The U.S. Coast Guard announced at a press conference that debris from the submersible Titan was found on the seafloor near the Titanic, confirming the deaths of the five crew members onboard.<\/p>\n
While searching an area of flat seabed approximately 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, a remotely operated vehicle discovered \u201cfive major pieces of debris that told us it was the remains of the Titan,\u201d including the front end of the pressure hull. \u201cThat was the first indication that it was a catastrophic event.\u201d<\/p>\n
The location of the debris suggested that the submersible imploded around the time it lost contact on Sunday, an hour and 45 minutes into its dive. The tremendous pressure the submersible experienced at those depths means that even a pinprick failure in the pressure hull would have cascaded almost instantly into a lethal implosion.<\/p>\n
Gary Lang, a television and film director who worked with James Cameron on his documentary film about the wreck of the Titanic and dove in a submersible to the wreckage as part of that project, says everyone onboard was made to understand that if anything went wrong, death would be instantaneous. \u201cA pinprick would turn into a gaping wound in less than a second.\u201d Given the tremendous pressure, he says, \u201cat that point, you\u2019re not even mush.\u201d<\/p>\n
Given the nature of the sub\u2019s demise, it now seems likely that the \u201cbanging\u201d sounds rescuers heard over the past two days did not actually come from the occupants of the submersible, who would have been long dead by then. The ocean, though it can often seem placid from the surface, is full of noises both natural and man-made, and these can often mislead underwater searchers.<\/p>\n
Asked if the bodies could be recovered, Rear Admiral John Mauger, the leader of the search, said, \u201cThis is an incredibly unforgiving environment,\u201d and reiterated that the vessel had suffered a \u201ccatastrophic implosion,\u201d implying that there might not be much left to recover.<\/p>\n
Ocean explorer Robert Ballard, who discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985, suggested that Titan\u2019s innovative carbon-fiber pressure hull might have been to blame for the vessel\u2019s loss. \u201cWe\u2019ve made thousands and thousands of dives with different vehicles\u201d since 1960, Ballard said, \u201cand we\u2019ve never, ever, in the history of these extreme-deep-diving programs, ever lost a vehicle. So this is a first. So you naturally go to, How does this vehicle differ from the vehicles we\u2019ve been using for many years? And it did have a very experimental hull, and obviously that hull imploded.\u201d<\/p>\n
Heartfelt tributes have been paid to the five people on board the Titan submersible, after it was revealed the craft suffered a catastrophic implosion on its journey to the Titanic shipwreck.<\/p>\n
OceanGate, the company which operated the dive, said: \u201cWe now believe that our CEO, Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet have sadly been lost.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world\u2019s oceans.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The U.S. Coast Guard announced at a press conference that debris from the submersible Titan was found on the seafloor near the Titanic, confirming the deaths of the five crew members onboard. While searching an area of flat seabed approximately 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, a remotely operated vehicle discovered \u201cfive major<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1245,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-special-reports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/raqeeb.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/raqeeb.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/raqeeb.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raqeeb.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raqeeb.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/raqeeb.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1280,"href":"https:\/\/raqeeb.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1279\/revisions\/1280"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raqeeb.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/raqeeb.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raqeeb.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/raqeeb.ps\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}