Global Courant
It is not the first time that something has gone wrong aboard the Titan, the submarine that was lost on Sunday and for which the authorities confirmed this Thursday that all its crew members died. CBS journalist David Pogue is one of the few people who has already made the crossing and in recent days had issued a warning.
Pogue traveled on the Titan last year to see the wreckage of the Titanic. On the way, the submarine got lost looking for the old ocean liner.
“There is no GPS underwater, so the surface ship is supposed to guide the sub to the wreck by sending text messages,” Pogue said in a segment broadcast on CBS Sunday morning.
“But on this dive, communications were somehow disrupted. The submarine never found the wreck,” he stated.
The journalist said that the Titan was lost for a few hours. “When I tweeted that the sub was lost for a few hours last year, I meant it was LOST on the seabed. Didn’t know where it was and couldn’t find the Titanic,” he wrote on Twitter.
The journalist later backtracked and clarified that the communications were never interrupted, prompting angry responses from users, accusing him that the company that owned the Titan had probably forced him to make that clarification.
Pogue, a former technology columnist for The New York Times, also recounted that the paperwork he had to sign before boarding warned that the Titan was an “experimental ship” that had not been “approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, emotional trauma, or death.”
The submarine had battery problems
The company that owns the Titan, OceanGate, reported that the submersible had a battery problem on its first dive in 2021 and had to be manually connected to the lifting platform, according to a November court filing.
This undated image courtesy of OceanGate Expeditions shows their Titan submersible. Photo: OceanGate Expeditions/Agence France-Presse – Getty Images
“At sea, the submersible sustained modest damage to its external components and OceanGate decided to cancel the second mission for repairs and operational improvements,” the document states.
However, the missions continued. The company reported that 28 people visited the wreck site last year.
“A Safe Submarine”
This year, OceanGate had planned to start expeditions in May and finish them by the end of June, according to documents filed by the company in a Virginia, United States, court charged with dealing with Titanic issues.
Before that court, the company assured that the Titan was a safe submersible.
Titan is made of “filament-wound titanium and carbon fiber” and has been shown to “withstand the enormous pressures of the ocean depths,” OceanGate said.
OceanGate told the court that Titan’s viewer is “the largest of any deep-diving submersible” and that its technology provides an “unmatched view” of the ocean depths.
In a May 2021 court filing, OceanGate added that the Titan had an “unmatched safety feature” that tests the integrity of the hull on every dive.
At the time of the filing, Titan had undergone more than 50 test dives, including to the depth equivalent to Titanic, in deep water off the Bahamas and in a pressure chamber, the company said.
The warning from the experts
However, the description did not convince experts either inside or outside the company itself. And they warned of catastrophic risks.
Search operations in the Atlantic, this June 21. Photo: EFE
Years before the ship disappeared last Sunday, the company had to face several warnings.
Already in January 2018, experts inside and outside the company were beginning to sound the alarm, according to The New York Times.
OceanGate’s director of maritime operations, David Lochridge, ended up producing a scathing document saying the vessel needed further testing and outlining “the potential dangers to Titan’s passengers as the submersible reached extreme depths.”
Lochbridge was sacked.
El director de OceanGate Expeditions, Stockton Rush. Foto: OceanGate Expeditions / AFP
The director of the Stockton Rush company, which charged $250,000 to each “tourist” who wanted to go down to the ruins of the Titanic, is one of the passengers on the submarine and was acting as a pilot when it disappeared on Sunday.
Rush has been criticized by experts for his refusal to have the Titan inspected and certified. He was also sued by a Florida couple who had paid $105,000 each to see the Titanic in 2018, but the expedition was delayed. The company never responded to the lawsuit. And the cause today is in limbo.
Clarín writing with information from the Associated Press and The New York Times
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