The 2023 Titanic Submarine Incident: A Deep-Sea Tragedy Unfolds

The 2023 Titanic Submarine Incident is a maritime disaster that took place on June 18th, 2023, in the North Atlantic Ocean, near the wreck of the Titanic. A submersible named Titan, operated by OceanGate, disappeared during a tourist expedition to observe the Titanic wreck. The Titan was carrying five people and communication was lost 1 hour and 45 minutes into its dive to the wreck site. The authorities were alerted when it failed to resurface at its scheduled time​.

The cause of the incident was attributed to the failure of the pressure hull. This led to the implosion of the submersible, causing the instantaneous death of all five occupants. After a nearly 80-hour search, a debris field containing parts of the Titan was discovered approximately 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic by a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV)​.

The company behind the Titan, OceanGate, had been providing commercial submersibles for tourist trips since 2010. The company was founded by Stockton Rush and Guillermo Söhnlein in 2009. The company is based in Everett, Washington, U.S. The first-ever shipwreck site visited by an OceanGate submersible was the Andrea Doria wreck site, which was visited using their submersible Cyclops 1 in 2016​​.

The Titan was a five-person submersible that was constructed from carbon fibre and titanium. Its hull had been downgraded to a depth rating of 3,000 meters in 2020 after showing signs of cyclic fatigue. The hull was then repaired or rebuilt in 2020 and 2021. The Titan was capable of moving at a speed of up to 3 knots using four electric thrusters​​.

OceanGate had claimed that Titan was designed and engineered in collaboration with experts from NASA, Boeing, and the University of Washington. However, after the incident, representatives from all three organizations denied their involvement in the design, engineering, or testing of the Titan submersible​​.

According to OceanGate, the Titan had several backup systems designed to bring the vessel to the surface in case of emergency. Some of these backup systems were designed to function even if all the occupants were unconscious. These included ballasts that could be dropped, a balloon, thrusters, and sandbags held by hooks that would dissolve after a certain number of hours in water, thereby releasing the sandbags and allowing the vessel to float to the surface​.

However, the investigation into this incident is still ongoing. I could not find the final report on the investigation, and it is not clear whether the backup systems worked as intended or what the exact sequence of events leading up to the disaster was. I will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as more information becomes available.