This has been such an awful, strange, macabre and ultimately tragic story. Sunday morning, OceanGate lost contact with their tourist submarine, a vessel which carried people down to the site of the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean. The Titanic site is and should be considered a mass gravesite, and it’s deeply inappropriate to see it become a “tourist attraction” for the idle rich, men with too much money and too little sense. That’s exactly what happened here: OceanGate’s Titan submersible went missing and lost contact, and endless resources were spent Monday through Thursday to locate the vessel and perhaps attempt a search-and-rescue mission. Then, on Thursday, some news: debris was found near the Titanic site. All five men on the submersible are presumed dead, and it’s believed that the submarine imploded on Sunday, as it descended to the Titanic mass grave site.
All five people aboard the submersible that went missing on Sunday were believed to be dead, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Thursday, ending a dayslong rescue effort that gripped much of the world.
“On behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families,” Rear Admiral John Mauger said in a news conference on Thursday.
Earlier in the day, a remote-controlled vehicle located debris from the Titan submersible, including its tail cone, on the ocean floor, about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, he said.
“The debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” Admiral Mauger said.
Stockton Rush, the chief executive of OceanGate, was piloting the submersible. The four passengers were a British businessman and explorer, Hamish Harding; a British-Pakistani businessman, Shahzada Dawood, and his teenage son, Suleman; and a French maritime expert, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who had been on over 35 dives to the Titanic wreck site.
For rescuers, the search for the pilot and four passengers aboard the submersible, the Titan, was always a race against time. When the submersible, a 22-foot-long vessel owned by OceanGate, lost contact with a chartered ship on Sunday morning, it was more than halfway into its dive to the wreck of the Titanic, and it was believed to be equipped with only four days’ worth of oxygen.
Asked what the prospects were of recovering the bodies of the victims, Admiral Mauger said he did not have an answer. “This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor,” he said.
As the NYT noted (from the Coast Guard’s presser), the possibility of a recovery operation for the remains is an open question. I hope that they do not attempt any recovery operation – let the dead bury the dead. A mass gravesite claimed five more souls. Let this be the end of this kind of Titanic tourism.
Which isn’t to say that this should be the end of the reporting or the accountability. OceanGate needs to reimburse the government for the expense of these search-and-rescue efforts, and I would imagine that the victims’ families will be suing the f–k out of OceanGate too. There should be a consensus about adding more safety regulations to these kinds of submersibles too – from what I understand, the science of this submersible never made any sense, and a tragedy like this was sadly inevitable.
Photos courtesy of Getty.
So sorry for the families. Ocean Gate should have to reimburse every government and company who helped in this tragic, but perfectly avoidable situation.
Agreed – every joy ride for rich guys that ends up having to being rescued should be paid for by their families.
Agreed. The company should have paid for the search and rescue operation but I’m not sure the families can sue. I feel like I read somewhere from a man who didn’t go on the tiny tour sub that passengers had to sign a 10 page waiver explaining all the ways they could die. The passengers probably knew what could happen and went anyway.
Apparently this specific submersible model & technology have never been tested on that depth. This was her first voyage, before this the company borrowed other submersibles.
I doubt the passengers were made aware of that.
If it turns out they weren’t told this, then them signing the papers is moot.
A friend that is a lawyer once told me that if you are asked to sign anything, waivers, etc, to just sign it. If they had a lawyer draw it up, and you did not have your lawyer review it, it was easy to contest in court.
With all due respect, Terri Neff, that seems like terrible advice. My father is an attorney and he told me to read everything before signing anything. This made my mortgage application take a long time!
While it is true that waivers and contracts can be successfully challenged in court, it’s much harder to defend if you signed.
I thought the passengers signed that they were aware of the risk of death and can’t sue
I watch Expedition Unknown on discovery hosted by a guy named Josh Gates. He’s done some wildly dangerous things including being in a small plane when the roof ripped off and diving into a sunken tomb in Egypt. Well about two months before Oceangate started to take tourists he went with them on some shallow test dives in preparation for an episode on the titanic. Both he and his longtime cameraman refused to go back down in the sun because of how incredibly unsafe they felt and the episode was scrapped. And it sounds like none of the concerns they had were addressed in the years since. This was an entirely preventable tragedy and I hope it ends the tourism to the site.
I know it is the law of the sea that every effort be made to rescue those in danger (regardless of what they may have done to get themselves into that danger), but it does seem reasonable that people who did something knowingly and recklessly negligent could be sued (or their companies sued, if applicable) for the rescue/attempted rescue costs. Rush knew there were *serious* safety concerns and he blithely ignored them and dismissed those who raised them. It’s not OK that taxpayers should have to foot the bill.
Yes, Sadie. And I really hate to say this, but a recovery mission for the “bodies” is a fool’s errand. There are no bodies. They experienced no pain, no tragedy, realized none of the danger, blessedly. May they rest.
With the CEO’s death there is no longer even a company to sue; I hope the bereaved can eventually find peace.
I never thought of it in these terms, but you’re absoluter right in calling it a mass gravesite. People should just stay away, we don’t need to be everywhere.
That being said: what a horrible way to go. My condolences.
Most of the bodies were recovered, actually. There weren’t enough lifeboats, but there were enough lifejackets to go round. This is a sunken wreck like many others, not a mass grave.
Only 337 of the 1500 victims were found – I wouldn’t call 20% most.
Very interesting comment re: mass grave. There are also many other tourist “graves” — Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Normandy Beach, Tombstone, AZ, and so on. Easier to visit than the Titanic, but still locations where many deaths were recorded, bodies recovered and tourists visit. Even Mt. Everest, especially this year after another record number of deaths happened (and bodies not all recovered). I guess that people just have an interest in these sites and their accompanying history.
Okay, but the point still stands.
Sites of tragedies really shouldn’t be tourists spots, regardless of how many are still physically buried with the ship.
@ Honey, that’s a good point about historic mass graves. As a kid, I was obsessed with reading about US history, and my dad lived in Maryland, so I had him take me on several tours of Gettysburg over the years. I will say, being on the field in person imparted a gravitas I didn’t get from the books I read. It was just terribly sad.
One expert who is opposed to this kind of “tourism” suggested that people with an obsessive need to visit graveyards go to Arlington National Cemetery. And they would probably get more out of it.
+!
Not wishing to be macabre but there are no bodies to be found for those five. The forces involved in an implosion at that depth mean they would have been pulverised instantly. There is also the possibility that the implosion would have ignited gases inside the submersible meaning they were simultaneously incinerated. The only merciful thing is that it would have been an instantaneous death.
As such there is absolutely no point in spending more time and money trying to recover any remains. There is, I would imagine, a point to recovering the debris to work out what might have caused the catastrophic failure so that learnings can be made to prevent this ever happening again.
Right? Like it floors me that people think there are bodies. Those people were basically turned into hot paste that then dissolved into the water.
Yes, there is a myth busters about diver compression and it does…not end well for the (fake) diver.
It’s pretty grim. But also instantaneous, so they never suffered.
James Cameron said everyone in the tiny ultra-deep dive community knew immediately what had happened. That to lose communication and also location information at the same moment can mean only one thing — implosion.
The use of ‘presumed’ in the article above is an odd choice of wording.
They’re dead. Make no mistake of that. I read someone’s description of what happens to a human body under those conditions and it was horrific. There’s no way they could survive a sudden implosion at that depth. No way.
They’re gone, when they wouldn’t have been if that CEO had been responsible. They died horribly, albeit suddenly, but they died.
@The Recluse ‘presumed’ is the official word choice when you don’t have a body that has been identified regardless of how impossible it is for the person to still be alive
I didn’t either but it makes so much sense.
I can’t help but compare this tourist “attraction” to what some rich men are trying to do with space. Some things should be left alone unless you are 100% qualified for it.
I think the point others are making is exactly right. Mass graves are a place we go to learn and pay respects. This was not a respectful venture it was a circus for rich people and disrespectful in the extreme. It gave me a bad feeling in my stomach for that reason.
I will say that I’d they were doomed I am very glad that they didn’t suffer long, unlike the original passengers. They may have known they were I. Trouble but they didn’t have to feel the pain of suffering. The thought of waiting in your metal tomb to die for 96 hours is horrific. My heart goes out to their families…especially the mother of the 19 year old who did t want to go, but whose husband dragged him into this disaster. They never got to chose the pain they are stuck with.
Agreed. Visiting the Arizona is respectful, this is adrenaline chasing.
The thing that I keep thinking about is how much time/money/people hours launching this kind of search and rescue operation takes. I hope OceanGate is made to pay back at least some of it. It seems really unfair that the government/the taxpayer should have to be financially responsible for the consequences of people’s idiocy like that.
My heart hurts for the poor son, who was reportedly terrified to go, but went anyway to make his dad happy. And his poor mom lost her husband and son.
Absolutely heartbreaking. I agree Roo. At 19 I trusted my parents. If they told me something was safe, I believed them. They were accompanied by a man who made over 30 dives down there. I’m sure that was a selling point for this kid (yes I know he’s an adult but he was still a teenager) who wasn’t old enough to learn to trust his instincts. I’m so sorry for all the families, but at 19 you aren’t old enough to make an informed decision and you trust your parents.
I did not hear that. It makes this even more tragic. I only hope they never saw it coming.
But they did because they signaled that they were having some issues, released some weights and were resurfacing before losing coms entirely
@Roo: other than the teen, I have little to no sympathy. Its not that I am particularly cold. Here are (overly) rich men doing stupid things (even Disney “subs” were all certified) and then surprised there is a bad outcome. I feel the same way about Everest climbers.
Yes, this hurt my heart the most.
Agree with these comments. I have young adult children and they absolutely trust that I will always consider their safety and well-being, first and foremost. I cannot hold that child (because he was a child) responsible. I hadn’t heard that he was terrified – as Side eye says, at that age he hadn’t learned to trust his instincts yet. As for the others, they were old enough and had lived enough life to know the risks. Still a horrible way to go, and I do feel terrible for the mother who lost her husband and child.
such an irresponsible thing for the dad to do for his dreams. i read he didn’t want to do it and it was ultimately as a father’s day gift to accompany his dad. idk how they missed massive red flags when you have to sign a waiver saying it’s an experimental vehicle and uncertified…
and a CEO that literally says safety is secondary to innovation over and over again on their website and in interviews.
I guess I can see why someone might knowingly risk their own life to do something like this (although it seems dumb to me – you’re not going to see anything you can’t see in a documentary, and probably with better clarity there!) but I cannot imagine taking my child with me. (Technically an adult at 19, but at that age they really are still kids in many ways, and I expect he felt pressure to do what his dad wanted and also felt that if his dad said it was OK, he couldn’t really say that it wasn’t.) Signing waivers to take my precious child on an experimental deep-sea vehicle that was known to have had serious safety concerns alleged? I cannot wrap my mind around it.
Yeah, it is awful. The consensus at this point is that they could hear the carbon fiber cracking and that is why they dropped their weight and were trying to ascend before the implosion. Which is a horrifying thought. I’d like to think they simply had no clue.
In a bizarre way, I can see how a CEO would just make assumptions about safety and go in this thing without really thinking the risk through. What floors me is that the experienced diver from France got in that machine and also the Hamish fellow as well. The submersible community had already reached out to flag issues in the craft and you would think those two might be more aware of the risks. All I can figure is that they thought it had gone on two prior dives and that the carbon fibre hadn’t hit enough cycles to experience fatigue. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had actually been submersed a few more times and the company simply didn’t disclose that fact, given everything else around the history of the craft.
I can’t believe their warning system was acoustic. Like James Cameron said, that is like using a warning system for a jet engine that only lets you know there is an issue once it is on fire. At that point it is just too late, the carbon fibre just collapses. There are no dents.
Since it’s already bizarre and macabre, might as well acknowledge this is a less horrific outcome than running out of oxygen over 72 hours trapped in an undersea grave.
But answers and reimbursement should be forthcoming with the swiftness.
It happened so fast the passengers didn’t have time to process what was happening, which is a blessing of sorts.
However, reports from the sub community (there’s a current interview with James Cameron where he states this that is making the rounds this morning) that the sub was built with sensors to alert impending structural collapse. JC indicated the sub was aborting the descent and began an emergency ascent process when the implosion happened. So, the passengers were likely processing “oh crap, we might not make it” thoughts and/or a realization they were likely to die. But yes, they could not mentally process the actual event of implosion.
@Larelyn: can you provide a link for that quote? I’ve read several articles quoting Cameron, but all they said was that the sensors “should have” alerted them to abort the descent. Haven’t seen anything yet that said the sub was actually doing that?
@ncboudicca:
It is in his CNN interview with Anderson Cooper. He eventually connected with folks with data on the company, and that was how he confirmed they had dropped their ballast and were trying to ascend immediately prior to the implosion.
@superashes: OK, thanks for that extra bit of info!
Yeah, I was (sadly) so relieved to hear about the implosion. I was having nightmares thinking about what some men would do to each other if they knew their oxygen/rescue situation was hopeless.
I agree. Part of me was “relieved” to hear that is what happened, as opposed to slowly losing oxygen over multiple days.
I read the book Dead Wake a few years ago about the Lusitania, and there is a section in the beginning talking about the german u-boats and how the technology developed etc and some of the descriptions of the…..less successful….initial attempts were really haunting. I kept thinking about that over the past week.
I’ve read more than a few books that describe this scenario. People will do anything, and I mean anything to survive. I kept picturing the man onboard with his son and wanting to do anything to save him, air being his overriding concern.
Putting Dead Wake on my TBR. After reading Perfect Storm years ago I went through a brief obsession with Maritime non-fiction and memoirs. The book is heavily researched non fiction that ultimately determines a rich man’s greed murdered the blue collar fishing crew (who had to either risk the storm or let their entire haul go bad for lack of a working ice machine). Is there a theme somewhere here?
Sorry to be a bit morbid, but “haunting” in what way? Was it graphic or gory, or just generally chilling (like the Kursk disaster, for example)?
That reminds me of the first submarine to see battle in a US war – the CSS H.L. Hunley in the Civil War. It sank 3 times :
1. before it reached the battle site, killing 5/8 of the crew, then dredged up
2. before it reached the battle site, killing all of the crew, dredged up again
3. managed to attack the USS Housatonic, then sank and killed the entire crew again (left on the sea floor until the 1970s)
Like how do you keep trying at all, let alone keep putting the same damn tube in the water to kill more people?
I’m a former scuba diver, and more than likely the sub’s early warning system had gone off and that CEO had dropped the sub’s weights and tried to surface when the sub imploded. That’s what we did as scuba divers if you ran into a problem. You dropped your weights and did a controlled assent to try and avoid the bends. More than likely the passengers knew something had gone wrong with the alarm but then a second after that they were gone. To me that would be much better than suffocating. This was a tragedy that was entirely avoidable.
A clutch of millionaires and billionaires who made the money from deregulation end up dying, because they went down on an unregulated corporation’s ship. That’s a tragic, but a fittingly ironic sequel to the irony of the Titanic itself.
Did you guys know that the French diver was actually the CEO of the company that had exclusive salvage rights to the titanic site? So yeah, one of the guys who died literally made his profits off of exploiting this mass gravesite.
He wasn’t CEO, he had worked for them for years.
Rush was the CEO of OceanGate.
@HandforthParish
“CEO of the company that had exclusive salvage rights to the titanic site”
Not OceanGate
And a teenager who didn’t want to go but went because of his dad and is now dead because of him. Keep that in mind.
Deregulation had nothing to do with it. Oceangate declined to have the sub certified by the appropriate authorities so they could take more risks. Everyone on the sub knew it was potentially unsafe.
Apparently, they were required to sign many pages of safety waivers before boarding.
I agree. And these men have been labeled “high intelligent” by there friends and peers. So they exactly the risks. One man said he pulled out of the dive due to how unsafe it was. They knew the risks. My heart aches for the mother who lost her son. That is the tragedy here, the young man who did not want to go but trusted his father.
But the point was he had argued against regulation, he even bragged about nothing being approved by regulators, and that is a really important point because his class (the rich) are always arguing against regulation.
Deregulation is absolutely a part of this. It’s a force that both gave these people ridiculous amounts of money to waste but also endangered them. I don’t have the space here for a full argument, but trust me that I’ve actually outlined an article on the topic, and surely other people will be coming out with similar parallels in big journalistic outlets.
What’s really stupid about it to me is that these guys were billionaires! Why take the risk of being a passenger on this cobbled-together McGyver vessel when they could probably afford to just purchase or build their own legitimate deep-sea submarine and an experienced pilot to run it??? if you have billions of dollars, why cheap out and just spend $250,000.
Right? It boggles my mind!
There’s the billionaire who *commissioned* The Limiting Factor submersible. It cost $37 million, but it is fully certified, it has seats it has electronics, and there’s no concern about it blowing up.
There were actually a couple of comments the first day of the search that they wanted to get that submersible to go look for the Titan.
If you have billions of dollars, what is 37 million? Especially when you’re talking about your life?
i think some billionaires are actually the most stingy MF-ers around…based on stories and very very limited interactions. also, i think the whole production of the vessel, hiring ppl to man it, the amount of time to plan it, and the resources for the trip to do the expedition would be way more than 37 mil so in comparison they probs thought 250k is a steal for a fraction of time. time is more valuable to these people too.
Sounds as if Rush was a pretty charismatic guy. Even smart, successful people are susceptible to a very charismatic person who insists that something is safe, whether that’s a physical risk, financial risk, etc. He made them feel like intrepid adventurers who were blazing a new trail – he even made the lack of regulation/testing sound like it was essential to staying on the leading edge. That’s pretty seductive, especially to the kind of person who would pay $250K so he could brag that he’d seen the Titanic himself. (I mean, you’re not gonna see anything down there that you couldn’t see on YouTube, and probably more clearly there … I feel like most people would only do it for the bragging rights.)
Plenty of the super-wealthy are notoriously stingy. Hey, John Paul Getty I played chicken with his kidnapped grandson’s life because he didn’t want to spend–what, $100,000? When he was spending millions on artwork. The grandson was rescued, but never really mentally recovered from the ordeal.
No to sound too ghoulish, but with such a brutal implosion there aren’t going to be any remains to recover…
The only positive in this horrible story is that it happened during their descent and would have been over before they had time to even register something was wrong.
It’s now emerging that the US Navy picked up sounds consistent with an implosion, way before the submersible was reported missing. It’s rather odd that the families appeared to be unaware of it until after the time the oxygen would have run out.
The saddest thing is that according to the teenager’s aunt, he was terrified at the thought of going in the submersible but did it as a father’s day treat for his dad.
i feel so bad for his poor mother.
I was under the same impression regarding the remains. I thought they had waited until they found evidence that the submersible had been destroyed to tell the families about the noise data point, though, since it was an inconclusive piece of data.
I’ve met so many men like Stockton Rush – capitalists who view any attempt at regulation unnecessary and stifling. It is infuriating to see the pain and suffering they carelessly inflict on others.
“Move fast and break things,” in action.
Poor kid.
The Navy’s capabilities in this area are technically highly classified. My guess is that the Navy figured out what was going on, basically as a training exercise. Another factor is that OceanGate didn’t notify anyone for eight hours after they lost contact. If they had found the sub, the investigation would probably reveal what happened and when. The Navy surely declassified what they knew to give comfort to the families and end speculation.
I knew about another person lost at sea where the Navy quietly sent divers to recover the body. It wasn’t known until a day or two afterwards that they had been involved. I don’t think it was ever officially announced. People on the scene knew because they saw the divers.
CNN had a salty old navy captain on last night and he was so angry that Rush took the general public on this contraption. He also said that he was surprised that the navy hadn’t heard the implosion, as they had classified equipment on the ocean floor that would pick up such disturbances. Half an hour later WSJ had the story that the navy had picked up the sound on Sunday at the time contact was lost.
There was another expert from Duke who basically said this titanium that the Titan was made out of had already been tested and rejected for its instability in salt water. One of the engineers in Washington state who had worked with Rush to develop the capsule said there was a rush to complete it without the necessary R&D. It feels like the Titan had a shelf life in salt water, and Rush was in a rush and didn’t care to find out what that shelf was. Hubris.
I believe the issue is that the fuselage was made out of carbon fiber, not just titanium, and in order to confirm that there were no defects in the fusion process, you had to either do destructive tests or pay a stupid amount of money for imaging, and Stockton didn’t want to do either.
Also that it wasn’t built as thick as it should have been.
I think the Navy probably let the families know early that it was likely an implosion. My guess is they were 99% certain everyone was gone, but unless it is 100% they do a search and rescue effort. It was the same case with El Faro as well, because that 1% possibility of saving a life makes the effort worthwhile. The fact that the families were all largely silent I think meant they already knew their loved ones were gone.
Just adding to my post above about the saltwater wearing away at Titan, the NYTimes is now saying that it may be relevant that the implosion happened on the first dive of the season. Saltwater from 2021 and 2022 dives that was trapped in between the different materials most likely softened the fibers of the vessel, making it vulnerable to implosion, experts are now thinking.
1% chance of saving a life unless it’s all the refugees that drown in the Mediterranean at the same time
@JM : This! Finally!
I’ve been thinking about this the most since I’ve heard the story.
So many millions, hours of work, resources spent and at the same time, around 100 migrant children reported dead just last week while trying to cross Mediterranean in order to reach safety. And European ports refusing to take them in even when they are saved, while other Western countries, responsible for destabilising countries those poor souls cake from, refuse to offer any help (primarily: accepting them ).
I feel bad for their families, and for the 19 year old, who apparently was terrified and only went to make his dad happy. Tragic.
However. The Titanic is not a mass gravesite. Although there weren’t enough lifeboats, there were enough lifejackets. Most of the bodies were recovered on the days after the sinking. People dive to other sunken wrecks all over the world and this is no different (except that it being at such a considerable depth makes it hard to reach, and as we’ve seen, extremely dangerous).
That’s a really interesting point. It does change my perspective but not my opinion on the hubris of undertaking a risky but pointless adventure with the assumption of costly rescue efforts if needed. Ditto for all extreme tourists who view the world as a personal playground.
People dive but not in unregulated submarines that multiple experts expressed concern about and was built as this one was.
Also, not sure where you’re getting this from but a titanic site says only 23% of the dead bodies were recovered.
Of that 23%, many were buried at sea.
So mass grave seems more than appropriate.
This is correct. 340 bodies were found, and 1,160 bodies remain unaccounted for.
I’m not opposed to people visiting the Titanic or any other mass grave as long as they’re respectful.
I agree that this is very different than other deep-sea missions. There hasn’t been a deep-sea diving death since 1983. OceanGate not only refused certification, but mocked them and claimed that the testing measures and peer reviews used by governments and other companies stalled innovation. They fired a man on their team for questioning the safety of their porthole window. They constructed the hull out of carbon fiber composite, which was cheaper than steel, despite it having been untested on submersibles and having been repeatedly warned by others in the industry that it may degrade after repeat dives.
There’s always danger inherent in going 12,500 feet under the sea, but the Titanic has been visited by over 250 people, and this was the first time numbers were added to the mass grave. And it almost certainly preventable.
Yes many of the bodies were recovered, but not all.
On the 100th anniversary of the sinking I went to the graveyard in Halifax to visit the graves and the museum which includes in-depth information about the Titanic. There are bodies that were never recovered – an image was released in 2004 depicting a coat and boots in-situ which in all likelihood based on the positioning once contained a human. The Titanic is a gravesite – most shipwrecks are.
What makes both the Titanic and the submersible stories so compelling is the hubris – given the parallel story this week of the sinking of a migrant ship carrying 750 souls off the coast of Greece – while the world stood by, watched and shrugged, just as the Titanic’s steerage passengers – also immigrants, for the most part, seeking a better life, were also left to perish.
@Nic, thank you for this last paragraph-you articulated it so perfectly, in a way my non-natove English soul could never. And yes, I think that fact says something about how we are degeading as a civilization: nothing chamged from 1912., Regarding the lives of the poor and volnerable. .
You keep saying how most of the bodies of the doomed Titanic passengers were recovered, and that’s not true at all. A very small portion of the bodies were recovered. The vast majority were left in the ocean in their final resting place, where they disintegrated away because of (i believe) the extreme water pressure down there. You can still see peoples’ boots/shoes laying on the ocean floor/among the Titanic wreckage and that lets you know that a body once lied there.
I made a really long post about this that got deleted, but you’re correct. Only 340 bodies were found; 1,160 bodies were unaccounted for. They came nowhere close to collecting all of the bodies from the Titanic.
@K-Peace – It’s also worth noting that of the bodies that were recovered, it was generally only 1st and 2nd class victims that actually ended up being identified. In many cases, it seems that retrievers would guess the victims’ class based on clothing and personal effects, and presumed 3rd class victims were simply buried at sea.
This is false. Of the nearly 1,500 people who died, approximately 330 bodies were recovered. There were absolutely people who went down with the ship. Both James Cameron and Robert Ballard have said they’ve seen the shoes of people who were trapped in the ship. Neither doubt that there are likely human remains preserved in the ship. So yes, it’s a mass grave.
Can you expound on this point?
Because from my knowledge- limited obviously- so many people went down IN the ship. Not to mention that only 300 ish bodies were recovered of the 1500+ missing.
Do they even count crew in the 1500 number or is that just passengers?
They only recovered 20% of the bodies.
It’s a mass grave
Truly tragic. Especially the 19 yr old boy who never got a chance to really live. RIP to them all.
So well said! Idle rich men staring at an underwater cemetery at $250,000 per person. Grotesque all around.
I’m glad their families are relieved of imagining their loved ones dying a slow and agonizing death.
On another note, while I’m absolutely not in favour of tourism at the Titanic, I don’t really get the argument that it shouldn’t be done because it’s a mass gravesite. So is Arlington. So is the cemetery at Omaha. So is Pere Lachaise, and innumerable other cemeteries, military and otherwise. So are places like Grosse-Ile, where the mass graves of doomed Irish immigrants from the 19th century lie.
Yet no one blinks an eye at the thousands of tourists that go to visit those places. Going to the Titanic might be done for foolish reasons, but so might anyone visit any place on Earth for foolish reasons.
Again, I’m not arguing in favour of people with more money than judgement going down there for kicks. I’m just saying I don’t understand that one point against it.
The difference (in my opinion) is that people died a tragic, painful death at the site of the titanic while people at Arlington or Père La Chaise were laid to rest there and is a place where people can come pay their respects. Mass death site vs. mass grave site.
@Betina-well said!
I should have said Omaha Beach for clarity – this one and the innumerable other war cemeteries are certainly not places where the people had died peacefully. Same with the mass graves I mentioned for the Irish immigrants – their deaths might not have been surrounded by the mystique of the Titanic, but it’s no less tragic and unnecessary.
And I would argue that not everyone who goes to those places is paying respects. There are absolutely people mindlessly gawking.
Pretty sure many of the people at Arlington died tragic, painful deaths. That’s almost the whole point of Arlington cemetery.
I agree with you. Holocaust concentration camps are regularly visited in an effort to better understand pieces of our history. We, as a culture, have a long tradition of making these kinds of trips, pilgrimages, and site visits, and I don’t have an issue with it as long as it’s done respectfully. The unimaginable ego involved in this voyage, however, feels more exploitive than respectful, and I think that’s the distinction.
Totally agree with you it’s about the ego here for the tourists (and probably the guy who created the company). It feeds their vanity for belonging to an ultra-exclusive club.
@Whatever, I agree with you. To add two more: Pompeii and the World Trade Center.
These are sites of mass destruction either due to natural consequences or acts of war. Scores of people visit each site annually.
I do think Rush and co. went about this the wrong way. I am not defending them. His choice to go ahead with this was reckless and selfish knowing what he knew about his glorified garbage can and all of its serious issues. That said, it doesn’t mean we should shame everyone else for visiting other sites marked as “mass graves.” The lesson isn’t “don’t visit a graveyad,” it’s “don’t get into a poorly designed composite coffin that locks you in from the outside and drops you into the ocean.”
Sass – Yes. This. Exactly. Thank you.
100% agree. There’s a lot of anthropological value to exploring sites where mass tragedies occurred, as grim as that may sound.
I’m also thinking of the war memorial USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor where the bodies of all its sailors are buried underneath after the bombing of PH.
My question is – what is there to be learned, for most people, by going to Titanic? I am fully in favor of genuine scientific exploration, especially to learn how inorganic materials break down, etc. I believe in that. But what does your average person gain by going to it? They were tourists who wanted to gawk at a site of mass death and tragedy.
I equate it to going to Pripyat In Ukraine. Is there valuable scientific research to be done there? Yes. Should tourists be going there solely to gawk at it? No. There are many pictures of it that we can see. There is an excellent documentary about the Titanic (Ghosts of the Abyss) that you can watch if you really want to see it.
TMZ has the contract they signed. I don’t think anyone can sue. I feel terrible for the teenager who told family he didn’t want to go and was scared but wanted to please his dad. The daily mail (I know) also has lots of interviews with people who were on the sub and previous whistleblowers and the CEO himself all saying how cheaply done the sub was. A discovery host pulled out of a titanic tour for the channel bc he feared for his life. I hope these things become heavily regulated. If the rich are so bored and in need of adventure they should go to third world countries and work on resources or go out with green peace or do something else beneficial to society, however all of the people saying they deserved this are heartless.
The legality of the waiver is questionable, given that OceanGate was warned many times by various experts that this was a bad idea. People can sign any contract they want, but not all of them will hold up in court. This is going to be litigated, for certain.
James Cameron had some interesting comments about the whole thing. He’s been to the wreck multiple times (in legit submersibles which cost a lot more than this tin can to make).
I believe there are places that are not meant for humans. Everest, K2 etc – all the mountains where there’s not enough oxygen – and the deepest sea. It’s ok! We have everywhere else! The ocean is even more unforgiving than high altitude, and yet people die on Everest every year. People are nuts. We don’t belong everywhere. It’s ridiculously macho (and tbh colonialist) to think that we do.
The CEO dude did a lot of handwaving about exploration and science, but how much science can you do with such a limited vessel? It was high dollar tourism, pure and simple. And it bit them in the azz. They would have been safer on Everest. (Which is Not Safe!)
@Bee – this is so thoughtful and well said. 100% Thank you.
What’s being said about how absolutely unforgiving the oceans depths are, and how fast the implosion would have occurred is no joke. The pressure on that vessel at or near the depth of the wreck is about 400 atmospheres, give or take. Think an elephant balanced on a postage stamp. Ironically, space is more forgiving, more survivable.
This rich CEO fancied himself to be some kind of maverick, an explorer, someone who would go down in history. The hubris is staggering.
What is K2? Googling keeps bringing me to drugs.
@Steph it’s one of the world’s highest mountains and much more difficult and dangerous than Everest. Something like one in four climbers die attempting it. Just Google K2 mountain and you will get lots of info on it.
There maybe lawsuits for damages from these families but I doubt there will be any monetary compensation for their suffering. I’m sure the business partners of Ocean Gate have cleaned out the accounts and lawyered up. The only thing left would be hard assets to attach for sale.
The families could hope for a criminal charges since the company CEO laughed about safety on video but company executives do not face criminal charges in the US. Best case scenario are new laws put in place and more regulatory to protect customers who engage in such risky behavior. Although I would argue why even do that ? They knew the risks and signed off on it and waivers do definitely hold up in court – that’s the whole point in having them. This whole thing is a lose lose for everyone involved.
“I don’t think anyone can sue.”
^^ I disagree with this. Not sure about US law but under UK law it’s unlawful to limit liability for death or personal injury. So it will be interesting to see the developments here, especially if it is shown that there was a fraud/ misrepresentation or suppressing of information so severe that it went to the heart of the contract.
Safety would be the major contract buster here as the CEO is all over the internet in his marketing videos on record stating that his submersible was constructed of carbon/ titanium composite material which even NASA did not feel using in a commercial context as it had not been rigorously tested.
Further other industry figures were uneasy about speaking out bc Stockton had a reputation for being litigious. He even sacked a whistle blower who raised safety concerns about the construction of the sub a few years ago. Oceangate were sued for fraud by a couple and the details of that case seem also prescient to this disaster.
Finally but most egregiously they knowingly allowed a 19 year old into the sub via that misrepresentation to his father who was likely paying. The courts take a dim view of vulnerable people being harmed by companies where there is unequal bargaining power.
It also tends to point to a pattern of reckless and unregulated behaviour – how many other trips had OceanGate arranged which clearly flouted the rules? There are only so many billionaires of a certian age with the inclination to engage in this sort of activity so they may have relaxed the rules to widen the net (pardon the pun).
Also I suspect that OceanGate were targeting billionaires for investment and in doing so many rules then go out of the window to secure that money as there is a clear conflict of interest. This is what de-regulation looks like in its worst form.
The final irony being that once, everything had gone t!ts up, these libertarian clowns relied on the good old tax payer to bail them out – sound familiar ?
Many good points made here, Flower. I hope the families can sue.
They can sue in civil court for wrongful death. I hope they do, and I hope they prevail. There is a surviving cofounder who is probably sweating bullets right now.
He was technically an adult.
Nobody forced him to do this, sadly.
They all signed death waigers. So litigation will be interesting going forward.
Unless there is insurance coverage to pay, would they get any money from a lawsuit? The company could just declare bankruptcy and go out of business (resurfacing later with a different corporate identity if they wanted to stay in business).
My guess would be no insurance because insurance companies require classifications to make sure all safety requirements are met. This was a entrepreneur who thought he was smarter than all of us and started a company that resulted in 5 deaths. No insurance company I’ve worked with would touch this company. They are a private company so info will slowly leak out but I would bet my career – there’s no insurance coverage beyond liability that was not precluded by any waiver.
The hardest thing for people to understand regarding the law and business for that matter is how people think” it should be “versus “how it really is. “
So after reading more about the expeditions themselves…it seems that almost always faced issues. I’m surprised it took this long for a catastrophic accident to happen. This is supposed to be a tourist attraction, not an expedition with adventurers who assume absolutely the risk they are taking.
I just feel awful for the 19-year-old who didn’t want to go but did so to please his father who never should have put him in that position.
And an implosion pretty much guarantees there are no bodies to recover. I don’t know why the question was asked.
Let this also be a lesson to the Republican and libertarian nutjobs, particularly the ones with downright obscene wealth: THIS is what deregulation and sacrificing common sense safety at the altar of the worst impulses of capitalism will get you.
(No, I don’t honestly expect them to get the message. They’re the type of people who will read about how much the passengers paid to board this death trap on a journey to a mass grave, and will have a light bulb moment that leads them to build their ever-failing sea-going civilizations on half-assed submersibles and attempt to set up shop at all the most infamous wrecks.)
Their rallying cry is “privatize the profits, socialize the cost.” The same jerkwads in congress who were screaming the loudest for search and rescue for this are the same ones who scream the loudest to oppose free school lunches for kids.
Absolutely. I have a friend who is libertarian who was bitching about regulation of sudafed, because he took the bus to get some and it’s now kept behind the counter and the pharmacy was closed. And he was all mad about it. I was like, what is your ass even doing on the bus in the first place, Mr Libertarian? You shouldn’t even be using the roads or sidewalks! ALL of that stuff is subsidized by taxes!
My boyfriend is an engineer who assesses the quality of machines and engines and I can’t tell you how many times he is told to just approve everything even though he says something is dangerous. He is, thankfully, always able to have his way, but the pressure from investors is extremely high, so it’s always a struggle. So to hear OceanGate was declared unsafe by their employee and then he was fired for it is just infuriating.
I’m deeply disturbed by this comment. My husband is a senior engineer and everything he does has to be rigorously tested and a lot of it doesn’t even make it to production, even after five years of design on a single program, because they have to pass a number of tests.
It’s very frustrating, of course, when you don’t see your work realized, but better to gain experience from the failure and operate ethically/safely.
I can’t imagine what corporation or customer would willfully ignore standards and I’m grateful/hopeful that my husband will never be under that kind of management.
Unfortunately history is full of stories about corporations that did something negligent or outright harmful that they were fully aware was negligent/harmful. They just hoped the possible bad outcome wouldn’t happen, as it often doesn’t. And often when something bad does happen, it happens to poor people and/or people of color, so it gets very little press coverage and the victims can’t afford to legally fight the lawyered-up corporation. (Unlike in this case, the rich owners aren’t usually putting *themselves* or people like them in danger.) Sociopaths are overrepresented in the C-suites of major companies for this very reason: they’re willing to endanger and exploit people. People who earn profits get promoted, and often their superiors avert their eyes from the things they did to earn those profits. The left hand doesn’t know (and doesn’t want to know) what the right hand is doing. Everybody’s getting rich. It’s revolting, and it’s why we need government regulations. Without them, we get things like the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire.
There are no remains, the reporter should have known and not asked.
Reporters are asking questions for the people. They need someone official to have said it so that they can report on it…
I have to imagine that 99% of the paying passengers were men. Unnecessary risks and all.
Yeah, obviously sometimes women do things like this (like “climbing” Mt. Everest by having sherpas haul them up there) but generally it’s a matter of what my dad would call a d***-measuring contest.
This is a tragedy, but what really irks me is that there is so much made of the death of five very rich people and a massive international rescue operation when a vessel with about 700 refugees on board (with a lot of them children) sunk a few days before in the Med and didn’t get near the attention (many many died). It’s almost as though we don’t care about poor people…
For real. For the folks that want to say I’m heartless for saying these rich idiots played a dangerous game and died because of hubris and stupidity, get off it. Absolutely zero people would care AT ALL or even know about the situation if they weren’t rich. People would be harshly critical of their dumbass decision-making if they were poor, not crowing about the traaaaaaaaaaagedy of it all because THEY’RE PEOPLE GODDAMMIT! Not if they’re poor.
Jillian, I could not agree with you more, and I’m happy to hear someone else saying it. My heart is absolutely breaking for Suleman Dawood and his family. It’s devastating. As for the other four, I’m so unspeakably angry. The absurd waste of money, time, and resources they’ve caused this week. The anguish they’ve brought upon the entire world as everyone watched and waited and imagined a gruesome fate. And the destruction of their families, who now have to pick up the pieces. These people ran large companies, and with their deaths, things will be restructured and jobs will be lost. Jobs of people who are not billionaires, and can’t even fathom spending a quarter of a million dollars to view something through a teeny porthole that could be seen much better and with more clarity on their TV at home. It’s already been made clear that the Coast Guard never gets reimbursed for search and rescue missions, and this will be no different. That money isn’t being repaid. It’s wastefulness, it’s ego, it’s stupidity, and I’m sorry, but I can’t find it in me to feel bad for the four men who willingly took that risk, I’m just too mad.
Not to take away from your more salient point but the USCG is under the Dept of Homeland Security. It was transferred from the Dept of Transportation by GW in ’03. The DHS has a budget of $103B so personally I don’t GAF if they don’t get reimbursed. On that note, PLENTY of money to support rescue efforts for refugees lost at sea.
Kitten, thank you for the additional information. That definitely sheds an interesting light on this. My understanding is that Canadian, potentially French, and other governments and organizations were involved in the search and rescue efforts as well. I wonder how potential reimbursement works in other countries.
I’m still personally reeling from the idea that if I require an ambulance in an emergency I have to pay for it, but the entire cost of this search and rescue mission will be absorbed.
Right. And I’m sure there’s taxpayer money in that giant budget but just to make the point that rescuing people at sea (including immigrants) is a worthy use of that money IMO. Better than building a wall.
And I feel you so much on the cost of healthcare in this godforsaken country.
I also just read about a German woman sea captain that is facing 20 years for helping to rescue more than 1000 migrants at risk of drowning in the Mediterranean, so that nice. Let’s also not forget why these refugees from Pakistan were risking it all in the first place, because there is a major climate disaster going on over there and displacing them and they were just trying to survive.
@whatever I’m Canadian and as a taxpayer will also pay for the search. There will be no reimbursement to our government. All I can think of is how that money could have gone to healthcare, housing, homelessness, addiction, food banks, mental health, climate protection…. The list goes on. The justifications for the “no cost is too great” for the search, and the international marine obligations and excuses that to not do so would risk future human lives is starkly contrasted by the lack of effort and compassion for the 700+ migrants. The thinking seems to be that if they were rescued it would only encourage further migration, whereas billionaire tourists must be rescued lest future “exploration” be placed at risk.
JD,
100% this! I saw so many posts about this story, and NOT ONE about the refugees. I only heard about the refugees when people commented on the OceanGate story and mentioned them.
Why did the Navy not contact the Coast Guard about the explosion? Why were so many days spent on a rescue mission if this was known?
Why did the Coast Guard execute a rescue mission for days when experts said that the vessel likely exploded just as it started? It seems like this “rescue mission” was a waste of resources. I hope theres one skeptical journalist who investigates this odd timeline.
I didn’t know a teenager was on board; whatever bit of sympathy I had for the adults just dissipated. They killed that man young man to feed their egos.
The Navy did alert the Coast Guard, but it wasn’t conclusive that it was the submersible at the time. Like the banging the sonar picked up during the search, it can be hard to pinpoint what and where a noise in that environment is coming from. The Coast Guard continued to treat it as a potential rescue mission until they had hard evidence otherwise. That’s generally how they operate.
Thank you for clarifying. I still hope there is an investigation because reading more known details about the vessel and the atmosphere at that depth, again why were so many days spent searching? When did the Coast Guard become aware of the material that was used to build the vessel?
If it’s good fiscal policy for state governments to kick people off Medicaid over addressing errors to “save money”, then it’s our duty to ask why didn’t the Coast Guard use the evidence they had available–material science and physics–and end the search days earlier?
JP: supposedly, the company did not even report the sub missing/loss of communication etc for eight hours after losing contact. Navy probably didn’t know exactly what they heard.
i bet the navy was doing something “somewhat” top secret and they didnt want to outright say something. although experts say sound at that depth would travel for thousands of miles. so maybe hindsight they can say “oh that’s probs that”. what i don’t understand is why not drop the ROV sub on the first day to where they last had contact????
I’m retired Navy and I worked with sonar and radar during my time in. More than likely the Navy told the Coast Guard higher ups that they had heard the implosion on Sunday. However, a lot of what the Navy does is classified. I’m not sure why OceanGate waited 8 hours to alert authorities but from things I’ve read the CEO often turned off communications after he and the sub descended. Another bonehead move.
It’s my opinion that the search and rescue wasn’t to find the passengers but to find the submersible. The Coast Guard already knew that everyone aboard that craft was more than likely dead. I think they were trying to verify that when they found the wreckage. But that’s me. I told my military friends on Monday that I thought the submersible had imploded.
I mentioned this the other day but there is a great clip on YouTube from CBS Sunday Morning where their reporter David Pogue actually goes down on the Titan, but his mission is aborted. Apparently, during the time Pogue was on the mothership, the Titan attempted another expedition which was “lost.” In the segment, Pogue only casually mentions that the Titan was lost, but it came out later that they did lose contact with the Titan for five hours. So it makes sense that they would wait even 8 hours hoping it would turn up.
I would wish we in europe would invest as much money in rescuing refugees in the Med as was spend on trying rescuing the crew of Titan. As a european, there is an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe on our borders.
Disclaimer: I think making every effort to save the titan crew Was right, I just want the engagement for everyone in distress at sea.
Well said Lara (the other). My sentiments exactly.
The rear admiral of the Coast Guard who was answering questions was dodging the question about remains because he didn’t want to discuss graphic details publicly, but there are no remains to recover. The implosion basically obliterated the bodies. Not a good way to go but at least it was fast, apparently so fast that they wouldn’t have had time to register what was happening.
The CEO of this company railed against regulations constantly and was told repeatedly that his janky tin can was unsafe. The company should be picking up the tab for this rescue, and since the billionaires on board assumed the risks knowing the dangers, their estates should share the burden of costs.
And yes, Titanic is a mass grave. A lot of people went down with the ship, many were locked in the lower decks.
I wish that our country wasn’t so litigious because it makes journalists have to be way to careful in how they report on things. All of these articles say that the 5 men are “ believed” to be dead as opposed to saying outright they were killed as a consequence of the implosion. Because media literacy is dead there are a lot of dumb dumbs who see “believed” and extrapolate that to mean that they could have faked their deaths and are still around somewhere.
There are no remains after a catastrophic implosion. I wish the Rear Admiral Mauger would’ve made that clearer instead of just repeating “There was a catastrophic implosion” every time he was asked be I’m not sure most people understand what a “catastrophic implosion” does.
Any recovery operation–if they decide it’s worth doing–will be to gather as many pieces as are left of Titan and examine them in an attempt to figure out what happened. But there’s not much of the Titan left. The hull collapsed in on itself at intense speeds and under extremely high pressure, as outer parts pushed away. Those outer parts, like the nose cone and the landing gear, are what they found. It’s likely not enough to figure out what occurred, and they may just leave it at the bottom of the ocean.
I could go into more detail about what happens to human bodies during the implosion/hull collapse, but I will spare you. Everyone should know that they didn’t feel anything and were unaware of their impending deaths. They were just there one second, and then they were gone.
It’s a horrible way to loose your love ones. I feel awful for the families. The five men were spared a slow, painful death, but their families have to go through this now with the whole world watching.
It is a blindingly fast, and in this case, merciful way to go.
I don’t know how well that ‘ironclad’ contract will hold up in court considering how often the CEO guy was out there making proud public statements about how he ignored regulation standards on purpose. I mean, the vessel was sealed shut from the outside — what if they were able to surface, but still suffocate because they can’t open a hatch? Or handle any type of onboard emergency? I hope the families sue them into oblivion and the costs of the recovery efforts are repaid. I also hope this will serve as a strong moral reminder the next time a boat full of immigrants is in need of assistance.
But that’s pretty much the point, right, that he was out there making public statements? I would think that in order to be able to successfully sue, you would have to establish that potential safety information was withheld from the passengers when they signed the contract. They absolutely 100% knew the risk they were taking, and four of them took it willingly. Nothing was withheld from them. With the obvious exception of that poor teenager who went reluctantly, the other four were willing to risk their lives because that type of person has such a monstrous ego that they think, “oh, sure, it’s not flawless, but nothing will happen to ME. I’m ME! I’m invincible!”
I hear what you’re saying, but there still seems to be an implication of safety made by the CEO. To your point, this guy thought he was invincible and (I’m guessing) reassured his passengers that his creation was safe DESPITE all that regulation nonsense. This dive was to prove he was right about all the uptight safety rules in place ruining and stifling his innovative spirit. I also assume the other passengers felt it must be ok, right, the CEO and experienced pilot are on board, what could go wrong? Sure they all got on that thing, but I believe, did not fully know the danger of what ultimately became a death trap.
There was DEFINITELY an implication of safety made by the CEO and while I’m sure the inherent riskiness of underwater exploration was made clear to them, these guys didn’t know they were signing up for a voyage in a death vessel.
People who are saying otherwise mostly want to justify their callousness towards the deceased– “they knew exactly what they were getting into”. They didn’t, guys. And I’m the first to say abolish billionaires (not like this obviously) but it’s insane to presume that these men knowingly signed up to die this way.
@MrsSmith and @Kitten:
Exactly. I was arguing with my husband about this yesterday: he’s firmly in the “they should have done their research” camp. I, otoh, tend towards the “sure something bad could happen but really what are the chances that it will?” method of making decisions. So I absolutely see how someone with the risk-taking gene and endless resources could be taken in by the CEO/pilot saying “We’ve done x number of dives in this vessel already, we abort missions in unsafe conditions, and look I’m going down with you myself, that’s how confident I am that we’ll be safe in my superduper cutting-edge uncertified submersible.” I put 100% of the blame on Rush for this foreseeable catastrophe. Sure I see the hubris involved in 3 of the 4 other deaths, but I think in hindsight we the spectators are privy to a whole lot of information that was not made so clear to the passengers at the time.
I don’t think the CEO really gave much thought to the legal status of those contracts. After all, why should he? He was also the pilot, and he knew that if/when something went catastrophically wrong, he’d be as dead as the clients he was hosting. He absolutely seems callous enough to not care if the victims’ families sued his company when he would be too dead to be held personally responsible.
Miranda – I hadn’t considered this, but now that you point it out, I’m sure you’re spot on. Which actually means it might be easier for the families to successfully sue than I had thought.
I wonder if his estate could be held responsible? Has he opened his survivors up to litigation and liability issues? What a piece of garbage.
It would be darkly ironic if the agreement turned out not to be “ironclad,” considering…
Just to echo: there is no “dead” to bury, in that there are no bodies. What happened was an instantaneous act of liquidation (from pressure) and incineration (air as hot as the sun). Whatever might constitute “remains” is really the most elemental kind of biological material that deep sea creatures have already consumed.
It’s important people understand this! As horrific as the reality it, there is literally nothing to recover!
@Naomi. Thank you for clarifying in the simplest terms what actually happened. How utterly horrific! It’s hard enough to wrap our heads around this tragedy. And I don’t even want to think about the deep sea creatures with the changing LED lights…
My condolences to their families and friends as well as to those of the migrants that lost their lives days before this incident dominated the world’s media and the world’s attention. I suspect that the impending lawsuits will (rightfully) bankrupt Oceangate. Unfortunately, the wealthy will find other equally, if not more, dangerous joy seeking adventures…
@Shawna what I meant is the CEO on board was Stockton, Nargeolet was a respected French diver who worked for the Titanic Salvage company- he didn’t profiteer from a mass grave.
He was on record to his friends as saying he didn’t like commercial trips to the Titanic, and was also dubious of the sun technology.
I don’t know why people seem to think this poor man is somehow deserving of death. By all accounts, Nargeolet was a prominent and experienced ocean explorer with 35 dives to the Titanic under his belt. People are really digging their heels into this idea that everyone on board was a bloviating, narcissistic billionaire who believed themselves to be invincible but how TF does that apply to a brilliant man like Nargeolet, someone who has prior experience doing these kinds of expeditions? Is it possible that Nargeolet’s mere presence on the submersible created a false sense of security and legitimacy, allaying any safety concerns these men had?
That’s what I’ve been trying to say. I’ve been following the news from France and he comes across as one of the good guys.
Absolutely and thank you for saying it.
(I’m French and also follow French news)
I get your point, but why did the guy get on this thing then? I’m legitimately asking to try to understand, not to be argumentative. I mean, he’s been down there multiple times before successfully. This wasn’t a once in a lifetime opportunity. He must have had some knowledge of the technology required to do so safely, yet he still climbed into the tin can with the Playstation controller. I’m really struggling to understand what would drive someone in his situation to do that, and hubris and a sense of invincibility is the only answer that occurs to me. If he was on record as saying that he didn’t support this tourism, and was dubious about the technology, why would he get in that extremely dangerous submersible, other than the simple desire to check it out for himself? I just keep coming back to ego, but if anyone has more information about why he was on that trip, I’d be very happy to be corrected.
I mean, only he can answer that and obviously he can’t now. I’m curious as well.
But the fact that a scientist and experienced ocean explorer presumably deemed the vessel to be safe–or at least as safe as previous submersibles he’s traveled in–tells me that this isn’t as cut and dry as people make it out to be. There was probably a HEAVY sell from the CEO–lots of reassurance etc. Remember that rich CEOs don’t get to where they are without being manipulative…
And while Nargeolet has talked many times about the risk and dangers associated with underwater exploration, people make calculated risks all. the. time. and we don’t judge them for it. I mean, 14% of all traffic deaths are from motorcycles (only 3% of vehicles on the road) yet people keep buying the damn things. I don’t think that knowing the inherent risks of an activity yet still doing it is unusual human behavior and I don’t find it to be automatically deserving of death.
I am both too poor and too claustrophobic to have any desire to do something like this. I’m also very risk-averse lol. But even I can understand wanting to have a once-in-lifetime experience–at least I understand it a lot more than spending $250K on a Birkin bag or whatever.
@whatever I watched an interview with CBS reporter who interviewed the CEO a few years ago. The reporter seemed really well informed and he said that first time he saw the system, he thought of it dangerous. But, after talking to the CEO, he said he felt safe. I think the CEO had some kind of salesman ability and persistence. People think they are smart and don’t fall for something like that, but we saw with elizabeth holmes. You can convince the smartest people if you have the right attitude.
The manipulation/salesmanship angle is an interesting one I hadn’t considered. I’m just thinking of it from the perspective of, “I know driving an automobile is risky, but so is crossing the street as a pedestrian. There’s no way to manage a life completely devoid of risk. But absolutely no one on the planet, no matter how convincing, could talk me into getting into that untested, unproven sub under any circumstances.” And sometimes we really struggle to understand decisions that we, personally, wouldn’t make.
To be clear, too, I would never say that I think any of the passengers on that submersible deserved their death. There’s a land in between “they deserved it,” and “I feel really badly for them,” and I think that’s where I reside.
no one is saying any of these people are deserving of death. i do think there’s a general sense of these extreme tourism for billionaires that rub people the wrong way and hard to feel sympathetic for. no one NEEDS to go to the titanic as a lay explorer with no objective other than to brag “i’ve been there”. nor can any of us fork over 250k for this experience. we can empathize for their families, but ultimately judge these individuals for grave lapses in decision making for the sake of their hubris. this whole thing trivializes the incredible amount of planning, work, and expertise you need to go down to those depths, and to put your faith in a CEO who repeatedly states that he prioritizes innovation over safety is just idiotic.
TBC, I wasn’t accusing anyone here of saying that but I have absolutely seen some of the most callous reactions to this situation and yes, I have seen tons of comments saying that they deserved it. I don’t feel passionately enough to lecture people and of course part of me really enjoys everyone hating on billionaires because they’re a scourge. But honestly, dying in a submarine is maybe the least destructive thing that they could do.
But I digress, mostly I’m just thinking of the families who had the worst day of their lives yesterday, having to see folks saying that their loves ones were arrogant idiots who deserved their fate. At most, it’s needlessly cruel and at the least, it’s just bad karma, man.
*deleted* sorry
“Dying in a submarine is maybe the least destructive thing that they could do.” This deserves all the applause.
Re why Nargeolet was there, his daughter was interviewed on French TV before his death was formally announced.
She basically described him as utterly fascinated by the Titanic- TBH it sounded like any chance he would get to go, he’d jump at it. It wasn’t at all money motivated, and she concluded the interview by saying ‘wherever he is right now, it’s where he wants to be’…
In hindsight sad and a little eerie.
i can see how a seasoned ocean explorer and diver could be lulled into a false sense of security after doing 35 successful dives to the Titanic, especially if this is his passion and the pure excitement of seeing it again. it’s just another trip for him. and i honestly think that’s his hubris…he’s done it so many times he might not have thought more critically of the journey with Oceangate. but he was just one passenger, and the rest were wealthy tourists who had no business going down there. and internet tends to lump everyone together for one narrative. i think criticisms of how idiotic and the privilege (money, belief they are above safety standards while doing no research about the process) these people think they are entitled to is valid, but comments about deserving their deaths are absolutely cruel. it also seems most experts had a feeling the vessel imploded on Monday and somehow this long drawn out search just prolonged clickbait and the family’s suffering.
Given that that they signed a waiver before agreeing to the trip I doubt the families will able to sue OceanGate. I suspect OceanGate knew that Titan had imploded when they lost contact on Sunday.
Not all waivers are ironclad. They can sue for wrongful death and very well could win damages.
I posted at length about this above so I won’t go on about it again. But not all contracts are actually legally binding. You could sign a contract agreeing that I can shoot you in the arm and it would never stand up in court because it’s illegal to shoot people on purpose.
They knew how dangerous their tin can was and yet they sold (very pricey) tickets to it. This will go to court and I bet that the waiver will hold up like wet TP when it is made clear that the deep sea community warned OG multiple times.
Part of the purpose of waivers is to make you think you can’t sue. But you can always sue. The judge will decide if the waiver is legal.
Can’t speak to the to the waiver, but agree that the company knew the submersible had imploded. If the submersible community knew by Monday morning so did the company. I’m curious whether they believed the same in the 8h it took to contact the coast guard. Not sure it makes a difference. The mother boat is supposed to land in St. Johns on Saturday morning and I’d expect the media will be there to greet it. Gonna assume lawyers have instructed all on board to say sorrows and prayers and no comment but we’ll see.
This is what happens when you think your money makes you qualified to do whatever you want . Regulations are there for a reason. The owner went out of his way NOT to hire any experts and bragged about it like he was above regulations or rules because he’s so rich nothing bad will happen. Hubris is a hell of a drug. My heart breaks for the 19yr old on board, his aunt said that he was terrified about going and only went because it was over Fathers Day weekend and he wanted to make his Father happy.
I’m so glad that their deaths were quick and painless, the thought of being trapped in a tiny, dark tube at the bottom of the ocean with 4 other people is too horrific, the panic and terror would be too much. I feel so sorry for the 19 year old, it was reported that he went with his father but was terrified, it was not something he would have ever done on his own.
Tragic for the all the families.
Interesting to me that we routinely send 18 y/o to fight in wars (and drafted them atone time) but this one 19 y/o is referred to as a child/teenager.
All loss of life is tragic to the remaining loved ones.
Risk taking like this is more so. The poor woman who lost a husband and a son.
RIP.
You are 100% correct!!
In fact, I found some info about the 2 people (a father and a son) who backed out/canceled their reservations on this ill-faded trip:
https://www.insider.com/titan-sub-ceo-offered-cut-price-tickets-millionaire-doomed-trip-2023-6
https://fortune.com/2023/06/22/titan-sub-latest-missing-chris-brown-david-concannon-hamish-harding-richard-branson/
Elder Dawood SHOULD HAVE LISTENED to his son; not only because he was afraid but also for the reason that the vessel was definitely not up to par: The specs were not via regulations and safety protocols. Moreover, the NDA-ish contract that they signed manifested that there were issues of all types concerning this faulty piece of machinery. All in all, and it’s unfortunately too late, COMMON SENSE instead of a QUEST for bragging rights, etc., should have been used AFTER reading the agreement and BEFORE placing their John Hancock on the dotted line.
So, very sad that this has happened to the 19-year-old. May he R.I.P. 🙏🏼🙏🏼
Some really thoughtful comments here (as usual, Celebitchies).
For those who are interested in digging into some of the wider issues raised by this incident:
The case of the Pisces III, a submersible for laying transatlantic cable that was trapped on the seafloor with 2 crew for 3 days in 1973. When the sub reached the surface, there was less than 12 minutes of oxygen remaining – truly harrowing and remarkable account that amazingly ended well.
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-23862359.amp
The site of the Edmund Fitzgerald (yes, of the Gordon Lightfoot song): 29 crew died when the ship sank in Lake Superior in 1975. The families successfully lobbied to declare the site a gravesite. This piece from CBC compares the legalities to the Titanic site.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/titanic-edmund-fitzgerald-1.6882861
Finally, on the ways in which we make sites of mass tragedy “sacred”, including incidents like 9/11 where often there are no remains to return, the book Trauma and the Memory of Politics by Jenny Edkins (my PhD examiner) explores the complex ways we collectively manage national grief through memorialization.
No suing OceanGate. They signed waivers saying they acknowledged the risk of death and death was mentioned all over the waiver. It’s sad though. The kid didn’t even want to go, but went because his dad wanted to and it was Father’s Day weekend.
Incorrect, not all waivers are legal.
Waivers of liability can be set aside for gross/willful/wanton/intentional negligence or if there is misrepresentation.
These liability waivers are not enfoceable in the face of the gross negligence of OceanGate.
So my two cents (worth less than that) is that they could sue but it would be a waste of time and energy. What are the damages, considering the waiver? Who has the pockets?
I’m with the people who say, play stupid games win stupid prizes. There’s no way this rinky dink sub was safe. Any idiot should know. Also, the only good billionaire is a dead one.
Tangentially, and definitely not to excuse a company that happily flouted the most basic safety for profit, but in recent years they’ve identified an “extreme” gene in a small-ish group of people that attracts them to seemingly insane high-risk behavior. I always wonder if this is an evolutionary bug or a feature? I started reading about it after going to the top of the Aiguille du Midi in the French Alps and watching men in wing suits throw themselves off the top of the mountains. It was so alarming and disconcerting I honestly felt like I was going to throw up just looking at it. Chamonix is known as the “death sport capital of the world” given how many people have this impulse for extremity and regularly die in the process. The human brain is incredibly weird. I mostly just feel terrible for that teenager who apparently did *not* have that make up. How many boys are lost simply trying to please their fathers? Incredibly sad.
I’m really confused/ intrigued by the James Cameron angle that he knew almost in real time that the sub had imploded. US Navy knew too? And yet a huge search went out that wasted even more dollars and resources. I think OceanGate absolutely knew when it happened and were covering it up for hours and hours.
The James Cameron angle is James Cameron talking at least partially out of his ass. He may have a lot of knowledge and experience in undersea travel, and he can certainly take a better, more educated guess than most of us about what may or may not have happened on that ship, but for him to say that he “knows” that a warning signal went off and that the submersible had begun its ascent is just total garbage. There is absolutely no way he can know that. Only five people know that, and none of them are able to share details.
Otherwise, the timeline makes perfect sense to me. The navy heard a sound that was likely the implosion, but at the time they heard it, the ship had not yet been reported missing by OceanGate, so they didn’t know what it was. Once the ship was missing they most likely reported having recorded the sound to the Coast Guard, but until the implosion was verified by finding tangible evidence of the destroyed ship, it made sense to continue with the search and rescue. The sound that we now know to be the implosion could have been a number of other different things, just like the banging noises turned out to be unrelated. I don’t think there’s any kind of coverup here, I think they just continued looking until they had hard evidence that there was no point in continuing to look.
In hindsight, I think there are clues the Navy/Coast Guard knew it was never a “rescue” operation. The sub was apparently designed to drop its ballast — either intentionally or automatically — after 24 hours to send the sub to the surface, which should have meant the search was focused on locating the sub on the surface, but it seemed the focus was always on locating something (remains) undersea. The military spokesperson said they detected no sounds of implosion during their search — but in hindsight, use of the qualifier “during their search” is very telling, because now it’s reported they detected the implosion prior to the search even starting. And the debris field that was found so very close to the drop point (which is where the undersea search should have started?) wasn’t found until around the same time the air would have run out? That’s a coincidence. Could it be there was simply no longer a pretext to keep up (once the air ran out) and they could stop pretending they were doing a rescue? I think the “banging sounds” was a red herring and I hope it didn’t give the family members false hope.
I’m not actually blaming the military. They have reasons for doing what they do, and maybe there were getting valuable training and/or information while carrying out the “rescue” exercises. I’m just saying in hindsight, I think there were clues the company and military knew this was never a “rescue.”
Yeah, I’m the same. I think the company knew or was 98% certain. Maybe if that 2% had been the outcome, they didn’t want to risk foregoing search and rescue. But mostly, I think ocean gate has been very quiet. For the comms and tracker to go out at the same time was actually not normal, regardless of all the issues on previous dives. It also seems the company knew the ballast had been dropped and they were attempting to ascend before the implosion. James Cameron mentioned that detail and he had to get it from somewhere, and that was likely from someone with ocean gate or someone talking to oceangate.
I am just numb at the tragic loss of that poor teenager. He went to please his father, and now his mother has lost both her husband (assuming they were still married) and her child. It is a relief to know that it happened quickly and without suffering, but it still just hurts my heart.
I do not understand people who put their lives at major risk for thrills. Unlike some, I don’t have an issue with people visiting battle sites, graveyards, etc., so long as they are respectful and thoughtful in the process. The problem with this attempt to see the Titanic was that it was unduly dangerous.
They had to sign a ten page waiver? Did they not read it? I always read things before I sign them, and if I had read that frightening document I would have noped out of the trip. Not only did they all go ahead with it, but one of them brought his child with him! It boggles the mind.
The only person that I feel massive grief for is the son who went on this fiasco to bond with his dad during father’s day weekend. That captain who complained about government regulation and seems to have put that tin can together with a joystick and crazy glue, not so much.
Very unnecessary way to die! RIP
If you’re geekish, there’s a great twitter thread by @BrynnTannehill, former naval aviator and sonar and underwater acoutics expert. Some excerpts:
“So, what likely happened, is after Titan went missing, there was a review of SOSUS data. They found a noise consistent with implosion, in the area of where Titan was operating, at the time Titan was operating. However, this was probably not definitive. 11/n
Until you find the wreckage, you cannot rule out tectonic activity, other military activity that was unknown to the US, potential commercial operations, etc… Yes, they likely knew that there was a low probability they were alive. 12/n
Long range passive sonar isn’t proof. As long as there was a chance, they still had to make the attempt in case one of the other explanations for the noise was true. Given how small Titan was, the carbon fiber, and the depth involved, the noise was probably sharp and short. 13/n
. . . .
But, this is a very long-winded explanation of why I reject the criticisms of the USG, USN, USCG, RCN, and RCCG for continuing the search despite knowing the crew had probably died. Passive sonar is maddeningly vague at times. There was still a chance. 15/n”
“There’s still a chance” can be used in almost any scenario, but the reality is there is a finite amount of money and resources that can be used for any particular incident. *Somebody* does a value judgment, and then makes the call as to whether or not that expense of money/resources is “worth it.” I do not blame the military for their (imho) “excessive” efforts to search for the Titan. The miniscule chance that the people could be alive probably played a part in it (but again, there are miniscule chances someone could be alive in other search efforts that are called off), and I say the chances are miniscule with hindsight and information that the public wasn’t given up front (the military’s detection of implosion sound, the simultaneous loss of communication and positioning of the Titan AFTER they alerted to emergency and dumped ballast, etc.). Combined with the miniscule chance is (again, imho) the chance to learn and gather information even though “rescue” was not realistic, as well as public relations since this incident captured headlines. That’s all part of decision-making, and to deny it is naive. Again, I’m not saying the military was wrong for their efforts, I actually support it and hope they can salvage something from the wreck to study, but I do disagree that “there’s still a chance” is the sole motivator.
Artfossil, thank you for that! Fascinating Twitter thread (I’m a huge nerd & learned a lot)!!
My heart goes out to the migrant families whose boat capsized in the Mediterranean sea this month, and whose news coverage or rescue efforts never matched what was given to these risk-taking wealthy individuals who boarded the Oceangate vessel.
Nearly 50 children died in that capsize, but everyone here cries for the 19 year old billionaire’s son whose father voluntarily risked their safety and paid half a million for it
I can’t stand the misplaced values and attention
I agree, and this CNN op-ed explains the contrast better than I could: https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/20/opinions/titanic-submersible-lost-interest-filipovic/index.html
To me, every search effort involves *someone* making a value judgment on whether or to what extent search efforts are “worth it.” And I think publicity and what makes it into the news cycle plays a part in that. I hope I am never in that situation, but if a loved one of mine went missing, one of the first things I would do is hire a public relations firm and make sure the search for my loved one becomes a top priority in the minds of the public.
1. More money than brains
2. I’d like the various governments who sent people and equipment to send at least the equivalent in $ or people to avoid future catastrophes of migrant ships like we saw this week.
The whole thing was just such a sad, disastrous sh-t show, and it makes me furious to think about how all of this could be avoided if people like the CEO of this company had valued good, proper, decent design work, over shoddy gimmicks and a desire to make a quick buck and a name for themselves.
I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing to facilitate tours to view the wreckage of the Titanic. But what makes this particular tour so disrespectful is that it prioritized flashy, flimsy technology, and pithy soundbites from the CEO, over providing a SAFE, decent experience.
It would have been entirely possible to create a tour of the wreckage that treated it as it should have been treated–as a memorial to a disaster. It could have been a unique and interesting way to combine teaching both history and show off the groundbreaking advancements in technology that were made to make such a thing possible.
Instead, the whole thing was designed as a greedy cash grab. It was made to be an adrenaline rush for mediocre millionaires, which it never should have been. Everything about the way the submersible was designed was in purpose of a facade that could be marketed as “innovative”, but which lacked substance.
And THAT is why all of this is so insulting to the memory of the Titanic. It was an attempt to make a profit off of the dead who can’t speak for themselves to say otherwise. It was disaster tourism of the worst kind, and they didn’t even have the decency, to either the dead or the living, to even do a good enough job that it would keep all the people on board safe. Bc it was more important to be “””cool””” and “””make a name””” for oneself by trying to be the worst stereotype of a Silicon Valley bro to ever exist.
RIP to all the people on board.
I agree with Kaiser. This is a mass gravesite and needs to be kept that way. It’s sacred waters where so many people died tragically over 100 years ago. It’s best to leave it alone. I read 2 of the 5 passengers who were killed included a father/son. However, the son really didn’t want to go as he was terrified, but he did it to please his father for Father’s Day.
We were in Hawaii for a couple weeks brought the kids to Pearl Harbor for a day trip for a little US history lesson. Same thing here, no one dares to dive in those waters just for fun. It’s sacred and solemn, where many visitors respect the servicemen who died that day.
A, perfectly said.
This occurred in the ocean too. What jurisdiction has liability for the accident?
The United States? Some Atlantic region?
@Ali, it was International waters, with joint efforts by the Canadian Coast Guard & U.S. Coast Guard.