Originally appeared on E! Online
More details about the Titan submersible tragedy have come to light.
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WATCH HERENearly two years after the OceanGate Expedition’s vessel imploded with five people onboard — including CEO Stockton Rush — new footage shows the moment when the sound of the catastrophe reached the ocean’s surface.
As Wendy Rush, the director of OceanGate and Stockton’s wife, monitored data and text communications at a computer alongside employee Gary Foss on June 18, 2023, they heard a muffled thump as the submersible reached 3,300 meters. She asked Foss in the footage released by the U.S. Coast Guard on May 22, “What was that bang?”
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SIGN UP The USCG — which used the footage as evidence to the Marine Board of Investigation as for the 2024 case into the incident — wrote alongside the clip that the sound heard “later correlated with the loss of communications and tracking” and explained that it “is believed to be the sound of the Titan’s implosion reaching the surface of the ocean.”
READ A Deep Dive Gone Wrong: Inside the Titanic Submersible Voyage That Ended With 5 Dead
Moments after the bang, Wendy received a message at 9:17 a.m. ET (10:47 a.m. NDT) from the submersible that it had “dropped two weights,” which helps the vessel change buoyancy and either descend or surface.
She appeared relieved as the message came in after the sound. However, contact with the Titan — which imploded 90 minutes into the voyage — was lost almost immediately after the messages were sent, the agency confirmed in a model animation viewed by E! News.
Just 30 minutes before, while the Titan — carrying Stockton, Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood — descended to 2,178 meters, the team in the accompanying ship asked three times whether the vessel could see them on their navigation system. The Titan responded, “Yes, lost system and chat settings.”
Among its final messages was, “all good here” as the team made it to 2,288 meters, almost 1,000 meters before the implosion.
While there was a race to locate the submersible above water, four days after the voyage, OceanGate shared in a statement that they believed those on board, who were headed to view the crash site of the Titanic, had all died.
“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world's oceans,” the company’s June 22, 2023 statement continued. “Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”
