US expected to lead probe into ‘catastrophic explosion’ of Titanic sub

The BBC reported Stockton Rush, who was one of the five people who died in Titan’s catastrophic implosion, had previously written that he had heard “baseless cries” of “you are going to kill someone” – which he believed were a “serious personal insult”.

His words could be seen in emails between Mr Rush and deep sea exploration specialist Rob McCallum – in which he also said he was “tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation”.

The emails, seen by the BBC, show Mr McCallum told OceanGate’s chief executive that he was “mirroring that famous cry” of the Titanic’s builders: “She is unsinkable.”

One of his emails read: “I implore you to take every care in your testing and sea trials and to be very, very conservative.

“As much as I appreciate entrepreneurship and innovation, you are potentially putting an entire industry at risk.”

Five crew members are presumed to be dead after the Titan submarine suffered a ‘catastrophic explosion’ – this is how it all unfolded.

The bodies of the five passengers aboard the Titanic sub that was lost in a “catastrophic implosion” near the wreck may never be recovered from the floor of the Atlantic, says the US Coast Guard.

“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment out there on the sea floor. The debris is consistent with the catastrophic implosion of the vessel. We will continue to work and search the area down there but I don’t have an answer on prospects at this time,” said Rear Admiral John Mauger of the US Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard says that ROVs will remain in place but that it will begin to pull back equipment over the next 48 hours.

The Rear Admiral said that sonar buoys had been in the water for the past 72 hours and that they had not picked up any evidence of an implosion, suggesting that it had happened early on in the dive.

OceanGate was reportedly searching for a new submarine pilot at the same time as a five-person crew on one of its vehicles was missing during its mission to the Titanic wreck.

A posting obtained by the Mirror, which allegedly ran between Monday and Thursday, sought a “Submersible Pilot/Marine Technician to join the team … looking for someone to “manage and operate our fleet of manned submersibles and support vessels.”

The search for the submersible captured the attention of millions, as phrases such as “Titan” and hashtags like #OceanGate dominated Twitter’s top trending and TikTok For You Pages. According to Dr Justin D’Arienzo – a clinical psychologist in Jacksonville, Florida and former US Navy psychologist – the reason the public has been so invested is down to our desire to relate to others that sustains our obsession.

“We all can relate to that feeling of being trapped somewhere or being in the water or experiencing that level of uncertainty,” he tells The Independent. “What makes it so relatable is that we all could imagine being helpless with other humans and not know what to do.”

The submarine expedition to the Titanic that claimed five lives over the weekend relied on a design featuring key components made out of carbon fiber, which experts say hasn’t been proven as a reliable material for deep sea use.

“Innovation is a wonderful thing,” Bart Kemper, a mechanical engineer from the Marine Technology Society, told NBC News. “But everything that is new and not tried introduces uncertainty, and uncertainty is risk.”

The wreck of the Titanic is at about 13,000 feet under the ocean, multiple times deeper than where US Navy subs typically operate. At that depth, pressure is nearly 400 times that of the ocean’s surface.

“It’s a design that’s not been used in this way at this depth,” Mr Kemper added. “All it has to do is fail in one spot and game over.”

The US Coast Guard will lead the investigation into the disaster, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has said.

In a tweet on Friday evening the body said: “The U.S. Coast Guard has declared the loss of the Titan submersible to be a major marine casualty and will lead the investigation. The NTSB has joined the investigation and will contribute to their efforts. The USCG is handling all media inquiries related to this investigation.”

The other countries that could have taken a lead on the probe into how five people lost their lives in the Titan submersible included Canada, the UK and France.

The NTSB is independent US government investigative agency responsible for civil transportation accident investigation.

Stockton Rush, the co-founder of OceanGate, and one of the five submarine passengers who died on the ill-fated Titanic expedition, was seen as a thrill-seeker by those who knew him.

After viewing the 2004 launch of SpaceShipOne, the first private effort to reach space, Rush told Smithsonian magazine that he decided he didn’t want to merely be a passenger on someone else’s expedition, but rather lead his own mission.

“I didn’t want to go up into space as a tourist,” he told the magazine. “I wanted to be Captain Kirk on the Enterprise.”