OceanGate Titan Submersible Remains: Everything We Know

Tuesday, June 18, marks the one-year anniversary from when the Titan submersible first began traveling underwater toward the wreckage of the Titanic before imploding.

The Titan submersible, which was operated by OceanGate Expeditions, descended into the Atlantic Ocean on June 18, 2023, to visit the wreckage of the Titanic, which sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg while sailing to New York from Britain on its first voyage, killing about 1,500 people.

The Titanic wreck sits at around 12,500 feet below sea level—far lower than most submersibles can travel. According to OceanGate, Titan was only one of five submersibles in the world able to reach that far down.

Aboard the submersible was Captain Hamish Harding as well as Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a Titanic researcher, and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.

After officials lost contact with the submersible hours after it descended into the ocean, it was determined by officials with the U.S. Coast Guard days later that all five on board the submersible, which carried 96 hours’ worth of oxygen, had died and that the debris located was “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber.”

Since then, some have questioned if the full wreckage of the submersible and the remains of those that had died have been recovered by U.S. Coast Guard officials.

Investigators uncovered human remains among the wreckage last summer—located by deep-sea robots a short distance from the Titanic.

In October 2023, the U.S. Coast Guard issued a statement regarding the recovery of wreckage from the Titan.

“The salvage mission, which was conducted under an existing agreement with U.S. Navy Supervisor of Salvage & Diving, was a follow-up to initial recovery operations following the loss of the Titan submersible. Investigators from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada joined the salvage expedition as part of their respective safety investigations,” the statement said.

In an updated statement to Newsweek on June 10 via email, the U.S. Coast Guard said, “The Titan Marine Board of Investigation (MBI) remains in the fact-finding phase of the investigation and is collecting all relevant evidence and information. A projected completion date is not available. The latter part of the fact-finding phase will include a public hearing, and the MBI will provide at least 60-days’ notice ahead of the public hearing.”

Meanwhile, one of OceanGate’s former employees sued the company over safety issues in 2018, while explorer Chris Brown told CNN last June that he was set to voyage to the Titanic wreck on the submersible before pulling out over the perceived risks.

He voiced worries over the off-the-shelf parts the company used on Titan, which used a modified gaming controller.

OceanGate says on its website that the off-the-shelf components helped “streamline” the construction while making it “simple to operate and replace parts.”

Despite the concerns surrounding safety precautions following the Titan submersible tragedy, Larry Connor, a billionaire real estate investor, recently announced plans to venture to the Titanic wreckage.

“He [Connor] called me up and said, ‘You know, what we need to do is build a sub that can dive to [Titanic-level depths] repeatedly and safely and demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that, and that Titan was a contraption,'” Patrick Lahey, co-founder and CEO of Triton, a company that makes submarines, told the Wall Street Journal in May.