- 6/2/2025
Implosion The Titanic Sub Disaster (27 May 2025)
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CreativityTranscript
00:00On June the 18th, 2023, the Titan submersible set out for the wreck of the Titanic.
00:15On board were five men, including the pilot and owner, Stockton Rush.
00:21When I started with this goal of getting people underwater, and I also wanted to go deep,
00:24I have what I call the deep disease.
00:26Titan descended two miles beneath the surface.
00:32Then, suddenly, all communication was lost.
00:37Our sub was there, and then it was not.
00:42What was that like?
00:43Did they have a chance to worry about it? Not a chance.
00:47The submersible had suffered a catastrophic failure, and all five men on board were killed.
00:54I lost two people who were important in my life. They're not going to come back.
01:00With unprecedented access to the U.S. Coast Guard investigation...
01:04In about two minutes, they identify that they lost conscience tracking.
01:09Everyone in the world wants to know what happened to Titan.
01:12...and exclusive footage from inside the submersible...
01:15Yep, everything's good.
01:16...we reveal the truth behind the biggest scandal in deep sea exploration.
01:21I've gone back and forth a lot, like, whether I should have done more.
01:25Nothing is breaching the hull. It's the safest spot on the entire planet.
01:30What really happened on that fatal dive?
01:34If it wasn't an accident, it then has to be to some degree of crime.
01:39Exploration is part of human nature.
01:49Many are compelled to push the boundaries and explore.
01:53And that's where, you know, you have to balance the risk with some oversight.
02:08In September 2024, 15 months after the Titan implosion, the U.S. Coast Guard convenes a public hearing into the cause of the disaster.
02:24We need to provide closures for the families.
02:31We have to find out why.
02:33We have to be able to provide that closure to everyone.
02:42The aim for Jason Neubauer and his team is not only to find out why Titan imploded,
02:47but to prevent this kind of failure ever happening again.
02:53I've met many of the families of the victims, and that is the one thing that keeps me driven.
03:01Seeing the impacts from a tragedy, every loss of life impacts hundreds of people.
03:08During the two-week hearing, the investigation team will question witnesses about their memories of Stockton Rush,
03:20and his creation, the Titan submersible.
03:26To get to the bottom of what went wrong on the fatal dive, they will have to delve back into how it all started.
03:31Carl Stanley has almost 30 years' experience diving submersibles.
03:41Mr. Stanley, the board's recorder, Lieutenant Steele, will now administer your oath.
03:45Good afternoon, sir. Please stand and raise your right hand.
03:50Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
03:56So help you God.
03:57I do.
03:58Thank you. You may be seated.
04:01Good afternoon, Mr. Stanley.
04:05Mr. Keith Fawcett will have the first round of questioning for you, sir.
04:09Mr. Stanley, could you just talk about your experience and your interaction with Mr. Stockton Rush?
04:16My relationship with Stockton goes back at least 10, possibly up to 15 years.
04:22When I learned that he was making a carbon fiber sub, I told him I want to be a part of that.
04:28I saw that as an opportunity to dive deeper than I probably would have ever gotten to dive again.
04:34I was excited about it.
04:38I don't think Stockton started this whole project knowing that it would end in total disaster.
04:45I think he believed in having people have better access to the deep ocean.
04:55In April 2017, Stockton Rush was invited to the prestigious Explorers Club in New York,
05:02where he gave an impassioned presentation about his ambitions for deep sea exploration.
05:09Thanks very much.
05:12You may have seen in the write-up of this that I wanted to be an astronaut.
05:17It's why I got an engineering degree. I watched Star Trek, Star Wars, and I wasn't going to get to Jupiter or Mars,
05:25but I did realize that all the cool stuff that I thought was out there is actually underwater.
05:33He wanted to support science. He wanted to, you know, make this kind of adventure more
05:42approachable to the public. The goal was, where do you want to go in the ocean? What is the most known
05:51site in the ocean? And it's clearly the Titanic. And to go to the Titanic, which is at 3,800 meters,
06:02requires a special sub. Carbon fiber in subsea vehicles is really the right substance to use.
06:10It's three times better on a strength to buoyancy basis than titanium, the next best thing.
06:16Deep diving passenger submersibles are made of steel or titanium, not carbon fiber.
06:23But Stockton was a strong advocate for using the untested material.
06:29It would be the deepest diving carbon fiber sub ever built. But if we mess it up,
06:35there's not a lot of recovery.
06:36I'm good already. North, south, I ski so well.
06:39Stockton and Ocean Gate came on our radar probably in 2020. My job is to go around the
06:44world investigating great mysteries and to tell stories of exploration. And so we thought this
06:50would be an amazing opportunity to shine a light on what they were doing.
06:56Stockton wanted to bring more people to Titanic. So he built a vehicle that had a totally different
07:02shape, toilet paper tube. This carbon fiber hull that was built to be lighter and stronger from
07:08the space age material. It had these big titanium end caps that would seal this cylinder.
07:13When I first saw it on the dock, it was kind of this marvel.
07:16Titan's design meant that it could carry five passengers down to depths.
07:25This will be one of the great moments of submersibles in that this technology is what we need to
07:32explore the ocean depth. It's our belief that without innovative technologies and innovative business...
07:38Ocean Gate extensively documented their story for their archives.
07:44Their videos were used to promote Titan, to attract investors, the media and passengers wanting
07:51to explore the ocean depths.
07:52Make the exploration possible.
07:59If you're starting a submarine company, is there a more famous destination in the world than Titanic? No.
08:06Where is your excitement factor on this?
08:08Oh, definitely at 11. By the time we're done testing it, I believe it's pretty much invulnerable.
08:15And that's pretty much what they said about the Titanic? That's right.
08:23To test the strength of Titan's carbon fiber hull, Stockton took the sub to deep waters just off the
08:30coast of the Bahamas. I got an email saying,
08:34come out to Marsh Harbor, Bahamas, and I have a spot open for you.
08:40This was the opportunity that sub-expert Carl Stanley had been waiting for.
08:45OK, I'm good. Lock me up.
08:47Stockton told him that the incremental testing of Titan's hull had so far involved 46 dives,
08:55mostly shallow, with only three reaching deep sea pressure.
08:59All of our test program has been about incremental testing. This is really focused on the pressure
09:04vessel and making sure that the most critical component of the sub is safe and capable of
09:10handling depths down to 4,000 meters repeatedly with people on board.
09:174,000 meters, or two and a half miles, is the depth of the sea floor where the Titanic lies.
09:23To succeed in reaching it, Titan would have to withstand crushing water pressures equal to two
09:30and a half tons bearing down on every square inch of the hull.
09:34I did not even come close to appreciating the real danger. I was the one that was like,
09:43hey, capture this moment. Like, I was happy to be there.
09:52Joining the dive that day was 25-year-old Petros Mathiodakis.
09:57He was in the Bahamas demonstrating an underwater scanner to Stockton,
10:01and he had jumped at the chance for a ride in Titan.
10:04I was aware that this was extremely risky, and Stockton was very clear.
10:11He said, do you have a wife? And I said, no. Do you have kids? And I said, nope.
10:20He said, okay, you're in.
10:21When you're inside of Titan, on your descent, you're just free-falling. You're just heavy,
10:33and your gravity is pushing you down.
10:38You're essentially in the dark, just enough light to see.
10:42The first time the carbon fiber made a noise in that hall, it was extremely loud. It was like a gunshot.
10:59Any noise would have been loud, but that was loud.
11:05Everyone stops talking for a little bit, and okay, I think we're okay, you know.
11:09That loud, sudden noise that you know is essentially part of your pressure vessel breaking,
11:21I think that's going to scare anybody.
11:25But the alarming noises were not the only concern for those on board.
11:31When we got almost to the bottom, the lights on the exterior of the sub powered down.
11:36We had a bit of issue with one of the battery banks. Stockton had mentioned we're not seeing
11:53full vertical thruster availability.
11:56The supposed goal of the trip was to test it to the exact depth of the Titanic. We got 96% of the
12:13way there. Like we're getting closer to it, but we're not touching it. You're on the dive. It's hard to
12:20put the brakes on that. So what are you going to do? The cracking sounds were continuing. So at some point,
12:30collectively, we came to a decision of, well, that's good enough. Let's call it a day.
12:35I'm sure we were within a few percentage points of implosion.
12:48After his experience, Carl Stanley decided to warn Stockton Rush that the noises could mean the sub's
12:55main hull was no longer safe. Mr. Stanley, you sent an email in April 18, 2019, I believe, to Mr. Rush.
13:06You say the sounds we observed yesterday sounded like a flaw, defect in one area being acted on by
13:12the tremendous pressures and being crushed, damaged, would indicate there is an area of the hull that is
13:19breaking down, getting spongy. I was very much concerned that I kept sending him emails for over a year.
13:31And I didn't even know a fraction of what we know now. You know, I feel this exchange of emails strained
13:42our relationship. I felt like I kind of pushed things as far as I could without just him telling me to
13:49shut up and never talk to him again. It's become clear during the investigation
13:55that the damage was worse than Carl had suspected. And after dive 47, Stockton found out about a crack.
14:05After dive 47, one of the pilots for Oceangate was getting ready to do a pre-dive inspection of the hull.
14:13And he was able to identify a crack in the carbon fiber.
14:16The layers of carbon fiber were beginning to come apart, known as a delamination.
14:24This is what had caused the crack.
14:32In the Arizona desert, Tim Catterson, one of Oceangate's contract safety divers,
14:38is building his own steel submersible. Using carbon fiber was an option he never even considered.
14:45Hardly anybody in the public is familiar with carbon fiber. It's stable all the way up until this magic
14:55point that it is not. The failure happens catastrophically, nearly explosively.
15:04As you're diving down, the pressure's getting greater. They heard big pops. So you got your fibers are like this.
15:15When this breaks like that, that would make some pretty loud pops.
15:18It's pulling apart from one side and is now starting to roll up underneath itself. That's delamination by its definition.
15:28The damage to Titan meant it would no longer survive the pressures of the deep ocean.
15:36So early in 2020, Stockton had no choice but to completely replace the hull.
15:42Building once more with carbon fiber.
15:45He was convinced that with slight modifications to the processing of the carbon fiber, this sub would
15:53be able to repeatedly dive down to depth.
15:58It's been a long process to ensure that Titan can go to the Titanic repeatedly and safely.
16:05He was not going to be swayed from using carbon fiber.
16:07We've refined the process so that we have extremely uniform five inch thick carbon fiber.
16:13Stockton and Oceangate needed to maintain their company vision of taking people in a carbon fiber
16:20innovative submersible for the trip of a lifetime.
16:23I can't wait to get out to the Titanic.
16:28Titan was relaunched with its new carbon fiber hull early in 2021.
16:33The Titanic expedition plans were well underway.
16:38But Oceangate had disregarded US guidelines for carrying passengers.
16:44They did not register it.
16:45Why would they not register it?
16:47One reason to not register is to make sure that no one from a regulatory standpoint is monitoring
16:53your operations. You know, by design to operate in a manner that you stay off the radar.
17:00The saga of the Titanic's sinking and rediscovery has captured...
17:04At this GeekWire conference, Stockton Rush attempts to justify why Titan was not properly certified.
17:11And today we're honored to host one of the explorers who is literally bringing new light
17:16to that saga. Stockton Rush.
17:19There are certifying agencies, the Pressure Vessels for Human Occupation Committee,
17:24the sub-safe program in the Navy. These programs are over the top in their rules and regulations,
17:31but they had nothing with carbon fiber. So we had to go out and work on that. And one of the things I
17:36learned is, you know, when you're outside the box, it's really hard to tell how far outside the box you
17:41really are. And we were pretty far out there.
17:54Hey, Josh. Hey, how are you, man? Glad you made it.
17:57Nice to meet you, Jim.
17:58We had read about Ocean Gate and we thought this would be a great story for Expedition Unknown.
18:03Here was this innovator that was going to come and break design barriers and to create a next
18:10generation submersible. Discovery presenter Josh Gates saw Titan as his chance to take the trip of a
18:19lifetime. Come on board. Hi, everybody. How are you? How's it going? Stockton was a really compelling
18:29salesman. And that's a good way to describe him, I think. So this is the largest
18:33viewport on any deep diving sub in planet Earth. Stockton's answers felt rehearsed. They felt
18:42like they were the smooth answers that you were bound to get as you cruise the showroom floor for
18:48a new car. Carbon fiber will be one third the weight of a similar titanium structure. Right.
18:55We all rely on that spidey sense. We all have that little voice that whispers to us. And that voice
19:00started whispering to me early on. All right. The only way to get in or out of Titan was through the
19:07front. Thank you, sir. Copy that. And so when you climbed inside of it and they close that door,
19:16they seal you in from the outside. Okay. The door is closed. Now what's happening to it?
19:21They're bolting it in. How many bolts go around it? Four bolts. Four bolts. So
19:25we're in. Yes. We're sealed up. You are a prisoner. My prisoner. I'm happy to be here. Stockton just
19:33didn't see, even psychologically, the need for a way out of this sub.
19:39This is Titan. Topside. Topside. Titan. There you go. It's going to take it pretty steep. That's where
19:50it gets interesting. Pretty good. Yeah. We are underwater. We were in the sub for
19:59hours with Stockton. And the dive was interesting in that nothing really worked right.
20:06Uh, I'm having trouble with our port horizontal thruster. Okay. Let's show them that.
20:21Aft is unlocked. No UBT light. Go, Ben. The sub didn't really do anything it was asked to do.
20:28Now this guy helped me down at Titanic too, right? Yeah. Yep.
20:31They have an emergency overwrite on the VBT. In case we have a software problem.
20:39Then there was an issue with the software. The system crashed at one point.
20:44Hello? Can you copy?
20:47The motor doesn't even seem to be moving, but the control program says it's moving. No current.
20:52Yep. I don't like when thrusters go out. We may just go back to the platform rather than go to the bottom.
20:57Okay. We're pretty much here. Hey, top side. I mean, it was
21:04non-functional is a good way to put it. And so eventually it was decided that we had to scrub
21:12the dive and bring it back to the surface. Okay. We're up. We're going to get some good footage.
21:18Big time. And this will make it a different story. On the way back to port, Josh quizzed Stockton
21:24about being in Titan on deeper dives. How noisy is it when it goes down? Is it pretty quiet?
21:30Oh, it'll be quiet. There's usually a bang somewhere. Most subs have a bang of some type.
21:34When I was in the sub before and it was, you know, I'll play you what it sounded like when
21:37the carbon fiber is collapsing around you and you don't have much time left. This is what it sounds like.
21:42And what you just were sending, ascending, ascending at that point?
21:45No, no. I was going down. I kept going down because why not? I don't know if it'll play on the speaker.
21:55Those click sounds, that wasn't a mouse clicking. And you could feel it. I was in the dome. I could
22:03feel these things popping. The second dive, I put earplugs in and it worked much better.
22:08It wasn't just a red flag for me. It was like a flare had gone up.
22:14Josh confronted Stockton about how much testing Titan had undergone.
22:20OK. Ho ho. We're back.
22:23So we've had 52 dives in the sub to date.
22:26Test dives? Test dives.
22:28OK. We spent a year and a half in the Bahamas testing the sub.
22:30But we've done a massive upgrade of the software systems and some of the external components.
22:36And we're testing. And so those things, you test, test, test.
22:39And I was thinking, when did they go back and test this new sub in the Bahamas?
22:45And I couldn't quite make the dates line up in my head.
22:49What Stockton hadn't told Josh was that this Titan, with its replaced hull,
22:55had only been tested so far on three shallow dives.
23:01Pieces of it were tested in the ocean.
23:04But the main pressure hull, once it was refabricated, never went back to depth.
23:11All right.
23:12I suddenly realized, what would it mean if I made this kind of promotional documentary
23:18about Stockton and about Ocean Gate that maybe inspired other people to go
23:22and take a ride in this sub?
23:24And then something happened to it.
23:27And so I made the really difficult decision to call up the president of the network
23:31and to fall on my sword and say, I know that this is something that was a big deal for you to sign off on.
23:36And I appreciate the opportunity, but we shouldn't do this.
23:40This is a mistake. Something bad is going to happen here.
23:42Well, I'll get there.
23:44In the very short time that I spent with Stockton,
23:47it absolutely seemed like he had something to prove.
23:50Currently, Stockton's directing this, too.
23:52Okay.
23:52He wanted to kind of, you know, damn the establishment.
23:57And I'm going to kind of show them.
23:59And I'm going to, you know, be this cutting edge entrepreneur and inventor and do it my own way.
24:05Certainly Stockton had the money.
24:14He had the vision.
24:15He had the drive to do this.
24:20He invited me once to go out flying with him.
24:25He's got an experimental aircraft.
24:29Experimental.
24:29He said, do you want to fly?
24:35Give me that thing.
24:36So, you know, I'm flying the airplane a little bit.
24:40It's great fun.
24:43And then he says, do you want to do a barrel roll?
24:46Sure.
24:47He told me how to do it.
24:48And then I did one.
24:53Basically, we were just doing this stuff.
24:55And he said, you know, this is great.
24:57Nobody else ever wants to go and do this stuff.
25:00And I said, well, it's either going to work or it's not going to work.
25:03You know, while we're doing it, it's going to be a, you know, a great fun time.
25:08Yeah, we could have crashed.
25:15Somewhere, somewhere in there, we were a kindred spirit.
25:20Why I kept working with him, I don't know, because I definitely did not say yes to him all the time.
25:27I don't know.
25:32My dynamic with Stockton was interesting.
25:35We didn't agree on everything.
25:37You know, Stockton wasn't always right, but he was always sure he was right.
25:41Businessman and adventurer Alfred Hagen was one of the first to sign up for Stockton's Titanic expedition.
25:48I mean, he was a genius.
25:52And he had a very distinct vision of what he was going to build, how he was going to do it, and what he was going to achieve.
25:58I'm here with Stockton Rush, who is the CEO of Oceangate.
26:02You know, there's no doubt in my mind that his primary motivations were more ego-driven than financially driven.
26:08You got the dry suits, you got the...
26:10Well, Stockton was guilty of hubris, and he's...
26:13People accuse him of trying to prove himself and live up to his own ancestry, and those are relevant points.
26:21And his family legacy was about the closest that you can get to royalty within the United States.
26:28Stockton was a true blue-blood patrician, as was his wife Wendy.
26:36You know, her great-grandparents were the people that owned Macy's, whose lives were lost on the Titanic.
26:42And she had that direct connection.
26:44They were of the upper crust.
26:51I don't think most people can even imagine the access that Stockton had to
26:57the Uber elites of the world.
27:01Stockton's father had been the president-elect of the Bohemian Club,
27:06which owns a multi-thousand-acre reserve of old-growth redwood forest,
27:14an hour outside of San Francisco, that they use for their private campground.
27:21Who cares where the original funding came from?
27:25You know, it doesn't matter. It's what he was doing with it. That's what mattered.
27:29He pitched an idea to people at the right place in the right time that threw money at him,
27:36and he felt some kind of psychological need to accomplish something and impress these people.
27:44Don't miss the opportunity to be part of history.
27:48Ocean Gate Expeditions offers you the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a specially trained crew member
27:54safely diving to the Titanic wreckage site.
28:00Rushing things to market so that a business can become profitable or stay afloat is obviously dangerous.
28:06The Titanic is one of the most amazing brands in the world. People are so enthralled with Titanic
28:16that it became a must-do dive. And so from a business perspective, it was very appealing.
28:24I understand the draw to go down and see the underwater world, the Titanic first-hand,
28:31but how do you keep the person safe who doesn't understand submersible operations,
28:36who just knows they want to go see something unique from taking the ultimate risk like that,
28:42especially in a kind of a commercial arrangement?
28:44So to confirm, to become a mission specialist, did you pay Ocean Gate any money?
28:57I did.
28:58As a mission specialist, were you part of the submersible crew or were you a passenger?
29:06Well, both. I was a passenger who was given the latitude to participate in the mission.
29:13I didn't do any of the, what I would say, critical items, but certainly, you know,
29:20Titan bolts on the dome and other things that I would qualify as what we would say
29:26in a slang version, monkey work.
29:31Alfred paid a discounted price of around $200,000 to join the first expedition in 2021.
29:38He was on deck as Titan was launched for its first attempt to reach the Titanic.
29:44The dive, number 61, was abandoned at seven meters.
29:49But as the submersible was hauled back up the ramp, another, more serious failure occurred.
29:57Did you observe the incident as the dome fell off?
30:01Yes, I did.
30:02The titanium dome, there were only four bolts in it and they just sheared and they exploded like bullets.
30:11Suddenly the people inside were looking out at the ocean down a ramp and obviously a horrifying moment.
30:16Stockton and his team had taken the decision that only four of a possible 18 bolts needed to be used to fix the titanium dome to the carbon fiber hull before a dive.
30:29The thought with the four bolts was simply that once you went to depth, I mean, you didn't need anything to hold on.
30:35The pressure was so intense that you couldn't pry it off.
30:39Stockton wanted to appropriate any pictures or videos of the occurrence.
30:43So there was a dedicated effort to hutch that up.
30:48Despite witnessing that incident, Alfred remained determined to get down to the Titanic.
30:54It did not deter me because I understood that they made a basically a dumb mistake and they had corrected it.
31:00It was not a safe operation. It was an experimental vehicle.
31:06It was clear to me from Mr. Higgins' testimony that he had a very high risk tolerance and that he felt like there was a possibility that the worst could occur.
31:17And when Alfred did get his chance to go on Titan's next dive, they were forced to abort the attempt halfway down.
31:24Anyone that went down in it either knew or should have known how risky it was.
31:32They were either embracing that reality or they were delusional.
31:43Christine Dawood lost her husband and son in the implosion.
31:50She watched the hearings from her home in the UK.
31:54It felt like a real crime horror film, to be honest.
31:58The strain of flying there and staying and going there would have been, I think, too much.
32:06I guess that there was an element of doubt in myself.
32:10Like, did I miss something? What could I have done differently?
32:14Oceangate celebrated reaching Titanic depths six times that summer.
32:30Stockton, emboldened by their success, was back in the North Atlantic with Titan for a second season of dives in 2022.
32:38So we're coming into the sub. This is the only toilet available on a deep diving submersible.
32:53Best seat in the house. You can look out the viewport. We put a privacy screen in, turn up the music.
32:58It's very popular. We have our control screen here, our sonar screen here.
33:05This is the second year we've been out to the Titanic.
33:08We're a completely privately funded operation and we're funded by,
33:11we call mission specialists, who help support the mission.
33:14So they take quite a bit of money.
33:15We want to document what the wreck is like now and also try to predict what it'll be like in the future.
33:26Midway through the season, Antonella Wilby joined the ship as a contract crew member.
33:31She is an expert in underwater remotely operated vehicles.
33:36From the moment I stepped onto the ship, I never forgot it.
33:40I was signing, I had to sign the liability waiver and Stockton was there.
33:44And two, a room full of people, some of them who had paid him lots of money to be there.
33:50All I really knew was a quarter million dollar price tag.
33:53He says, the company's registered in the Bahamas and they don't do punitive damages,
33:57so don't even bother suing me. And he says this with a laugh.
34:00And I was so shocked, I wrote it down, that's a verbatim quote,
34:02because I wrote it down right after this meeting because I was just shocked.
34:07I wasn't even aware the extent of how ridiculous and unsafe their operation was.
34:17Even just the level of attention to detail in inspecting the sub or pre-diving the sub.
34:23You know, I'd walk around right before a dive and just find, you know, cables that were loose or unplugged.
34:29We wouldn't send an ROV down like that.
34:31And I don't have people on an ROV. It's entirely remotely operated.
34:35Fresh air.
34:38How does this guy keep taking this sub down?
34:42Delusion or desperation?
34:45Someone who is so deep into this and has so many creditors at the door and has their personal
34:53reputation on the line that they have to move forward and keep forging ahead because there's no other path.
35:01It's like pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. We're going to work on to talk about all
35:07these different little things. No one actually notices, wait a second, like there's a bigger problem here.
35:15It felt like watching some really bizarre surrealist movie or something and I'm the only one going,
35:21this is insane, right?
35:28All right. Good morning, everyone.
35:31Headed back to the Titanic. Right now, we did vessel checks this morning.
35:34A couple of very minor anomalies, which is great.
35:42On the morning of 15th of July, the Titan crew prepared for Dive 80.
35:50Alfred was back in the hope of finally seeing the Titanic up close.
35:54It was one of those moments where you embrace the possibilities, you embrace the unknown.
36:07Titan is a go for a dive to the Titanic.
36:11In that moment, you're living a life trembling with joy. That's the essence of what I felt.
36:17It's unlocked. Unlocked. We're unlocked, okay?
36:47It's unlocked.
36:52Oh my god, that's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
36:57Pretty close.
36:58Yeah.
37:00Yeah, that's it. That's it.
37:09Oh my god, we're pretty close here.
37:11Above here. Oh yeah.
37:16That's the funnel number one.
37:19Where is the actual funnel? Oh my god.
37:21Oh, they're on their stern.
37:25It's a devastating thing to look at, but it's also all inspiring
37:29and inspirational in some ways and deeply sobering.
37:37And that's where they were launching the light bulbs.
37:39Yeah.
37:41After the dive, it took two hours for Titan to return to the surface.
37:55Right now we're doing three knots and we're trying to get back to the sub.
37:59We were ascending in the Titan. We were actually fairly close to the surface,
38:04as I remember, and we heard a loud crack.
38:12Sounded like the ship breaking apart.
38:15It was very loud, it was very dramatic, and everyone sat up and like, what was that?
38:19Oh, look at that blue. It's getting bright.
38:25Yeah.
38:27You can see the surface almost.
38:32That's a pretty welcome sight.
38:34I spoke to a member of the Horizon Arctic crew about the bang that was heard.
38:41Because I was, you know, just concerned and kind of shocked that this had happened.
38:45And he told me that he heard this bang.
38:47He was able to hear it from the surface. It must have been loud.
38:51When we got to the surface, Scott was piloting. He heard a really loud bang.
38:56Um, not a, not a soothing sound.
38:58No.
38:59But on the surface, and as Tim and PH will attest, almost every deep diving sub makes a noise at some
39:06point. You have dissimilar shapes and metals that are expanding due to thermal interaction,
39:13due to pressure changes, and it's quite common to have a noise.
39:16I heard that and I was just like shocked. And no one else really sort of reacted,
39:21and then Stockton sort of shut it down and, you know, just, oh, we'll talk about that later.
39:25And, you know, but for me, my initial reaction was like, hold on, you know, you don't,
39:31even if you heard your car make that sort of noise, you'd probably stop and go,
39:34wait a second, we need to like see what happened here.
39:40At the U.S. Coast Guard headquarters, Lieutenant Commander Katie Williams
39:45has been studying the data from Dive 80 obtained from Oceangate.
39:49This picture here is of the placements of the acoustic admission sensors on the Titan.
39:58These acoustic sensors pick up and record any noise from the carbon fiber hull.
40:06Oceangate recorded this data and they plotted it. On Dive 80, this purple line was a loud bang.
40:12There is this huge amplitude. When they heard this loud bang, there should have been all stop,
40:24do not continue, investigate further to make sure that that carbon fiber hull was still safe for people
40:29to operate in. The data reveals that the loud noise was, in fact, the carbon fiber delaminating.
40:38Titan's hull was beginning to break apart.
40:47You don't need to be a composites expert to think, okay, maybe we need to step back
40:53and stop the operation until we figure out what this actually means. But of course,
40:58as with anything with Oceangate, the response was to just go, oh, okay, and then just keep going.
41:04Their system said there has been a fundamental change in the material of your carbon fiber,
41:11and it was no longer structurally sound. Delamination at Dive 80 was the beginning
41:17of the end. And everyone that stepped on board the Titan after Dive 80 was risking their life.
41:22I've gone back and forth a lot, like whether I should have done more, you know, whether there's some moral
41:31obligation to do more. Antonella contacted the Coast Guard and volunteered to give evidence at the
41:39hearing by video link. I felt like it was the right thing to do to, you know, share what I knew
41:45and tell that part of the story. Lieutenant Commander Williams.
41:49So as I understand it, you were present during Dive 80 on July 15, 2022, where a loud bang was heard
41:57upon surfacing. Am I correct? Yes.
42:01Can you please tell me in detail about what you know about that dive?
42:06I wanted to say something before the next dive because they were going to be diving the sub.
42:14A couple days later, I went to Amber Bay, the director of administration.
42:22I told her I was really concerned that they were going to continue diving the sub.
42:26Her initial response was, yes, people are concerned about you too. You don't have an explorer mindset.
42:32Talking about explorer mindset, like that is not a mindset that you should have for doing anything.
42:37I did also talk to Phil Brooks. He's the director of engineering. And I asked him,
42:41are you going to keep diving the sub? And he said, yeah, we'll do the next mission,
42:44and then we'll visually inspect it. And I was just shocked by this. I'm like,
42:47you're going to continue diving it. Like, you don't know what's wrong,
42:50and you've seen evidence that something has happened in the hull. And I said, something has gone really wrong here.
42:56The hull itself, you're not going to hurt the hull. From a standpoint of the passenger safety,
43:05you're going to be alive because the hull, nothing is breaching the hull. It's the safest
43:09spot on the entire planet. But the stuff around it can get smashed and mangled, and then that can
43:14delay launches and dives and all kinds of stuff. They offered to send me home, and I said yes.
43:19You know, no one even looked at me. Like, I just grabbed my duffel bag and walked off the ship,
43:23and people wouldn't make eye contact with me. After Dive 80, Stockton was undeterred.
43:32And over the following week, Titan carried passengers on three further deep dives.
43:43Two and a half miles down, and it's difficult. That's why no one else does it.
43:46After Dive 80, every single time you would go down to depth, you were further damaging
43:55that hull. Eventually, something bad was going to happen.
43:58You guys should be able to see it.
44:03All right. Right now, they will cruise around the bow, and they'll spend about two hours on that,
44:09and then they'll come up and take about two and a half hours to get to the surface.
44:11Okay. Next stop, Titanic. Titan reports on bottom.
44:20The unique thing that we're doing here, and we're in a unique spot where a site where so many people
44:25pass away. There are a lot of parallels. That was a ship that was more of the finest ships of its day,
44:31and I think we have sub. It's one of the finest subs. We want to make sure we do things safely,
44:36and have a good outcome, and are able to take people down to the wreck for many years to come.
44:47I think he painted himself in a corner. And if he admits defeat and failure,
44:54and then has to tell this to the people that had given him so much money,
44:59what's the rest of his life look like? There's no possible way that Stockton didn't know how this
45:05was going to end. It was just a matter of, is it going to fail with me in it or with other people?
45:12It was obvious that it was going to fail in some way.
45:15This arrogance of the people in charge, when they think they're above everything,
45:29that really gets to me.
45:33Like, why is ego and arrogance more important than safety?
45:39The irony is not lost on me that the Titanic sunk for exactly the same reason.
45:45In May 2023, Stockton and the Ocean Gate team brought Titan back to the North Atlantic
45:53for its third season. For the first few weeks, poor conditions meant four dives were cancelled or
46:00aborted. Then, one morning, the weather finally broke.
46:06It was a perfect day for diving. The seas were calm, the wind was down.
46:18What was your responsibility on that day?
46:20Basically, I did all the dive checks for the platform.
46:26Stockton was the pilot. He was doing all the internal checks. He's like,
46:30this is great. This is great. We get to dive.
46:37On board Titan with Stockton was adventurer Hamish Harding,
46:43Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargile, and Shahzada Dawood, and his 19-year-old son, Suleiman.
46:51Suleiman knew nothing about it. This was just his grand adventure. It's the same for his father.
46:59Suleiman was close to the last to going in. And when he came up, I grabbed him by the back of his
47:08flotation device, you know, pull him and make sure he's not going to go sliding off into the water.
47:13And I helped him get in. I helped him get into the sub. And then I said, have a good dive.
47:35At 9.14 a.m. local, according to the Polar Prince deck log, the Titan disengaged,
47:43maneuvered away, and proceeded to dive with five persons aboard.
47:51They're going down to see the Titanic. You have this young boy, you know, who's excited. His dad's
47:58excited for him. The quiet, right? What questions, what conversations were they having?
48:11For the next 90 minutes, Titan descended towards the Titanic.
48:17Communications continued throughout the descent. There were no transmissions, which indicated
48:23trouble or an emergency aboard the Titan. At 10.47.33 a.m. local, the Titan was pinged for the final time.
48:34With Titan just 500 meters from the ocean floor, all communication was lost.
48:45Recently retrieved video from the support ship cameras has allowed the Coast Guard to see that moment
48:50for the first time.
48:55Okay, so what you're going to see is Miss Rush, as she is on the comms and tracking team.
49:00She leads that team, right?
49:02Yes.
49:03You will hear a noise that is external to the ship, or external to the room, I should say,
49:08and you will see their reaction to the noise.
49:10Okay.
49:13Um, yeah.
49:14So at that point you said, what was that bang?
49:28What was that bang?
49:28I'm going to back up and play a horn one more time.
49:30It sounds like a door slamming.
49:32Um, yeah, yeah, it should be about 500 meters or 30.
49:41Yeah.
49:41What was that bang?
49:45Now next, she's going to look at the computer and she says,
49:48drop two weights.
49:49Drop two weights was the last message from the Titan up through.
49:54Right.
49:54The message actually comes in after they heard the noise of what could possibly have been the implosion noise.
50:01Right.
50:01Okay.
50:02Drop two weights.
50:07Tight, drop two weights.
50:10It appears that she thinks something happened or she, she senses something.
50:14And then the relief once she sees drop two weights.
50:19What we believe is implosion sound came first before the computer message of drop two weights.
50:25Based upon the speed at which the acoustic telemetry modem chat
50:30and the speed of actual sound.
50:33That final text took several seconds to arrive on screen.
50:38Longer than the sound of the implosion took to reach the ship.
50:43That is, I mean, you figure it's a fatal moment, you know, all.
50:47It's very sobering.
50:59Seven hours after communication was lost with Titan, Oceangate notified the US Coast Guard
51:06and a four day search began.
51:08The search and rescue mission is underway after an underwater vessel used to take people to view
51:14the wreck of the Titanic went missing in the Atlantic Ocean.
51:17The Canadian Coast Guard, they have new ships that have just arrived on scene.
51:21The Horizon Arctic, a ship that can drop a remotely operated vehicle.
51:25But if they find that sub, they've got a huge challenge.
51:28Lifting it up out of the water, maybe from the depth of two and a half miles.
51:32There's no other explanation for losing comms and tracking when they weren't yet at the bottom,
51:43other than implosion.
51:46They found what they were looking for.
51:48It was no longer a search and rescue, but a recovery.
51:51They found debris.
52:07Stockton would have understood the reality of an implosion being instantaneous and painless.
52:16You're talking about something happening in a fraction of a second,
52:20where you're exposed to temperatures hotter than the sun and pressures
52:27more than double what's inside a scuba tank.
52:29So they, you know, they didn't feel a single, that it's basically the perfect painless way to die.
52:41This was a moment in time when their sub was there and then it was not.
52:50This is the life of my son and my husband they're talking about.
52:58This is the life of Hamish and two others who died there, right?
53:03So it's, it was deeply personal.
53:07I would never want anybody to go through that pain.
53:22So here is a picture of the aft dome that came up.
53:27It is filled with carbon fiber, fiberglass, electronic parts.
53:31As we're pulling each item out, we have to individually separate it
53:36and we placed it out on two tarps.
53:41So we're sifting through and we realized what it was, the clothing material.
53:46It was a portion of Mr. Rush's suit, the piece of his sleeve that had survived.
53:55No, not the whole suit, just that.
53:57And inside of the sleeve of it was ink pen, business cards and stickers for the Titanic.
54:09My belief with the dead is just leave them alone.
54:21Same goes for Stockton.
54:24I wish he was here right now and I would smack him one, you know.
54:30It's, it does no good to, to, to speak ill of the dead.
54:35Yeah, it's, their voices are still in the house.
54:44Their memories are in the house.
54:51I think I will never be the same person ever.
54:56I don't think that anybody who, who goes through loss and, and such a trauma can ever be the same.
55:05As the U.S. Coast Guard investigation draws to a close, Christine has to face their conclusion.
55:14It doesn't change the fact that they are dead.
55:19No matter what the investigation is, the rooms are still empty.
55:24They're not going to come back. They're never going to come back.
55:26So, do I need to know exactly what happened in order to come to terms with these empty rooms?
55:35Or not? And, and, and, and I don't know the answer yet.
55:38It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a process.
55:49After almost two years investigating the tragedy,
55:52the Marine Board of Investigation reviews the findings,
55:55which will eventually inform their report and recommendations.
55:59Ocean Gate gave this idea that they were safe.
56:04But when you look at all of the things that Ocean Gate bypassed and didn't do,
56:09safety was not their priority. It was a monetary gain.
56:12It was arrogant and he felt that his way was the only way and the best way.
56:16And I mean, I don't know why he felt that way, but he did. And, um,
56:20Five people perished because of it.
56:22There were so many opportunities for Stockton to stop this operation from happening. And he always
56:30chose to continue the operation instead of thinking about it from a safety perspective.
56:37With regards to the actions and inactions of Mr. Rush, continued failures to properly inspect the hall,
56:45failures to, to properly identify risks and risk mismanagement.
56:51So many steps and so many failures that, that got to where this happened.
56:54So really what we have here is not an accident. It's a potential crime.
57:02He knew the risks he was taking with that carbon fiber haul and with the Titan,
57:06but he didn't tell anybody else about those risks because he had to make the money.
57:16When people are doing things like spending a quarter million dollars in a
57:21death tube controlled by a game controller that wasn't tested by a guy that's telling you
57:28how he wants to be remembered for breaking rules,
57:32it's a message to the super wealthy, the oligarchy, if you will, that your money can't buy everything.
57:39If you want to be an explorer, an inventor, an innovator, that's awesome.
57:47But when you start inviting the public, when you bring a kid into this thing you've invented,
57:56you have a responsibility at that point to be totally forthright about what it is that you're offering.
58:03We all know who the culprit is.
58:11It's not changing anything, does it?
58:15The culprit died with them, right? So,
58:17who am I to blame?
58:30For a secondaire guy…
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58:39…
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59:00Transcription by CastingWords
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