Image: OceanGate/Youtube
Debris of OceanGate Expedition’s Titan submersible was found on the ocean bed 4,000 metres deep late on Thursday. OceanGate announced the tragic death of five passengers on board
Image: OceanGate
OceanGate issued the statement, “We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost. These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans. Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time.”
US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger said in a press conference, “An unmanned deep sea robot found the debris lying 1600ft away from the bow of Titanic wreckage. The debris is consistent with catastrophic loss of pressure chamber.”
The US Navy reportedly heard a sound of implosion from the area where the vessel was diving and lost communication with the mother ship. But the sound was found to be “not definitive” at the time
The tragic story started on Sunday when Titan began its descent with five passengers on board for an exploration of the wreckage of the Titanic that sank in 1912. After 1 hour and 45 minutes the vessel suddenly lost connection with its mother ship. The cost of this experience was $250,000 per person
Titan submersible was made with an experimental combination of carbon fiber and titanium. Due to this, one of the employees named David Lochridge even raised an objection about the safety and durability of the hull in 2018. He asked the company to carry out non-destructive tests of the hull, but OceanGate reportedly didn’t do it. Instead, they fired Lochridge and filed a lawsuit against him
Recently, the director of the 1997 blockbuster Titanic also made his comments on the missing vessel and said that he was skeptical about the design. Cameron became a deep-sea explorer in the 1990s while researching for his Oscar winning film. Cameron said to Reuters, “I thought it was a horrible idea. I wish I'd spoken up, but I assumed somebody was smarter than me, you know, because I never experimented with that technology, but it just sounded bad on its face”
Image: CBC news
A correspondent of CBS, David Pogue also went on a Titanic expedition last year in the Titan Submersible. Pogue recently revealed that the submersible was small and sparse on the inside. The passengers had to sit with their legs crossed on the floor as there were no seats and just one toilet. He also said that the vessel had no GPS and would completely rely on text messages from the mothership. Also, the pilot would steer the vessel with the help of a video game controller. But if that failed, there was a hard wired system that controlled the propellers. Pogue also said that during his trip also, the vessel lost communication with the mother ship and was lost for over two hours
The Simpsons has proven itself to be the modern Nostradamus as it predicted Trump's presidency and even the takeover of Fox by Disney. But it seems that these weren’t the only things they predicted. A post on Twitter shows an episode of 2006 where Homer Simpson and his father Mason Fairbanks die while retrieving the treasure from a wrecked ship underwater. Netizens are comparing the father son duo with Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleiman