Mystery of Titan Submarine: What Actually Happened?

Hello friends, on June 18, 2023, at 9:30 AM, 5 people boarded a submersible called Titan and began their dive into the ocean. Their goal was to visit the wreckage of the Titanic, which sank over 100 years ago. This is a very risky and expensive form of adventure tourism. Each person paid more than 2 crore rupees for this short trip.

The Titanic wreck is located 3,810 meters below the sea, and it would take about 2 hours to reach that depth. Every 15 minutes, the submersible would send a signal to a ship above the surface called Polar Prince. This was how they stayed in touch with the outside world. However, on June 18, just 45 minutes after the dive started, communication with the ship was lost.

The submersible was supposed to return to the surface at 4:30 PM, but when it didn’t show up, the team on Polar Prince informed the US Coast Guard at 7:10 PM. This started a massive search operation that lasted 4 days. Aircraft, ships, and robot vehicles were used in the search. The main question on everyone’s mind was: What happened to the people inside?

Now, let’s talk about where the Titan disappeared. The area is in the Atlantic Ocean, about 600 km from Canada. The Titanic wreck is broken into two parts, about 800 meters apart. While the word “submarine” was used earlier, Titan is technically a submersible. The difference is that a submarine can operate on its own, but a submersible needs a support ship to launch and recover it. In this case, the support ship was Polar Prince.

The company running the trip was OceanGate, founded in 2009. They offered deep-sea expeditions for wealthy tourists, including visits to the Titanic since July 2021. OceanGate had other submersibles, but Titan was the only one capable of diving to the Titanic’s depth, which is nearly 4,000 meters.

At such depths, the pressure is enormous. The Titanic wreck lies in the “midnight zone,” where no sunlight can reach, and the water temperature is about 4 degrees Celsius. The pressure at the Titanic’s depth is 400 times higher than at the surface, meaning the submersible had to be specially designed to withstand this. The Titan’s body was made of carbon fiber and titanium and was about 6.7 meters long. It had four electric thrusters and was controlled by a video game controller.

The Titan had no seats inside, just a small toilet near the viewing window. The submersible communicated with the surface through a text-messaging system, and it’s unclear what kind of internet connection was used. Five people were inside Titan on June 18: a British billionaire, a French navy commander, a Pakistani businessman and his 19-year-old son, and the CEO of OceanGate.

When the communication was lost at 11:15 AM, everyone still hoped the submersible would return to the surface at 4:30 PM. If the submersible got stuck underwater, there was a system for releasing heavy ballasts to help it rise back up. However, by 7:10 PM, when there was no sign of it, the US Coast Guard was informed, and the search began.

The Titan had a 96-hour oxygen supply, so rescuers had only 4 days to find them alive. The search area was huge, about 25,000 square kilometers. Despite the efforts of the rescue team, on June 22, a robot searching the ocean floor found debris from the Titan 490 meters from the Titanic. It was confirmed that all the passengers had died.

The submersible had imploded due to the high pressure underwater. An implosion is the opposite of an explosion—it’s when something collapses inward under pressure. The main body of the submersible, made of carbon fiber, couldn’t handle the pressure and was destroyed in less than a millisecond. The passengers likely didn’t feel anything.

The design of the Titan was experimental, and carbon fiber had never been fully tested for such deep-sea use. Many experts had warned that this material was not suitable for such depths. In fact, several people in the deep-sea exploration field had expressed concerns about the safety of Titan, but these warnings were ignored.

This tragic incident reminds us of the importance of safety regulations and the dangers of cutting corners. Thank you for reading, See you in the next Blog!

How Survival Become Nightmare: The True Story of the Golem Cave Incident