A year ago, the world held its breath as a major rescue operation was deployed to try to locate the submarine Titan, in which five billionaires were traveling to explore the wreck of the Titanic, off the coast of Newfoundland. .
If the explorers had paid US$250,000 each to find a place on board, the tragedy of the Titan submersible had struck the collective imagination after its disappearance on June 18, 2023, while the last reserves of oxygen on board were slowly running out. board, leaving their fate uncertain.
Today, although the cause of death of the five passengers has been established, many questions still remain unanswered. But hindsight has made it possible to develop several theories to explain what could have led to the implosion of the submarine.
Here is everything we know to date about the Titan tragedy:
Who was in the submarine?
1-Hamish Harding, 58 years old
British businessman Hamish Harding, head of the private jet sales company Action Aviation, was an adventure lover.
Indeed, the year before the accident, he had visited space aboard Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket New Shepard, after breaking a Guinness World Record by exploring the deepest part of the ocean known to date in March 2021, aboard another submersible.
AFP
2-Shahzada Dawood, 48 years old
A Pakistani businessman with British citizenship, Shahzada Dawood was vice-chairman of the Karachi-based conglomerate Engro: a company with investments in several sectors, including energy, agriculture, petrochemicals and telecommunications. .
He was traveling with his 19-year-old son Suleman, who had accompanied him on the Father’s Day adventure.
AFP PHOTO / DAWOOD HERCULES CORPORATION
3-Suleman Dawood, 19 years old
Passionate about the Rubik’s cube, which he could complete in 12 seconds, the 19-year-old hoped to break a Guinness world record aboard the submersible by completing the puzzle near the wreck of the Titanic, 3,700 meters under the sea, confided his mother Christine Dawood.
AFP
4- Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77 years old
A specialist in deep diving and passionate about maritime archaeology, the Frenchman had spent a long time working on the seabed as commander of the clearance divers group in Cherbourg, France, then as a submarine pilot in the French Navy. .
As early as 1987, he took part in several missions to retrieve hundreds of objects from the Titanic, aboard the French submarine Nautile.
AFP
5-Stockton Rush, 61 years old
Nicknamed “the daredevil inventor,” Stockton Rush was the American boss of OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the Titan submersible, which he founded in 2009 and which has been offering tours to see the wreck of the Titanic since 2021.
Over the past 20 years, the trained pilot and engineer had set his sights on several ocean-related technology companies, including BlueView Technologies, a manufacturer of small high-frequency sonar systems.
AFP PHOTO / OceanGate Expeditions
• Read also: Who are the 5 passengers of the submersible that disappeared near the Titanic?
Chronology of the drama
The Titan tragedy began more than a decade before the fateful day of June 18, 2023, when the founders of OceanGate, Stockton Rush and Guillermo Söhnlein, allegedly set out to “increase access to the seabed,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Here is a timeline of the tragedy, according to the encyclopedia:
2009: Foundation of the OceanGate company
2013: Work begins on a first submersible, Cyclops I, which will only have the capacity to go to a depth of 500 meters.
2016: Construction work begins on the Cyclops 2, which will be renamed “Titan” in 2018 following its maiden voyage. In the meantime, OceanGate announces that it wants to offer excursions to the wreck of the Titanic, for the sum of US$105,129.
2018: The president of the Marine Technology Society, Montrealer William Kohnen, supported by 30 other experts in the field, wrote a letter to OceanGate expressing his security concerns regarding the Titan.
2019: A submarine expert conducts a first test dive aboard the Titan and is concerned about cracking noises. Tours are canceled for the rest of the year.
July 10, 2021: The Titan makes its first excursion to the wreck of the Titanic, but several expeditions will be canceled or postponed, pushing the price up to US$250,000.
June 18, 2023:
-At 8 a.m., the Titan begins its final journey.
-At 9:45 a.m., contact with the submersible was lost. Around the same time, the U.S. Navy detected “an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion,” according to Britannica, but the connection to the incident would not be revealed until later.
-At 3 p.m., the submarine did not surface at the scheduled time.
-At 5:40 p.m., the US Coast Guard was informed.
June 19, 2023: Research begins to try to find the submersible, while the population remains hopeful of finding the five explorers alive. But it’s a race against time, since the submarine only has a 96-hour reserve of oxygen.
AFP
U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick speaks during a news conference June 20, 2023 about search efforts for the missing submersible near the wreck of the Titanic.
June 20, 2023: Search teams hear “knocking” noises that they believe are related to the missing submarine, but which later turn out to be just natural seafloor noises.
June 22, 2023: The fateful hour of the last oxygen resources has passed: there is no longer any hope of finding the five men alive. The US Coast Guard announces that it has found debris.
June 23, 2023: The US Coast Guard announces the opening of an investigation.
July 2, 2023: The OceanGate company announces the end of its operations.
October 4, 2023: New debris from the Titan, as well as human remains, are recovered near the wreck of the Titanic.
• Read also: Video explains exactly how the Titan submersible imploded
Why was the Titan special?
Unpredictable material, shape and size prone to yielding under pressure, video game controller to steer the submersible: OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush boasted of having broken several rules in the creation of the Titan, according to Britannica.
Indeed, instead of building the submersible from titanium, capable of withstanding intense tension, the Titan was made from carbon fiber, a strong and cheaper material which is however more unpredictable under compression.
The shape and size of the submarine also made it prone to uneven pressure distribution, because instead of being spherical like traditional submersibles, which usually accommodate up to three people, the Titan was more oblong in shape, cylindrical, and could accommodate five passengers.
AFP
Another peculiarity of the submarine was that it was controlled using a video game controller, which, although very similar to the systems used by other submersibles, had not been built specifically for this purpose.
Eventually, instead of being moved aboard a transport boat, the Titan was pulled onto a platform behind a ship, which some have raised could have caused damage if the waters were rough.
What’s more, the submersible was not certified by a third party, to ensure it complied with industry standards, like the vast majority of devices, indicated Montreal engineer William Kohnen, president of the committee specializing in Marine Technology Society submarines.
This certification is, however, not mandatory, but rather carried out on a voluntary basis.
International research: how much has Canada spent in total?
Canadian and American military aircraft, large numbers of boats, underwater robots, side-scanning sonars: to find the missing submarine, an impressive amount of resources were directed to the site of the Titan’s disappearance to lend a helping hand .
AFP
The “Victor” robot on board the “Thalassa” ship of the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER) was moved to the scene to try to locate the submersible.
Among them, the Canadian Coast Guard dispatched the Canadian military ship Glace Bay, equipped with medical personnel, the Atlantic Merlin, equipped with an underwater robot, as well as the John Cabot, equipped with a sonar to side scan for detailed imaging.
Canada alone would have spent a little more than $3 million in equipment and personnel to try to find the five explorers, according to an estimate made by Global News, based on the resources deployed and their duration.
• Read also: Missing submersible: a video of search operations revealed by the Canadian army
One year later
If the OceanGate company announced the end of all its commercial activities 18 days after the Titan tragedy, experts from the four corners of the map are still trying to explain what could have caused the implosion of the device.
In early May, researchers at the University of Houston proposed the micro-buckling theory, which suggests that underwater compression may have caused some hull fibers to deform, creating micro-imperfections that threaten to to sell.
“If you take a spaghetti and press it with two fingers, what will happen? It will basically warp and eventually break. That’s buckling. “It’s when you compress something and it deforms significantly through instability,” said one of the study’s authors, Dr. Roberto Ballarini, studying submersibles of similar shapes and materials.
For their part, the relatives of the five victims are still struggling to turn the page as the first anniversary of the accident approaches, and they remain without answers.
“I still can’t get back to Suleman’s room. His belongings remain in boxes. I can’t empty them,” confided the young man’s mother, who also became a widow that day, seven months after the incident.
