Downloaded from YTS.MX
We begin tonight with the urgent search
for a deep sea submersible vehicle
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
missing in the Atlantic Ocean
with five people on board.
Developing story that's really capturing
the world's attention right now.
[male reporter 2] The Titan bound for the wreckage of the Titanic
two miles below the surface.
[male reporter 3] Passengers paying up to $250,000.
Tonight, the families of the crew are waiting for word.
The idea that passengers were going to be aboard was insane to me.
[Stockton Rush] This is an experimental sub.
It's very dangerous down there.
You're in the dark. Just enough light to see.
Breaking news.
The tragic end to that deep sea dive.
All five men on board the craft lost at sea.
This was a moment in time when their sub was there, and then it was not.
The one person that should not have been on the Titan
was the teenage son.
I've gone back and forth a lot,
like whether I should have done more.
You know, whether there's some moral obligation to do more.
Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you're about to give...
Shocking new details about what led up to the deadly implosion
of the Titan submersible.
Everyone in the world wants to know what happened to Titan.
When you're outside the box, it's really hard to tell how far outside the box.
I've spent a great deal of time trying to figure that out.
If it wasn't an accident,
it then has to be some degree of crime.
Thanks very much.
You may have seen in the write up of this,
that I wanted to be an astronaut.
It's why I got an engineering degree,
I watched Star Trek, Star Wars.
And I wasn't going to get to Jupiter or Mars,
but I did realize that all the cool stuff that I thought was out there
is actually underwater.
[Tym Catterson] Stockton was a very strong personality.
He had a a trajectory of what his plans were.
Why were there only four submersibles
that could go to the average depth of the ocean?
I don't think Stockton started this whole project
knowing that it would end in total disaster.
He believed in having people have better access to the deep ocean.
[Catterson] He wanted to support science,
and he wanted to support educational outreach.
Make this kind of adventure
more approachable to the public.
That's basically why I stayed around.
The goal was, "Where do you want to go in the ocean?
"What is the most known site in the ocean?"
And it's clearly the Titanic.
It always has been a challenge to explain to people
why they would go in a sub
'cause they're typically nervous.
But when you say you're going to the Titanic, they don't care.
They've seen the pictures in the movie.
They want to go see the Titanic.
And so, from a business perspective, it was very appealing.
And to go to the Titanic, which is at 3,800 meters,
requires a special sub.
Level. Do a good cleaning, check the surface out and take measurements.
[Rush] Today is a critical joining of the titanium and the carbon fiber.
That seal needs to be uniform and small, but not too small.
[Josh Gates] Stockton wanted to bring people to Titanic,
so he built a vehicle that had a totally different shape.
Toilet paper tube.
[Rush] It'll be the deepest diving carbon fiber sub ever built.
But if we mess it up, there's not a lot of recovery.
I'm good already north-south. Just east-to-west.
[Gates] This carbon fiber hull
that was built to be lighter and stronger from the space age material,
it had these big titanium end caps that would seal this cylinder.
You can get more people inside that shape.
When I first saw it on the dock, it was kind of this marvel.
[Rush] This technology is what we need to explore the ocean depth.
We're going to go to 4,000 meters
after our testing in the Bahamas.
What he's doing is experimental,
and it involves exploration, and it's a business.
And with this, I thee christen, Titan.
[cheering and applause]
[Gates] If you're starting a submarine company,
is there a more famous destination
in the world than Titanic? No.
By the time we're done testing it,
I believe it's pretty much invulnerable.
And that's pretty much what they said about the Titanic.
-That's right. -[chuckles]
[news anchor] And we begin tonight with breaking news.
The tragic end to that deep sea dive
to the wreckage of the Titanic.
The Coast Guard reporting that pieces of the sub
have been found in a debris field near the Titanic.
Seeing all of the gear that came up,
the sheared off rings and the metal and the bent penetrators...
I was gutted. Um...
[R. Adm. John Mauger] Over the past week,
the world has followed the story of the sub Titan
and the five people who perished in the terrible tragedy.
The Coast Guard has officially convened
a Marine Board of Investigation
led by Chief Investigator, Captain Neubauer.
Thank you, Admiral Mauger.
This is the highest level of investigation the Coast Guard conducts
to determine the cause of this tragic incident.
The Coast Guard investigation can make recommendations
to pursue civil or criminal sanctions, as necessary.
Seeing the debris, the pieces that were left over,
kind of replaying what must have occurred,
that races through your mind over and over.
[Catterson] Three of my friends were in the sub, and disappeared.
Do I feel bad about it? Absolutely.
Stockton was a friend of mine. Now he's gone.
PH was one of the godfathers of diving.
And Hamish, they were all in there to get something out of this.
Do I miss them? Yeah.
I miss all of them.
Suleman knew nothing about it.
This was just his grand adventure.
And it was the same for his father.
[Christine Dawood] This is the life of my son and my husband
they are talking about.
This is the life of Hamish and two others who died there.
It was deeply personal. It can't get more personal.
They're never gonna come back.
Their voices are still in the house.
Their memories are in the house.
No matter what the investigation is,
the rooms are still empty.
Do I need to know exactly what happened
in order to come to terms with these empty rooms or not?
And I don't know the answer yet.
It's a process.
Mr. Stanley, the board's recorder Lieutenant Steele
will now administer your oath.
Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you're about to give
will be the truth, the whole truth
and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
I do.
[Lt. Steele] Thank you. You may be seated.
Mr. Stanley, if you would, explain your background and training
that relate to submersible operations.
I read a book when I was nine years old,
and started researching how to make a submersible.
This is the vehicle I operate now.
She's named Idabel after the town in Oklahoma,
and it's made out of one of the approved steels.
Actually, the US Navy was making their own submarines out of that steel.
[Capt. Neubauer] The public hearings are such an important process to have.
These are traumatic events with unexpected loss of life.
It's not a surprise to me when witnesses are deeply impacted.
Mr. Stanley, is there anything that you think would be valuable
for the board to consider?
I wish that you would indulge me a few minutes
to lay out what I think about this,
seeing that OceanGate came very, very close to killing me
and has had a severe impact on my business,
as well as an entire industry.
The definition of an accident is something that happened unexpectedly,
and by sheer chance.
There was nothing unexpected about this.
This was expected by everybody
that had access to a little bit of information.
And I think that if it wasn't an accident,
it then has to be some degree of crime.
Continuing coverage of the Titan submersible hearings.
Today we heard the testimony from a man
who went to the bottom of the ocean with OceanGate
and resurfaced with red flags.
Stockton Rush invited him on the deepest dive he had ever been offered,
and he just couldn't pass it up.
[Stanley] I got an email saying,
"Come out to Marsh Harbour, Bahamas,
and I have a spot open for you."
-[man] Yup, yup. -Looking good.
Looking good. Hold that line.
That was an extremely unique opportunity.
Kenny, do you hear that from Titan?
[man] That's affirmative. Stand by.
4,000 meters, we're there.
[people chuckle]
All of our test program has been about incremental testing.
Out here, we're really focused on one thing,
and that's the pressure vessel,
and making sure that that component,
which is clearly the most critical component of the sub,
is safe and capable of handling depths
down to 4,000 meters repeatedly
with people on board.
[woman] Rocks around. We've got two different directions...
-[man on radio] Go ahead. -[woman] Just checking on your progress.
[Stanley] When we were doing that dive,
I did not even come close to appreciating the real danger.
I was the one that was like, "Hey, capture this moment."
Like, I was happy to be there.
[Petros Mathioudakis] In 2019, I got invited to go down to the Bahamas.
OceanGate purchased a laser scanner,
and the intent was, at the time, to mount that on Titan
to be able to make a 3D model of the Titanic.
And they basically wanted someone there
to ensure that it was operating correctly.
I had never been involved in any submersible operations before,
so it was a lot to take in.
You know, being in the Bahamas and feet in the sand,
getting to work on underwater robotics and submersibles.
I mean, I couldn't think of a more fun thing to do.
You know, he was young and naive.
Kind of crazy for somebody in their 20s to be going that deep
with, really, no specific background.
Okay, I'm good. Lock me up.
Stockton had mentioned that it's really tough to test
the hull of Titan correctly.
It was just not feasible, not possible.
It fell outside the boundaries of normal testing.
I was aware that this was extremely risky,
and Stockton was very clear.
He said, "Do you have a wife?"
And I said, "No."
"Do you have kids?" And I said, "Nope."
He said, "Okay, you're in."
[laughs]
When you're inside of Titan,
on your descent, you're just freefalling.
You're just heavy and your, you know, gravity is pushing you down.
You're essentially in the dark.
Just enough light to see.
[Rush] Uh, no. Left is forward is down. On the left stick.
-[Stanley] This is down? -[Rush] That's up.
-[Stanley] That's up? -[Rush] Yup.
-[Stanley] That's down? -[Rush] Yup.
I remember driving for a large amount of the time.
[Stanley] Okay.
[Rush] You don't check down.
[laughter]
The first time the carbon fiber made a noise in that hull,
it was extremely loud.
It was like a gunshot.
[muffled thud]
Any noise would have been loud, but that was loud.
You don't want to be in a submarine
and hear those kinds of sounds.
Everyone stops talking for a little bit and...
That loud, sudden noise
that you know is essentially part of your pressure vessel breaking
when you're sinking in the near pitch blackness and silence,
I think that's going to scare anybody.
Just how much noise do I hear before we all die?
[muffled thud]
[Stanley] Took a while, let's say maybe like five or ten cracking incidents.
That was when I think I was composed enough
to isolate
where the cracking sounds were coming from.
Stockton saw this, but still he pushed on.
And you really have to ask yourself why.
[Mathioudakis] It didn't faze Stockton.
He's like, "Yep, that's normal.
"Like, you know, that happened before."
We're slightly negative.
Like, we're getting closer to it, but we're not touching it.
When we got almost to the bottom, or at the bottom,
the lights on the exterior of the sub powered down.
[Rush] I see the bottom. I don't think we're touching it.
We had a bit of issue with one of the battery banks.
Stockton had mentioned we're not seeing full vertical thruster availability.
[Stanley] Who wants to be the first one to say
that they're scared and they want to go back up,
canceling the trip for everybody because you got scared?
The supposed goal was to test it
to the exact depth of the Titanic.
We got 96% of the way there.
But because the cracking sounds were continuing,
at some point, collectively, we came to a decision of,
"Well, that's good enough. Let's call it a day."
I'm sure we were within a few percentage points of implosion.
You sent an email in April 18, 2019 to Mr. Rush.
You say, "The sounds we observed yesterday
sounded like a flaw/defect in one area
being acted on by the tremendous pressures
and being crushed/damaged.
"Would indicate there is an area of the hull
that is breaking down/getting spongy."
In my email, I tell him that the hull is yelling at him
and he needs to listen.
You'd literally see it on a graph of paper,
and he still chose to ignore that.
This exchange of emails strained our relationship.
I felt like I kind of pushed things as far as I could
without just him telling me to...
shut up and never talk to him again.
Mr. Stanley, within those emails, were you made aware
that a crack was identified in the hull?
According to the maintenance log, it was on May 29, 2019.
-I learned about the crack quite recently. -Quite recent.
[Stanley] It's like you're paying somebody to play Russian Roulette,
and there's really three bullets in the chamber,
but you're told there's only one.
That's not right.
[Capt. Neubauer] We will now hear testimony from Mr. Tony Nissen,
the former OceanGate Director of Engineering.
As the director of engineering,
did you make all engineering decisions?
No.
-Did you make any engineering decisions? -Yes.
And who would make the majority of the engineering decisions?
It was Stockton.
In June 2019, an OceanGate pilot
was conducting a pre-dive inspection
and identified a crack in the carbon fiber.
I got a picture.
I said... I think the email was,
"Hey, Tony, is this supposed to be there?"
Said, "No, that's a crack."
And I spent a couple hours trying to convince people that no, this is not salvageable.
And I said, "Titan's got a crack in it. I said, "The hull's done."
And we started carving it out,
they noticed that the crack was bigger than we thought.
When the first hull failed, they sanded it all out
and they saw that there was a crack.
It went virtually the whole length of the hull.
Now, I know what it takes to create a sub.
It's because it's what I do.
That was the issue with the Titan.
They painted themselves in the corner early in the game.
As Stockton was planning to build the sub using carbon fiber...
eh, I did not agree with it.
Hardly anybody in the public is familiar with carbon fiber.
It's stable all the way up until this magic point that it is not.
The failure happens catastrophically.
Nearly explosively.
As you're diving down, the pressure is getting greater.
Now, they heard big pops.
So your fibers are like this.
When this breaks like that, that would make some pretty loud pops.
And if it's still hanging in there, still supporting it,
it doesn't mean it's failed completely yet.
Certainly, Stockton had the money.
He had the vision, the drive to do this,
and he surrounded himself, for the most part,
with people that would say yes.
Because if you didn't say yes,
you weren't there working with him.
[Capt. Neubauer] Thank you, Mr. Nissen. I appreciate your testimony.
You are now released as a witness at this formal hearing.
[Lt. Cdr. Tom Whalen] So after dive 47,
Tony Nissen identified a crack.
Stockton and OceanGate needed to maintain their company vision
of taking people in a carbon fiber innovative submersible,
going down to the Titanic for the trip of a lifetime.
They didn't know what to do at that point
because the hull had a crack in it.
The director of engineering, Mr. Tony Nissen,
states that they are going to need to scrap it.
Basically what he says is, "The hull is done."
Mr. Nissen is then fired.
Stockton and OceanGate then move forward
to create the final Titan hull
of the same material as the first hull,
which was carbon fiber.
We're offering opportunities to go to the Titanic in 2021,
and we'll be out for around four weeks,
leaving from St. John's, Newfoundland,
which is 380 nautical miles from the Titanic,
and we're planning to go with our Titan submersible.
It is the rarest of rare to go see that.
Fewer people have seen the Titanic
than will summit Everest in one day.
[Dawood] This arrogance of the people in charge
when they think they're above everything.
That really gets to me.
Like, why is ego and arrogance more important than safety?
The irony is not lost on me
that the Titanic sunk for exactly the same reason.
History repeats itself.
[Catterson] Stockton invited me once to go out flying with him.
We were friends,
and we were friends that would argue,
and sometimes I would win.
Most of the times I didn't.
He's got an experimental aircraft.
"Experimental."
But anyways, we went out flying
and he said, "Do you want to fly?"
"Give me that thing."
So, you know, I'm flying the airplane a little bit. It's great fun.
And then he takes it back and says,
"So do you want to do a barrel roll?"
"Sure."
He told me how to do it and then I did one.
He said, "You know, this is great.
"You know, nobody else ever wants to go and do this stuff."
I said, "Well, it's either going to work or it's not going to work.
"You know, while we're doing it,
it's going to be, you know, a great fun time."
Yeah, we could've crashed.
Somewhere in there, we were a kindred spirit.
Why I kept working with him? I don't know.
Because I definitely did not say yes to him all the time.
My dynamic with Stockton Rush was interesting.
I mean, I liked Stockton. I respected him.
I think that he liked and respected me as well.
We didn't agree on everything.
There we go. I bring this up.
The Earth is really a water planet.
You know, Stockton wasn't always right,
but he was, like, sure he was right.
...clients who go to the Titanic
have either been to space or are going to space.
[Hagen] I'm guilty of the same hubris that Stockton had.
The same desire to do great things and to expand my horizons.
I was raised relatively poor
and became relatively successful.
I've always been drawn to people that were more successful.
He was a genius,
and he had a very distinct vision of what he was going to build,
how he was going to do it and what he was going to achieve.
[Stanley] It's a very small group of people in the world
that have done what Stockton and I have done.
Made a submersible, designed it, built it and operated it themselves.
Yes, he was attempting going deeper,
more people, more money involved.
However, looking at his finances and experience,
it didn't seem so unreasonable to me.
I mean, he was working with tens of millions of dollars,
doing something that I had done
with tens of thousands of dollars
and that I had started as a teenager with no formal training,
and he was an Ivy League engineer.
The sense of adventure appealed to him,
but I don't believe he had to work for money pretty much ever.
His primary motivations were more ego-driven than financial.
[Hagen] People accuse him of trying to prove himself
and live up to his own ancestry.
And those are relevant points.
Yeah. I mean, his family legacy
was really about the closest that you could get
to royalty within the United States.
[Hagen] Stockton was a true blue-blood patrician,
as was his wife, Wendy.
Her great grandparents were the people that owned Macy's,
whose lives were lost on the Titanic.
She had that direct connection.
They were of the upper crust.
I don't think most people can even imagine the access that Stockton had
to the uber elites of the world.
Stockton's father had been the president-elect of the Bohemian Club,
which owns a multi-thousand-acre reserve
of old growth redwood forest
an hour outside of San Francisco
that they use for their private campground.
You have such an accumulation of wealth,
and there's people that want something cool-sounding to invest in.
[man] Yeah, no, I'll get there.
[Stanley] Stockton pitched an idea
at the right place and the right time.
[man] Apparently, Stockton's directing this too.
[Stanley] People threw money at him,
and he felt some kind of psychological need
to accomplish something and impress these people.
[interviewer] What does it mean to you to actually go to the Titanic?
It's a culmination of over 11 years of work,
and tons of time and blood, sweat and tears.
I'm going to be so excited when I get down there
and I see that bow come into view.
Stockton wasn't necessarily fascinated by the Titanic.
He was trying to improve this technology
and trying to take it to a different level
using private funding.
[interviewer] What have you done to make sure
Titan can survive a trip to Titanic?
It's been a long process to ensure that Titan
can go to the Titanic repeatedly and safely.
We've refined the process
so that we have extremely uniform five-inch-thick carbon fiber.
And with great wealth comes great responsibility.
And unfortunately, it is not always the case
that those who possess great wealth behave responsibly.
The director of engineering at the time asked him,
"While that's great you want to build with carbon fiber,
but can we build one out of another material?"
He pushed and pushed and pushed, and OceanGate said,
"There is no debating this.
"It's gonna be carbon fiber."
There are certifying agencies.
the Pressure Vessel for Human Occupation committee,
the SUBSAFE program in the Navy.
These programs are over the top
in their rules and regulations,
but they had nothing with carbon fiber.
So we had to go out and work on that.
And one of the things I learned is,
you know, when you're outside the box,
it's really hard to tell how far outside the box you really are.
And we were pretty far out there.
[applause]
He had stated all of the advantage of carbon fiber,
but never stated any of the disadvantages of carbon fiber.
He felt that operations overruled safety
and saw classifications
as being a waste of money and a waste of time.
They wanted to be innovative.
[Capt. Neubauer] There's a few anomalies that I've never seen before
in thousands of investigations
and thousands of incidents that I've overseen.
One of them was just not registering the Titan.
So we weren't tracking it.
We call it "stateless," when a vessel doesn't have a flag or a registration.
[interviewer] Why would they not register it?
One reason to not register is to make sure that no one,
from a regulatory standpoint, is monitoring your operations.
To operate in a manner that you stay off the radar.
Ultimately had jurisdiction because it was US-built, US-operated
and not flagged by anybody else.
-Hey! -How are you, man?
-Glad to meet you. -Nice to meet you in person.
-How are you? -Great!
-Welcome to Everett. -Thrilled to be here.
-This is not Titan, I'm guessing. -No, this is Suds.
-S-U-D-S? -S-U-D-S.
What is Suds?
Suds is a a sub that I built, partly finished,
and dove it the first time in 2006.
As the host of Expedition Unknown on Discovery,
my job is to go around the world
investigating great mysteries
and to tell stories of exploration.
We had read about OceanGate. They had been in the news.
Here was this innovator that was going to come and break design barriers
and to create a next-generation submersible
that could take passengers down to see Titanic.
And we thought this would be a great story for Expedition Unknown.
Okay.
Oh, dear. What am I looking at?
-[Rush] These are the results of some of our pressure tests. -[Gates] Okay.
-High pressure tests? -High pressure tests.
This is a third-scale model of the Titan hull.
You have the cylindrical section
and you have the domes that we originally thought
we could make out of carbon fiber.
-So this would have been a sub you don't want to be in. -This is true.
But I assume, also, a valuable lesson, this test.
Yes. One element we were looking at is
could we predict the failure of carbon fiber?
So a carbon fiber sub may work great for one dive or ten dives or a hundred,
but will it get soft like the deck of your fiberglass boat
after somebody's been stepping on it too much?
-Right. -And how do you know that before somebody gets hurt?
And there's been a bunch of work on acoustic emissions.
So basically we're listening to the sound of the carbon.
They start popping and crackling,
these micro-buckling pieces.
You know, little air bubbles go and fibers snap.
And we found that you can tell quite clearly
way before the carbon fails that it's going to fail.
-Hmm. -And that would allow--
-You can hear it? -Yes.
So If you get to 2,000 meters
and it's making more noise than the last time you went to 2,000 meters,
you can stop and go to the surface, say, "We've got a problem."
-Right. -Our first hull didn't work out,
so we made a full-scale hull.
We tested it to 4,000 meters, and it didn't get quieter.
It stayed noisy. That was not a good sign.
So we took it to a chamber and tested it and said,
"This hull is not good enough."
So we scrapped that one and we made a new one and tested that,
and it was perfect.
Okay, so in the end, have you cracked the code?
I think we've cracked the code.
-Okay. You ready? -Yeah.
-Brian, whenever you're ready. -[man yells]
-Go ahead. Lead the way. -Okay.
We went up in May 2021
to meet Stockton and his team in person.
-So, Josh, this is Titan. -Wow.
[Gates] Stockton was going to give myself
and my director of photography, Brian, a trip in the sub
to understand what it's like to be in Titan
and to talk about where we might mount cameras and film it
when we went out into the North Atlantic.
-[Rush] Come onboard. -[Gates] Hi, everybody. How are you?
[Gates] Stockton was a really compelling salesman,
and that's a good way to describe him, I think.
So, this is the largest view port
on any deep diving sub in planet Earth.
Wow, that is extraordinary.
Stockton's answers were reassuring, I suppose,
but they also felt rehearsed.
They felt like they were the smooth answers that you were bound to get
as you cruised the showroom floor for a new car.
Carbon fiber will be one-third the weight
-of a similar titanium structure. -[Gates] Right.
If you look at other deep diving subs, they tend to be spheres
because the shape is the ideal shape for pressure.
-Right. -A cylinder is a better shape for actually doing something.
This was an experimental vehicle.
It had never been to Titanic at this point.
[Rush] Hang on here.
[Gates] We all rely on that Spidey sense.
We all have that little voice that whispers to us.
In my job, I've learned I have to really listen to that voice.
Because, you know, I dangle off a cliff for a living
and dive into flooded tombs.
I mean, that's my day-to-day job.
-[Rush] Come on, get your shoes off. -[Gates] All right.
[Gates] And that voice started whispering to me early on.
-[Rush] Shoes off and you're in. -All right.
See you later.
The way that Titan was designed, it had no top hatch.
You can't interrupt that hull with a hatch.
The only way to get in or out of Titan was through the front.
-Thank you, sir. -[Rush] Copy that.
[Gates] And so, when you climbed inside of it
and they close that door,
they seal you in from the outside.
Okay, the door is closed. Now what's happening to it?
[Rush] They're bolting it in.
[Gates] Literally bolting it in.
How many bolts go around it?
-Four bolts. -Four bolts.
-So... So we're in. -You're in.
[Gates] I mean, the only way out of this is if someone lets you out.
-[Rush] Yes. -[Gates] We're sealed up.
You are a prisoner. My prisoner.
[chuckles] I'm happy to be here. Happy to be serving.
Stockton just didn't see, even psychologically,
the need for a way out of this sub.
And so my question was,
in your tests, how long does it take
for Titan to mate with its sled
and rise to the surface
and for the bolts to be undone and passengers to get out?
How long does that take?
And Stockton said, "I have no idea."
The only things you really want to worry about: fire.
-There are smoke hoods. -[Gates] Those are where?
On the side here. Pull back the mat a little bit.
[Gates] Okay, under here?
[Rush] Yup. Open that compartment.
-There's a smoke hood there. -[Gates] Yup.
[Rush] You open that up and there is a packet which you pull open
and you have a hood that you put on top of your head, and that will keep you alive.
Got it.
He had never done any emergency docking procedures.
In fact, we were there in May.
They were bringing passengers a few months later
for the first time to the North Atlantic.
This is Titan, Topside. Topside, Titan.
[indistinct response]
[man] There he goes.
[Brian] It's gonna take it pretty steep.
This is where it gets interesting.
[man 2] Yeah?
We're settling down. We are underwater.
And we'll turn on our TBL.
[Gates] We were in the sub for hours with Stockton.
And the dive was interesting
in that nothing really worked right.
Nothing.
[Rush] I'm having trouble with our port horizontal thruster.
[Gates] Okay.
I don't know why, because it's starboard's that we changed.
Okay, show him that.
[Gates] "Aft is unlocked. No UBT light."
-Got that? -Aft is unlocked?
"Aft is unlocked. No UBT light."
The sub didn't really do anything it was asked to do.
You know, we took it underwater,
and then there was just a cascade of problems with the sub.
Now this guy will be down at Titanic too, right?
[Rush] Yeah. Yup.
They have an emergency override on the VBT
in case we have a software problem.
Then there was an issue with the software.
The system crashed at one point.
Hello. Do you copy?
Topside, Titan.
Motor doesn't even seem to be moving.
But the control program says it's moving. No current.
Give him an okay, and then just say we're going to thrust.
Testing thrust again.
Yeah, we don't like when the thrusters go out. We may just go
back in the platform
rather than go to the bottom.
-[Josh] Okay. -We're pretty much here.
Hey, Topside.
Topside Titan.
[Josh] At one point, three of the thrusters
weren't working, you know?
I mean, it was...
non-functional,
is a good way to put it.
And so, eventually, it was decided
that we had to scrub the dive
and bring it back to the surface.
[Stockton] Okay, we're up.
[woman speaking indistinctly over radio]
Yep, everything's good.
Tell us back whenever you're ready.
We're gonna get some good footage.
Big time.
And this will make a different story.
[Josh] Stockton seemed completely unaware
of how bad this dive had gone from our perspective.
And so on the way back to port,
I asked him about his experiences
in deeper dives on the sub.
How noisy is it when it goes down,
-you think? -[Stockton] What?
[Josh] Just the general descent,
-is it pretty quiet? -Oh, it'll be quiet.
There's usually a bang, um, somewhere...
-Most subs have a bang of some type. -Mm-hmm.
[Stockton] When I was in the sub before,
and it was, you know,
I'll play you what it sounded like
when the carbon fiber's collapsing around you
and you don't have much time left.
This is what it sounds like.
[Josh] And what, you just were ascending, ascending,
ascending at that point?
[Stockton] No, no, I was going down. I kept going down,
because [chuckling] why not?
-[Josh] That was in the first iteration. -Yeah.
Once I saw that that was
where he was willing to go
to get this operation
up and running,
a kind of fear set in for me
that was so much deeper
than anything I experienced while riding in the sub.
[Stockton] I don't know if it'll play on the speaker, but...
[faint clicking]
[Stockton] Those click sounds...
[clicking continues]
[Stockton]...that wasn't a mouse clicking.
And you could feel it.
I was in the dome. I could feel these things popping.
[Josh] Uh-huh.
[Stockton] It was... sort of different.
Second dive, I put earplugs in...
-[Josh] Right. -[Stockton]...and it worked much better.
[Josh laughing] You just ignored it.
-Right. -Yeah, yeah.
It wasn't just a red flag for me,
it was like a flare had gone up.
And here we were in 2021,
and I was thinking,
"When did they go back and test this new sub
in the Bahamas?"
And I couldn't quite make the dates line up in my head.
And so I pressed Stockton and said, "Wait a minute,
when did you take Titan,
this Titan, to the Bahamas?"
Hello.
Oh. We're back.
We've had 52 dives in the sub to date.
-[Josh] Test dives? -Test dives.
[Josh] Are those dives all here around Everett?
No, so 52...
We've had 52 dives on the hull.
Um, a lot of them at Everett,
-and many of them in the Bahamas. -Okay.
We spent a year and a half in the Bahamas
testing the sub.
[Josh] But this version of Titan had never even been
to the Bahamas.
The first hull had been on 49 dives,
but this hull, this new hull,
was only on its third dive ever,
and it had never been down to depth.
I suddenly realized,
what would it mean if I made
this kind of promotional documentary
about Stockton and about OceanGate
that maybe inspired other people to go
and take a ride in this sub...
and then something happened to it?
And so I made the really difficult decision
to call up the president of the network
and to fall on my sword and say, "I'm really sorry.
I know that money's been spent here.
I know that this is something
that was a big deal for you to sign off on,
and I appreciate the opportunity,
but we shouldn't do this.
This is a mistake.
Something bad is going to happen here."
[narrator reading]
OceanGate Expeditions offers you
the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
to be a specially trained crew member
safely diving to the Titanic wreckage site.
This is not a thrill ride for tourists.
It's much more.
[Josh] There's something eternal
about Titanic and her passengers.
We know the ship is wrecked.
We know about the lives lost.
We know that it's down in the depths of the ocean,
but it's still kind of out there.
It's the ship of dreams. It captures all of us.
We all went to that movie.
There's something about the story of Titanic
that really reaches out to us.
The Titanic, to me, was the embodiment.
It was the crowning moment of the Gilded Age.
We thought that we were leaving the past behind,
that we had created an unsinkable ship
of incredible speed and opulence,
and it sank on its maiden voyage
and took most of the celebrities of the age with it.
You know, you can't even imagine what that was like.
[Stockton] The Titanic is one of the most amazing brands
in the world.
People are so enthralled with Titanic
that it became a must-do dive.
[Josh] The idea that the very first time
that Titan was going to visit this...
really deadly wreck,
passengers were gonna be aboard,
was insane to me.
[Stockton] 920 meters.
[Alfred] Stockton did bring in people like myself
to help fund his perfection of this technology,
and that's what this was all about.
[man 1] We kill the thrust,
we are descending in a bit.
[man 2] Yeah, we're going down.
[Stockton] We make sure
that everyone who joins an expedition understands
this is an experimental sub.
There are no rules
for a carbon fiber and titanium sub.
People are informed
that it's very dangerous down there.
We're constantly improving the sub
to allow us to innovate.
But we have to be very careful
so that you don't, by trying to improve it,
create a safety problem.
[Alfred] I do have a higher tolerance for risk
than the normal person,
and so did Stockton.
Maybe that's bravery,
or maybe it's foolhardiness. I'm not sure.
[Jason] I understand the draw to go down and see
the underwater world of the Titanic firsthand.
But how do you keep the person safe
who doesn't understand submersible operations,
who just knows they want to go see something unique?
How do you prevent them
from taking the ultimate risk like that?
Especially because it was a commercial arrangement
and they're paying passengers.
That is something the Coast Guard has to look at.
[female panel member 1] So to confirm,
to become a mission specialist,
did you pay Oceangate any money?
I did.
As a mission specialist,
were you part of the submersible crew
or were you a passenger?
Well, both. I was a...
I was a passenger
who was given the latitude
to participate in the mission.
I didn't do any of the,
what I would say, critical items,
but certainly tighten bolts on the dome
and other things that I would qualify
as what we would say
in a slang version, monkey work.
[Jason] The term 'mission specialist' was created by Oceangate
to give the perception
you know, to others and including regulators
that these were really crew members,
when in fact they were paying passengers.
You can do an operation safely,
where you give passengers simple duties,
but it has to be done with the proper oversight.
And that's what was lacking in this case.
Did you observe the incident as the dome fell off?
Yes, I did.
And did the dome slide down the ramp?
A short distance, then it got stuck.
I actually have a picture of it on my phone.
When the titanium dome fell off,
there were only four bolts in it
and they just sheared
and they exploded like bullets.
Suddenly the people inside were looking out at the ocean
down a ramp
and obviously, a horrifying moment.
The thought with the four bolts was
simply that once you went to depth,
I mean, you didn't need anything to hold it on.
The pressure was so intense
that you couldn't pry it off.
Stockton wanted to appropriate
any pictures or videos of the occurrence.
So there was a dedicated effort
to hush that up.
[Jason] It was clear to me from Mr. Hagen's testimony
that he had a very high risk tolerance,
and that he felt like
there was a possibility
that the worst could occur.
[Alfred] I was okay with accepting the risk.
I insisted on going down on the next mission
after the dome fell off
because it was the first actual descent.
[female panel member 2] And if you look under dive 62,
there are several issues listed.
Some are dive critical.
[indistinct radio chatter]
[female panel member 1] And that was the dive you were on, correct?
Dive 62?
-Yes. -Okay.
It states "Incident, external hull,
HPA valve set in the wrong position
for the dive.
Starboard control pod failed at 1700 meters
after pop sound heard.
Two drop weights jammed in the starboard channel.
Number 1 and number 3 acoustic sensors
have extreme and unusual events.
Dome hinge retention plate bent.
DVL intermittent.
External lights flickering and tilt not functional.
Port battery will not turn on
and sub comes off the platform in a rough launch."
Did any of that cause you any concern
while you were inside the submersible at the time?
Well, there wasn't anything I could do about it.
I mean, we just had to get back to the surface.
It was...
I wasn't unduly con...
I mean, there was a level of concern.
I just figured we'd sort it out
and return to the surface.
[female panel member 1] Since you paid to go to the Titanic,
did you get reimbursed
since you didn't make it to the Titanic?
No, I did not.
I don't believe
there was any provision to be reimbursed,
but Stockton made it clear
that if you did not get to the Titanic,
you would get another opportunity.
I went back the next year,
so I had two expeditions basically
for the price of one.
Did I answer your question?
You did. Thank you.
Hi, my name is Stockton Rush.
I'm the CEO and founder of Oceangate.
Let's take a look at Titan.
So we're coming into the sub.
This is the only toilet available
on a deep diving submersible.
Best seat in the house. You can look out the viewport.
We put a privacy screen in, turn up the music.
It's very popular.
We have our control screen here,
our sonar screen here.
This is the second year we've been out to the Titanic.
We're a completely privately funded operation
and we're funded by what we call mission specialists
who help support the mission.
So they take quite a bit of money to come and join us.
We really are focusing on the Titanic,
on the science around it.
We want to document what the wreck is like now
and also try to predict
what it will be like in the future.
[Antonella] All my background, other than Oceangate,
has been in science work.
I love that aspect of the job.
There's a...
you know, the exploration aspect of it is certainly fun.
I'd been contracted to be an engineer
in operations tech.
There are very few women in this field.
So you're already swimming in to it
from a place of self-doubt, you know,
having fought to be taken seriously.
The moment I stepped onto the ship,
I never forgot it.
I had to sign the liability waiver.
And Stockton was there,
and to a room full of people,
some of them who had paid him lots of money to be there,
all I really knew was
a quarter million dollar price tag.
He says, "The company's registered in the Bahamas,
and they don't do punitive damages,
so don't even bother suing me."
And he says this with a laugh.
And I was so shocked. I wrote it down.
That's a verbatim quote,
because I wrote it down right after this meeting,
'cause I was
just shocked.
I wasn't even aware
the extent of how ridiculous
and unsafe their operation was.
Even just the level of attention to detail
in inspecting the sub
or pre-diving the sub.
You know, I'd walk around right before a dive
and just find cables that were loose
or unplugged.
My experience comes from the ROV world.
Remotely Operated Underwater vehicles.
We wouldn't send an ROV down like that.
And they don't have people on an ROV.
[people cheering and talking indistinctly]
[Antonella] It felt like
watching some really bizarre, surrealist movie or something,
and I'm the only one going,
"This is insane, right?
Like, is anyone else seeing this?"
You know what I mean? Sort of like,
what's the old, like, story? The emperor has no clothes, right?
And only one person is saying, "Wait a second."
[Josh] How does this guy keep taking this sub down?
There's only so many answers to this question.
Uh,
delusion
or desperation.
Someone who is so deep into this
and has so many creditors at the door
and has their personal reputation on the line
that they have to move forward
and keep forging ahead.
And that's when you start selling something as a product
that isn't a product.
It's an experiment.
[Alfred] I'm constantly reminded of the Titan
and my descents to the Titanic.
Anytime I see a glorious tapestry
of a lightning sky,
you remember that glorious morning
without a cloud
and the first rays of sun
brightening the eastern horizon.
And you tend to think of that
because it was that kind of a day.
And it was such a memorable day,
and such a wonderful adventure.
All right, good morning, everyone.
Headed back to the Titanic.
Right now, we did vessel checks this morning.
Uh, a couple of very minor anomalies,
which is great.
[indistinct chatter]
[Antonella] It was putting on a show.
It's like, "Pay attention to this,
pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
We're going to talk about
all these different little things."
No one actually notices,
"Wait a second.
Like, there's a bigger problem here."
[indistinct conversation]
[Alfred] It was one of those moments
where you embrace the possibilities,
you embrace the unknown.
-[man] There you go. -[ratcheting]
-[woman] All right, we're good. Ready? -[man 1] Yeah.
[man 2 over radio] Roger that.
[man speaking indistinctly over radio]
Platform tugger line will get you in place.
Titan is a go for a dive to the Titanic.
You find that in that moment
you're living a life trembling with joy.
At that moment, that's the essence of what I felt.
-[man 1] Unlocked. -[man 2] Unlocked.
[man 3] We're unlocked.
[Alfred] I remembered how passionate we were
in that moment,
how excited I was to see this iconic shipwreck
and to go deeper than I'd ever gone before,
I'd ever imagined.
[man 1] Oh, my God, that's it, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[man 2 speaks indistinctly]
-[man 1] Yeah. That's it, that's it. -[man 2 speaks indistinctly]
[man 1 chuckling] Oh, my God, we're pretty close here.
We're pretty close.
It's a devastating thing to look at,
but it's also awe-inspiring.
And inspirational in some ways,
and deeply sobering,
where all these people lost their lives,
but their remains are not there.
Their belongings are.
The detritus of their lives
and the detritus of the tragedy
are broken and ridden with bacteria
and scattered across the floor of the ocean for all to see.
-[man 3] Above here... -[man 4] Oh, yeah.
[man 3] That's the funnel number 1.
[man 4] And that's where they were
launching the lifeboats.
[man 3] Yeah.
[somber instrumental music playing]
Right now, we're doing three knots,
and we're trying to get back to the sub.
[Alfred] We were ascending in the Titan.
We were actually fairly close to the surface, as I remember,
and we heard a loud crack.
Which sounded like the ship breaking apart.
It was very loud,
it was very dramatic,
and everyone sat up, like, "What was that?"
Mmm, look at that blue.
[Alfred] I can see the surface almost.
[man 1] That's a pretty welcome sight.
[Alfred] It was certainly concerning,
because we didn't understand what it was.
I mean, we were close enough to the surface
where I knew we were going to come out
and that we were going to be okay.
FRC, we see them now out of our 9 o'clock,
about 450 meters out.
[Antonella] We spoke
to a member of the Horizon Arctic crew
about the bang that was heard,
'cause I was, you know, just concerned
and kind of shocked that this had happened.
And he told me that he heard this bang.
[dull thud]
[Antonella] He was out in the Zodiac
waiting as the sub came up,
and he was able to hear it from the surface.
Um.
It must have been loud.
I was just, like, shocked.
No one else really sort of reacted,
and then Stockton sort of shut it down
and, you know, just, "Oh, we'll talk about that later."
[Stockton] It's an open book here.
If you have any questions about what's going on,
about carbon fiber, problems we had,
rumors of problems we had, actual problems we had.
When we got to the surface, Scott was piloting,
he heard a really loud bang.
-Um, not a soothing sound. -[man] No.
Um, but on the surface,
and as Tym and P.H. will attest,
almost every deep diving sub makes a noise at some point.
You have dissimilar shapes
and metals that are
expanding due to thermal interaction,
due to pressure changes,
and it's quite common to have a noise.
[Antonella] My initial reaction was like,
"Hold on. You know, you don't..."
Even if you heard your car make that sort of noise,
you'd probably stop and go,
"Wait a second, we need to, like, see what happened here."
[Cmdr. Williams] When they heard this loud bang,
there should have been all stop,
do not continue, investigate further.
This picture here is
of the placements
of the acoustic emission sensors
on the Titan.
The purple you see here,
this is the acoustic emissions,
basically the energy
or acoustic data that was heard.
On Dive 80,
this purple line goes all the way to the top,
which means it was a loud bang.
There is this huge amplitude.
Delamination is essentially a parting of the carbon fiber.
And what we have come to the conclusion was
there was a delamination
on Dive 80
upon surfacing at 2:46 p.m. local time.
[Antonella] I did talk to Phil Brooks,
the director of engineering.
He had told me,
"It looks like there was movement in the hull,
but only a few microns."
But I did say to him...
I brought up the possibility of delamination.
And I asked him, "Are you going to keep diving the sub?"
And he said, "Yeah, we'll do the next mission,
and then we'll visually inspect it
when we get back to Seattle."
I was just shocked.
Like, you don't need to be a composites expert...
to see that and think,
"Okay, maybe we need to step back
and stop the operation
until we figure out
what this actually means."
But of course, as with anything with Oceangate,
the response was to just go,
"Oh, okay."
and then just keep going.
Stockton Rush touted this system as,
"It will let me know something is happening
before something bad happens." Right?
Their system did that.
Their system said
there has been a fundamental change
in the material of your carbon fiber,
and it was no longer structurally sound
like it had been prior to Dive 80.
Delamination at Dive 80 was the beginning of the end.
And everyone that stepped on board the Titan
after Dive 80
was risking their life.
[Antonella] I've gone back and forth a lot, like...
[sniffles]...whether I should have done more, you know,
whether there's some moral obligation to do more.
I felt like it was the right thing to do
to share what I knew
and tell that part of the story.
So many people are watching
and commenting.
We will now hear virtual testimony from Ms. Antonella Wilby,
former Oceangate contractor.
Ms. Wilby, can you hear us?
-I can. -Thank you for your time today,
Ms. Wilby. We appreciate it.
I was really impressed that Ms. Wilby contacted us
and said "Hey, I'm willing to go on the record"
in a very high profile setting
and gave us some really critical testimony.
So as I understand it,
you were present
during dive 80 on July 15th, 2022,
where a loud bang was heard upon surfacing.
Am I correct?
Yes.
Can you please tell me in detail
about what you know about that dive?
[Antonella] Um,
I wanted to say something before the next dive
because they were going to be diving the sub
a couple days later.
I went to Amber Bay,
the director of administration.
The culture is sort of, you know,
anyone who has a legitimate safety concern
should feel free to raise that concern
without fear of retribution.
I initially went to Amber Bay.
And I told her I was really concerned
that they were going to continue diving the sub.
Her initial response was,
"Yes, people are concerned about you too.
You don't have an explorer mindset."
And, like, that's not the mindset, you know.
Talking about explorer mindset, like,
this is not a mindset that you should have for doing anything.
[Stockton] It's a very participatory sub.
Often you'll be sitting there, and he'll back in.
And he'll say, "Everybody in the dome."
And so you all pile in the dome,
and that brings the nose down so he can slam it in there.
[Wilby] It was all about
I wasn't capable of working with them
because they were too innovative.
And not at all listening to, like, what I was trying to explain,
that, you know, there's a lot of evidence
that something has gone really wrong here.
[Stockton] All stations are reporting the launch as a go.
Please stand by.
It's two-and-a-half miles down,
and it's difficult.
That's why no one else does it.
[Williams] After dive 80, every single time
you would go down to depth,
you were further damaging that hull.
Eventually, something bad was going to happen.
[man] The bottom should be within a couple of meters.
-All right. -[people applauding]
[Stockton] Right now, they will cruise around the bow,
and they'll spend about two hours on that, and then they'll come up.
It'll take about two-and-a-half hours to get it to the surface.
[man on radio] Okay, all hands.
Sounds like we're go for the dive.
Next stop, Titanic.
[Gates] There is a real symmetry between Titan and Titanic.
That is wild.
[man] That is nice, yep.
Naming your submarine Titan is maybe a first clue
in some of the failings and some of the hubris
that ultimately led to what happened.
Titan reports on bottom.
-[all cheering] -None of it broke out.
[Stockton speaking]
[Stanley] There's no possible way that Stockton didn't know
how this was going to end,
and they just carried on anyway.
I think he painted himself in a corner.
He didn't have a good out.
And if he admits defeat and failure,
and then has to tell this to the people
that had given him so much money,
like, what's the rest of his life look like?
These guys, I-- I set up for the dome.
The hull itself, you're not going to hurt the hull.
From the standpoint of passenger safety,
you're going to be alive because the hull--
Nothing is breaching the hull.
It's the safest spot on the entire planet.
He wasn't necessarily set on murder-suicide at that point,
but he had given up hope on the project
coming to fruition the way he had promised.
And then it was just a matter of
is it going to fail with me in it,
or with other people, or how--
How is it going to fail?
But it was obvious that it was going to fail in some way.
[Wilby] I left after two weeks.
They offered to send me home, and I said yes.
You know, no one even looked at me.
Like, I just grabbed my duffel bag
and walked off the ship.
And, like, people were--
Wouldn't make eye contact with me.
It's just added another feeling of just feeling bad.
Like you've somehow done something horribly wrong.
Like you're the evil, terrible person that people won't even like.
Look at you.
[reporter 1] We continue to track some of the coldest air
so far in years felt across eastern Canada.
It pushes into the maritime provinces...
[reporter 2] Central and eastern Canada is in the grips
of a polar vortex right now.
Everything was conspiring against the sub.
When they would take it back and store it,
it was left out in the elements.
Once it started getting into freezing weather,
the water would then start to expand
and try prizing the--
The hull away from the titanium ring.
And each time, the water would go through freezing cycles.
It's like ice breaking up rocks.
[Gates] You're not going to tell them it was left out all winter in the cold.
You're not going to tell them about previous sounds
and cracking from inside the hull.
They didn't treat the Titan hull with respect.
And that was your moneymaker.
[Stockton] It's an open book here.
Do you have any questions about what's going on about, uh, acoustic monitoring,
about, uh, carbon fiber problems we had,
rumors of problems we had.
We want everyone going into this fully informed
this is an experimental sub.
This is a dangerous environment.
Almost every deep-diving sub makes a noise at some point.
You have these similar shakes...
[Gates] My suspicion is that Stockton had
enormous financial pressure to keep going,
and that's when bad things happened.
[man 1 on radio] Go ahead.
[man 2] Yeah, I need to stay alongside of this water.
[man 3] When I woke up, I was like, "Oh, God, no."
[Catterson] There was a risk that something could go wrong...
[man on radio] Topside stage,
diver one and diver two heading to surface.
...which is why I always kept coming back as safety diver.
It's a choice.
It's either to make yourself available to help if you're needed or not.
On the 18th, it was a perfect day for diving.
The sun came out, the skies were blue,
the seas were calm, the wind was down.
What was your responsibility on that day?
I was running the platform again.
Basically, I did all the dive checks for the platform.
Stockton was the pilot.
He was doing all the internal checks.
He's like, "This is great! This is great!"
We get to dive.
Did you have any communications with the passengers
after they had come out to the submersible?
-They'd come out on another dinghy... -[Whalen] Mm-hm.
...and they get out.
And then they got into the sub.
[Hagen] Anyone that went down in it,
whatever their motivations,
should have understood how risky it was.
They were either embracing that reality
or they were delusional.
The one person that should not have been on the Titan
was the teenage son.
Suleman was close to the last to going in.
And when he came up, I grabbed him by the--
The back of his-- His flotation device.
You know, pull him and make sure
he's not gonna, you know, go sliding off into the water.
And...
I helped him get in.
I helped him get into the sub,
and then I said, "Have a good dive."
[man] At 9:14 a.m. local,
according to the Polar Prince deck log,
the Titan disengaged, maneuvered away
and proceeded to dive with five persons aboard.
The Polar Prince received a ping from the Titan
approximately every five to ten seconds.
They're going down to see the Titanic.
You have this young boy, you know, who's excited.
His dad is excited for him.
These are the flashes going through your mind.
The quiet, right? The moments before.
What questions,
what conversations were they having?
[man] Communications continued
throughout the descent.
There were no transmissions which indicated trouble
or an emergency aboard the Titan.
At 10:47:27 a.m. local,
the Titan messaged, "Dropped two wts."
At 10:47:33 a.m. local,
the Titan was pinged for the final time.
The depth of the Titan was 3,346 meters.
[Whalen] Okay, so what you're going to see
is Miss Rush, uh, as she is the--
On the comms and tracker.
-[Neubauer] She leads that team, right? -[Whalen] Yes.
-You will hear a noise that is external to the ship. -Okay.
Or external to the room, I should say.
-And you will see their reaction to the noise. -Okay.
-And then we'll rewind and go again. -Right.
How many meters to go?
Um...
[thud over comms]
[Whalen] So at that point, she said, "What was that bang?"
[Neubauer] Yeah. "What was that bang?"
Is this max volume right now?
[Whalen] It is max volume for this.
I'm gonna back up and play it one more time.
It sounds like a door slamming.
Approximately in five seconds, you will hear the bang.
[Wendy] Um...
[thud over comms]
Yeah.
Now, next, she's going to look at the computer,
and she says, "Dropped two weights."
Dropped two weights was the last message from the Titan.
[Neubauer] Right.
The message actually comes in after they heard the noise of
what could possibly have been the implosion noise.
Right. Okay.
It appears that she thinks something happened,
or she senses something, and then the relief
once she sees "Dropped two weights."
Agreed.
[Whalen] What we believe is the implosion sound came first,
before the computer message of "dropped two weights."
Based upon the speed of actual sound.
Sound travels through the water column
-at 1,500 meters per second. -[Neubauer] Right.
And so they were at 3,346 meters below the surface,
so that would have been, like, two-and-a-half seconds.
Dropped two weights is the last thing that they stated.
-Within five seconds is when we lost comms and tracking. -[Neubauer] Yeah. Okay.
Gotta show some other folks.
That is--
I mean, you figured, the fatal moment, you know, for all of them.
[Whalen] Mm-hm.
It is. It's very sobering.
[Jamie Frederick] At 5:40 p.m., we received a call.
A report of an overdue submersible
at the site of the Titanic.
We happened to have the United States Coast Guard
C-130 on deck in St. John's.
And, ironically, that aircraft
was on deck in St. John's because they were conducting
an international ice patrol mission,
which is something the Coast Guard does
as a result of the sinking of the Titanic.
[reporter] The Canadian Coast Guard,
they have new ships that have just arrived on scene.
The Horizon Arctic,
a ship that can drop a remotely-operated vehicle.
If they find that sub, they've got a huge challenge
lifting it up out of the water,
maybe from a depth of two-and-a-half miles.
There's no other explanation for losing comms and tracking
when they weren't yet at the bottom,
other than implosion.
They found what they were looking for.
It was no longer a search and rescue, but a recovery.
They found debris.
Stockton would have understood the reality of an implosion
being instantaneous and painless.
You're talking about something happening
in a fraction of a second,
where you're exposed to temperatures hotter than the sun
and pressures more than double what's inside a scuba tank.
So they--
You know, they didn't feel a single--
It's basically the perfect, painless way to die.
[Catterson] This was a moment in time
when their sub was there, and then it was not.
[Dawood] I lost two people who are important in my life.
I would never want anybody to go through that pain. [sniffles]
So here is a picture of the aft dome that came up.
It is filled with water.
And then we emptied the water,
and then we started to go through some of the debris.
This is what the sludge looked like
once you got rid of the water.
So a lot of this is just carbon fiber or fiberglass.
You know, electronic parts.
I mean, really, it turned into sludge.
[Steele] Let's just consider the end cap to be a bowl, a mixing bowl.
Items that were inside of the Titan at the time
now become encased inside of the end cap.
We were all just, kind of, getting all hands in
and separating what needed to be considered
as, uh, human remains
and what was just other wreckage pieces.
So as we were pulling apart, that's how we realized what it was,
Mr. Rush's, uh, clothing.
It was actually caked inside of sand.
It was the piece of his sleeve, uh, that had survived.
No, not the whole suit.
Um, just that end inside of the sleeve of it
was ink pen, business cards
and stickers for the Titanic.
And there was nothing else but that.
But each one of those pieces,
even the pen, was still intact.
It hadn't been broken.
All of this debris,
all of these things shattered,
but his pen was still intact.
[Williams] Everyone wants to know what happened to Titan.
Could it have been prevented?
I think it's important for the public to hear the truth.
The whole world is interested in that.
[Neubauer] The testimony gathered has been critical,
but there is still more work to be done.
And our final report will be essential in shaping future safety standards.
I'm now ready to take your questions.
Anne Emerson, Channel 4.
Do you believe you have enough to recommend criminal charges?
And if so, who are you looking at charging?
[Dawood] I think I will never be the same.
I don't think that anybody who goes through loss and--
And such a trauma can ever be the same.
One of the most important things that came out for me
was when the Coast Guard
also assured us as a family that
we couldn't have known.
For me, that was...
yeah, I guess the most important,
um, reassurance they could have given me.
[Catterson] My belief with the dead is just leave them alone.
The same goes for Stockton.
[scoffs]
I wish he was here right now,
and I would smack him one, you know.
Um...
[sighs]
[stammering] It does no good to--
To speak ill of the dead. You know, it's...
[Steele] Those days searching,
I was hoping that the outcome
was not going to be what it was.
You know, laws are written in blood,
you know, regulations are written in blood.
That's the saying in the Coast Guard.
We needed to provide closure.
We needed to provide closure to those families.
OceanGate gave this idea that they were safe.
But when you look at all of the things
that OceanGate bypassed and didn't do,
safety was not their priority,
it was monetary gain.
For me, a submersible is way riskier
than other vessel operations.
So why are we giving them less stringent safety requirements?
It just doesn't make sense.
We've, of course, talked about some of the recommendations.
The most important one to me is--
Is changing how we handle
any US passenger submersible in our naval waters.
If you want to be an explorer, an inventor, an innovator,
that's awesome, you know.
Knock yourself out.
But when you start inviting the public,
when you bring a kid into this thing you've invented,
you have a responsibility at that point to be totally forthright
about what it is that you're offering.
[Stanley] When people are doing things like spending $250,000
in a death tube that wasn't tested,
controlled by a game controller
by a guy that's telling you
how he wants to be remembered for breaking rules,
it's a message to the super wealthy,
the oligarchy, if you will,
that your money can't buy everything.
[Whalen] He was arrogant.
He felt that his way was the only way and the best way.
And, I mean, I don't know why he felt that way, but he did.
And, um--
-[Williams] Five people perished because of it. -You know, it's-- Mm.
[Williams] There were so many opportunities
for Stockton to stop this operation from happening,
and he always chose to continue the operation,
instead of thinking about it from a safety perspective.
With regards to the actions and the inactions of Mr. Rush,
continued, um, failures to properly, um, inspect the hull,
failures to--
To properly, um, identify risks
and risk mismanagement.
So many steps and so many failures
that got to where this is at.
So really, what we have here is not an accident.
It's a potential crime.
-[Whalen] Yes, sir. -[Williams] Yes.
Okay.
[Whalen] He knew the risks he was taking
with carbon-fiber hull and with the Titan.
But he didn't tell anybody else about those risks
because he had to make the money.
It's inescapable.
There is no letting Stockton off the hook at the end of this.
How did the people that had access to the information
that the general public didn't have until after the disaster,
how did those people not only not stop him, but keep giving him money?
That's the question that keeps me up at night.
[Dawood] I'm not looking for blaming.
We all know who the culprit is.
Well, it's not changing anything, does it?
The culprit died with them, right?
So...
who am I to blame?
[Stockton] There are a group of people,
I don't know how many there are,
that say you shouldn't visit the Titanic
because it's a grave site.
Um, in my mind, I think that's just absurd.
The fact of the matter is
the best way to honor those who died
is to draw attention to it, to make people think about it.
I think it's very important to keep the Titanic alive.