Global Courant
The US Coast Guard has confirmed that the missing Titan submersible suffered a catastrophic implosion on its way to explore the wreckage of the Titanic. There are no survivors.
The United States Coast Guard confirmed that the Titan submersible that had been missing since Monday suffered a “catastrophic implosion” and that all its crew died. In a press conference, Rear Admiral John Mauger of the Coast Guard reported that the “material remains” found by the unmanned robot, after consulting experts, were “consistent with a catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber.”
The company OceanGate, in charge of the expedition to the Titanic with the submersible that disappeared with five people on board, had previously announced that the Titan’s passengers have been “sadly lost,” according to a company statement.
The tourists had paid $250,000 to “experience a completely alien world that only a few people had the privilege to know about” – or that at least was what the expedition’s tourist brochure promised. But the dream of him, however, turned into a real tragedy.
OceanGate Expeditions is the only company that had the ill-fated submarine – named “Titan” – able to reach the bottom of the ocean to see the wreckage up close.
The remains of the bow of the Titanic, filmed with incredible technical quality.
Are there human remains on the Titanic?
It should be borne in mind that several companies organize trips to see the remains of the Titanic, which is located at a depth of about 3,800 meters and at a distance of about 640 kilometers from the Canadian island of Newfoundland.
The ocean liner sank on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in 1912. Of the 2,200 passengers and crew on board, more than 1,500 died.
Of those 1,500, some 340 were found floating in their life jackets. The fate of the other 1,160 still remains a mystery.
Now, is it possible that there are still human remains along with what remains of the Titanic?
The disappearance of the submarine reignited the eternal debates on whether or not there could be human remains intermingled with the remains of the ship. It all depends on the specialist who thinks, but most tend to believe not.
Photo dated April 10, 1912. The Titanic leaves Southampton, England, on her maiden voyage. Photo: AP
Photographs from 2015, however, suggested that some of the remains of the travelers are still mixed with the wreckage of the ship.
Seeing the Titanic costs $250,000. Photo: WHOI Archives
According to a report in The Week, there are those who say that hundreds of people were trapped inside the ship when it sank and that the state of their bodies would depend on how exposed they were over the years to currents of hydrogen peroxide and scavengers of the sea depths.
“Decomposition slows down if the bodies are cut off from the open sea, which reduces oxygen levels and scavengers,” William J. Broad explained to The New York Times. “The interiors of old shipwrecks have yielded bones, teeth, and sometimes entire bodies.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if highly preserved bodies were found in the engine room. That was inside the ship,” added Titanic expert Robert Ballard.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet star in the James Cameron shipwreck film “Titanic.”
In any case, those who have explored the remains for the longest time claim that the bodies of the victims decomposed long ago.
Skeptics accuse NOAA, a branch of the US Department of Commerce, of exaggerating photographic evidence as part of a power grab.
Just because shoes or clothing turn up doesn’t mean there are still bodies at the bottom of the Atlantic, but for a NOAA representative it all has to do with semantics: since corpses can be reduced to sediment on boots and under coats, he, as an archaeologist, “I would say they are human remains.”
RMS Titanic INC., also a company that organizes expeditions to the Titanic, says that human remains would likely have been noticed after about 200 dives.
