Featured Image Credit: Ocean Gate/Becky Kagan Schott
Topics: News, World News, Titan submersible
Rhiannon Ingle
Topics: News, World News, Titan submersible
The final words from the Titan submersible crew before they lost contact have finally been revealed.
A massive operation was launched in June last year after the missing submersible vanished about 435 miles (700km) south of Newfoundland, Canada.
The tiny sub, named the Titan, had an inside space of just 22ft long and 9ft wide with a height of a little over 8ft.
The craft, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, carried five people on board including a pilot and a ‘content expert’ as well as three paying customers.
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Titan lost contact with its surface crew on 18 June, 2023 as it explored the underwater gravesite of the Titanic wreckage, which lies around 12,500ft deep.
The US Coast Guard later announced the 'catastrophic implosion' of the Titan vessel some days later (22 June), after debris was discovered near the wreck of the Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland.
The implosion ended up killing all five passengers on board who were identified as OceanGate CEO and co-founder Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, French diver/Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood.
Since then, the US Coast Guard shared the last words heard from the crew of the Titan submersible.
The crew on board the Titan sub had been communicating with staff on board their support vessel, named the Polar Prince, by messages.
However, contact was lost after an exchange of repeated inquiries from the Polar Prince about the submersible's depth and weight as it descended.
The Polar Prince then asked repeatedly if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.
One of Titan's final responses, which became 'spotty' as it descended, was simply 'all good here' during the dive and never heard from again, according to the visual recreation which was released Monday (16 September).
The US Coast Guard reportedly made the chilling revelation on the very first day of what is expected to be a two-week hearing on the causes of the fatal implosion.
The aim of the hearing, the coast guard said in a statement earlier this month, is to 'uncover the facts surrounding the incident and develop recommendations to prevent similar tragedies in the future'.
"There are no words to ease the loss endured by the families impacted by this tragic incident," said Jason Neubauer of the Coast Guard Office of Investigations, who led the hearing.
"But we hope that this hearing will help shed light on the cause of the tragedy and prevent anything like this from happening again."