CNN
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The Titan submersible sent its final message just six seconds before losing contact with the surface during its ill-fated dive toward the Titanic, according to a U.S. Coast Guard agency investigating the ship’s June 2023 implosion that killed all five people on board.
“I lost two weights,” the message the Titan sent to its mothership read, referring to the weights the submersible could lose in hopes of returning to the surface. A lawsuit filed by the family of one of the victims said the message, sent about 90 minutes into the ship’s dive, was an indication that the crew may have known something was wrong and were trying to abort the mission.
Instead, seconds later, the Titan was “alerted” for the last time, according to the opening presentation Monday, the first day of a two-week hearing by the Navy’s Board of Inquiry examining the tragedy. The mother ship, the Polar Prince, then lost track of the vessel.
Days later, authorities found the wreckage lying on the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean, several hundred yards from where the Titanic lay.
Confirmation of the Titan’s latest communications came early in the hearing by the Marine Inquiry Board, which also called its first witnesses: former employees of OceanGate, the Everett, Wash.-based company that developed and operated the 23,000-pound submersible, charging about $250,000 per ticket. The company has faced increasing scrutiny over its operations because of reports of safety concerns.
The Maritime Board of Inquiry, the Coast Guard’s highest level of investigation, was convened days after the submersible went missing and tasked with examining the cause of the tragedy and making recommendations, including possible civil penalties and criminal prosecutions.
“Over the past 15 months, our team has worked continuously in close coordination with multiple federal agencies, international partners and industry experts to uncover the facts surrounding this incident,” Jason Neubauer, chairman of the Marine Board of Investigation, said at a news conference Sunday.
“The upcoming hearings will allow us to present our findings and hear directly from key witnesses and subject matter experts in a transparent forum,” Neubauer said, adding that the proceedings “are a critical step in our mission to understand the contributing factors that led to the incident and, more importantly, the actions necessary to prevent a similar event from happening again.”
The submersible lost contact with its mother ship while diving toward the Titanic on June 18, 2023. When it failed to resurface, an international search and rescue mission took place in the remote waters several hundred miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Authorities eventually concluded that the ship had suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” a sudden inward collapse caused by immense pressure. Debris from the submersible was found on the sea floor several hundred yards from the Titanic, and authorities recovered “suspected human remains” believed to belong to the victims.
Stockton Rush, the founder and CEO of the ship’s operator, businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood, businessman Hamish Harding and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet were all killed. Their remains were identified through DNA testing and analysis, the Navy’s Board of Inquiry confirmed in its submission on Monday.
The Coast Guard previously said the hearing would focus on “historical events prior to the accident, regulatory compliance, crew member duties and qualifications, mechanical and structural systems, emergency response and the submersible industry.”
The witness list includes a series of former employees of OceanGate, the Everett, Washington-based company that developed and operated the 23,000-pound vessel, charging about $250,000 per ticket. The company has been questioned about its operations following reports of safety concerns.
The first of those employees testified Monday, including former engineering director Tony Nissen, who said he was fired from OceanGate in mid-2019 because he refused to sign on to a shipment at that time.
Nissen had concerns, he said, about the integrity of the Titan’s carbon-fiber hull, which emerged in the wake of the submersible’s disappearance and implosion as a focal point of these growing safety concerns.
Nissen described his frequent disagreements with Rush, saying the two men had “fights” that took place “behind closed doors” so that other members of the engineering team would “not know that the two people at the top are in deep disagreement.”
“He fought for what he wanted and didn’t give an inch, not even a lot,” Nissen said of Rush.
The company’s lawyers are present at the hearing and can cross-examine witnesses, but they declined to do so in Nissen’s case. At the start of Monday’s hearing, Jane Shvets, one of the company’s lawyers, offered her condolences to the families of the deceased.
“There are no words to ease the loss suffered by the families affected by this tragic incident,” she said, “but we hope this hearing will help shed light on the cause of the tragedy and prevent something like this from happening again.”
The MBI is comprised of numerous Coast Guard officials and at least two members of the National Transportation Safety Board, according to a list provided by the Coast Guard. Other witnesses expected to testify include regulatory officials, search and rescue specialists, underwater exploration experts and engineers from NASA and Boeing.
Although the primary purpose of the hearing is to “uncover the facts surrounding the incident,” Neubauer acknowledged that the board is also tasked with identifying “the fault or negligence of the certified mariners.”
“And if a criminal act is detected, we will make a recommendation to the Department of Justice,” he said.
The Maritime Board of Investigation is the highest level of investigation in the Coast Guard: About one MBI hearing is convened each year, Neubauer said, adding that “out of thousands of investigations that are conducted, fewer than one reaches this level.”
The hearing will take place in North Charleston, South Carolina, and is scheduled to take place over nine days, Monday through Friday, September 27. It is being streamed live on the Coast Guard’s YouTube page.
Once the investigation is complete, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board will each conduct an independent analysis and prepare reports, Neubauer said Sunday. He cautioned that more hearings could be held in the future, and he did not provide an estimated timeline for the investigation’s conclusion.
