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Implosion- The Titanic Sub Disaster Full Movie
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00:00Health stations are reporting the launch is a go. Please stand by.
00:05On June the 18th, 2023, the Titan submersible set out for the wreck of the Titanic.
00:15On board were five men, including the pilot and owner, Stockton Rush.
00:21When I started with this goal of getting people underwater, and I also wanted to go deep,
00:24I have what I call the deep disease.
00:26Titan descended two miles beneath the surface.
00:32Then, suddenly, all communication was lost.
00:37Our sub was there, and then it was not.
00:42What's that like?
00:43Did they have a chance to worry about it? Not a chance.
00:47The submersible had suffered a catastrophic failure, and all five men on board were killed.
00:53I lost two people who were important in my life. They're not going to come back.
01:00With unprecedented access to the U.S. Coast Guard investigation...
01:04In about two minutes, they identify that they lost conscience tracking.
01:09Everyone in the world wants to know what happened to Titan.
01:12...and exclusive footage from inside the submersible.
01:15Yep, everything's good.
01:16...we reveal the truth behind the biggest scandal in deep sea exploration.
01:20I've gone back and forth a lot, like, whether I should have done more.
01:25Nothing is breaching the hull. It's the safest spot on the entire planet.
01:30What really happened on that fatal dive?
01:34If it wasn't an accident, it then has to be some degree of crime.
01:39Exploration is part of human nature.
01:49Exploration is part of human nature.
02:03Many are compelled to push the boundaries and explore.
02:08And that's where, you know, you have to balance the risk with some oversight.
02:13In September 2024, 15 months after the Titan implosion,
02:19the U.S. Coast Guard convenes a public hearing into the cause of the disaster.
02:24The aim for Jason Neubauer and his team is not only to find out why Titan imploded,
02:47but to prevent this kind of failure ever happening again.
02:50I've met many of the families of the victims,
02:57and that is the one thing that keeps me driven.
03:01Seeing the impacts from a tragedy,
03:05every loss of life impacts hundreds of people.
03:08During the two-week hearing,
03:14the investigation team will question witnesses about their memories of Stockton Rush
03:19and his creation, the Titan submersible.
03:25To get to the bottom of what went wrong on the fatal dive,
03:29they will have to delve back into how it all started.
03:31Carl Stanley has almost 30 years' experience diving submersibles.
03:40Mr. Stanley, the board's recorder, Lieutenant Steele, will now administer your oath.
03:45Good afternoon, sir.
03:46Please stand and raise your right hand.
03:50Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you're about to give
03:53will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
03:56So help you God.
03:57I do.
03:58You may be seated.
03:59Good afternoon, Mr. Stanley.
04:04Mr. Keith Fawcett will have the first round of questioning for you, sir.
04:09Mr. Stanley, could you just talk about your experience
04:12and your interaction with Mr. Stockton Rush?
04:15My relationship with Stockton goes back at least 10, possibly up to 15 years.
04:22When I learned that he was making a carbon fiber sub,
04:26I told him I want to be a part of that.
04:28I saw that as an opportunity to dive deeper than I probably would have ever gotten to dive again.
04:34I was excited about it.
04:38I don't think Stockton started this whole project knowing that it would end in total disaster.
04:44I think he believed in having people have better access to the deep ocean.
04:51In April 2017, Stockton Rush was invited to the prestigious Explorers Club in New York,
05:02where he gave an impassioned presentation about his ambitions for deep sea exploration.
05:07Thanks very much.
05:12You may have seen in the write-up of this that I wanted to be an astronaut.
05:18That's why I got an engineering degree.
05:20I watched Star Trek, Star Wars.
05:22And I wasn't going to get to Jupiter or Mars.
05:25But I did realize that all the cool stuff that I thought was out there is actually underwater.
05:33He wanted to support science.
05:35He wanted to, you know, make this kind of adventure more approachable to the public.
05:45The goal was, where do you want to go in the ocean?
05:50What is the most known site in the ocean?
05:56And it's clearly the Titanic.
05:58And to go to the Titanic, which is at 3,800 meters, requires a special sub.
06:05Carbon fiber in subsea vehicles is really the right substance to use.
06:10It's three times better on a strength-to-buoyancy basis than titanium, the next best thing.
06:15Deep diving passenger submersibles are made of steel or titanium, not carbon fiber.
06:23But Stockton was a strong advocate for using the untested material.
06:29It would be the deepest diving carbon fiber sub ever built.
06:33But if we mess it up, there's not a lot of recovery.
06:36I'm good already north-south.
06:39Stockton and Ocean Gate came on our radar probably in 2020.
06:43My job is to go around the world investigating great mysteries and to tell stories of exploration.
06:50And so we thought this would be an amazing opportunity to shine a light on what they were doing.
06:56Stockton wanted to bring more people to Titanic.
06:59So he built a vehicle that had a totally different shape, toilet paper tube.
07:04This carbon fiber hull that was built to be lighter and stronger from the space-age material,
07:09it had these big titanium end caps that would seal this cylinder.
07:13When I first saw it on the dock, it was kind of this marvel.
07:20Titan's design meant that it could carry five passengers down to depths.
07:24This will be one of the great moments of submersibles in that this technology is what we need to explore the ocean depth.
07:34It's our belief that without innovative technologies and innovative business...
07:38Ocean Gate extensively documented their story for their archives.
07:44Their videos were used to promote Titan, to attract investors, the media and passengers wanting to explore the ocean depths.
07:52To make the exploration possible.
07:58If you're starting a submarine company, is there a more famous destination in the world than Titanic? No.
08:06Where is your excitement factor on this?
08:08Oh, definitely at a level.
08:10By the time we're done testing it, I believe it's pretty much invulnerable.
08:15And that's pretty much what they said about the Titanic.
08:17That's right.
08:22To test the strength of Titan's carbon fiber hull, Stockton took the sub to deep waters, just off the coast of the Bahamas.
08:32I got an email saying, come out to Marsh Harbor, Bahamas, and I have a spot open for you.
08:40This was the opportunity that sub-expert Carl Stanley had been waiting for.
08:45Okay, I'm good. Lock me up.
08:47Stockton told him that the incremental testing of Titan's hull had so far involved 46 dives, mostly shallow, with only three reaching deep sea pressure.
08:59All of our test program has been about incremental testing.
09:02This is really focused on the pressure vessel and making sure that the most critical component of the sub is safe and capable of handling depths down to 4,000 meters repeatedly with people on board.
09:154,000 meters, or two and a half miles, is the depth of the seafloor where the Titanic lies.
09:23To succeed in reaching it, Titan would have to withstand crushing water pressures equal to two and a half tons, bearing down on every square inch of the hull.
09:34I did not even come close to appreciating the real danger.
09:41I was the one that was like, hey, capture this moment.
09:44Like, I was happy to be there.
09:52Joining the dive that day was 25-year-old Petros Mathiodakis.
09:57He was in the Bahamas demonstrating an underwater scanner to Stockton, and he had jumped at the chance for a ride in Titan.
10:04I was aware that this was extremely risky, and Stockton was very clear.
10:11He said, do you have a wife?
10:14And I said, nope.
10:16Do you have kids?
10:17And I said, nope.
10:19He said, okay, you're in.
10:23When you're inside of Titan, on your descent, you're just free-falling.
10:32You're just heavy, and your gravity is pushing you down.
10:38You're essentially in the dark, just enough light to see.
10:43Now, left is forward is down.
10:45On the left stick.
10:46This is down?
10:47That's up.
10:47That's up?
10:48Yep.
10:48That's down?
10:49Yep.
10:49The first time the carbon fiber made a noise in that hall, it was extremely loud.
10:56It was like a gunshot.
10:59Any noise would have been loud, but that was loud.
11:01Everyone stops talking for a little bit, and, okay, I think we're okay, you know.
11:09That loud, sudden noise that you know is essentially part of your pressure vessel breaking, I think that's going to scare anybody.
11:25But the alarming noises were not the only concern for those on board.
11:29When we got almost to the bottom, the lights on the exterior of the sub powered down.
11:38Do you see anything down there?
11:39Oh, the lights are off.
11:42I see the bottom.
11:43I don't think we're touching it.
11:45Are we looking?
11:46We had a bit of issue with one of the battery banks.
11:50Stockton had mentioned we're not seeing full vertical thruster availability.
11:56If anything, I don't think we're on it.
11:59The supposed goal of the trip was to test it to the exact depth of the Titanic.
12:11We got 96% of the way there.
12:15Like, we're getting closer to it, but we're not touching it.
12:18You're on the dive.
12:19It's hard to put the brakes on that.
12:21So what are you going to do?
12:24The cracking sounds were continuing.
12:27So at some point, collectively, we came to a decision of, well, that's good enough.
12:34Let's call it a day.
12:35I'm sure we were within a few percentage points of implosion.
12:44After his experience, Carl Stanley decided to warn Stockton Rush that the noises could mean the sub's main hull was no longer safe.
12:57Mr. Stanley, you sent an email in April 18th, 2019, I believe, to Mr. Rush.
13:06You say the sounds we observed yesterday sounded like a flaw, defect in one area being acted on by the tremendous pressures and being crushed, damaged.
13:16Would indicate there is an area of the hull that is breaking down, getting spongy.
13:21I was very much concerned that I kept sending him emails for over a year.
13:31And I didn't even know a fraction of what we know now.
13:39You know, I feel this exchange of emails strained our relationship.
13:42I felt like I kind of pushed things as far as I could without just him telling me to shut up and never talk to him again.
13:52It's become clear during the investigation that the damage was worse than Carl had suspected.
13:58And after dive 47, Stockton found out about a crack.
14:04After dive 47, one of the pilots for Oceangate was getting ready to do a pre-dive inspection of the hull.
14:11And he was able to identify a crack in the carbon fibre.
14:17The layers of carbon fibre were beginning to come apart, known as a delamination.
14:24This is what had caused the crack.
14:32In the Arizona desert, Tim Catterson, one of Oceangate's contract safety divers, is building his own steel submersible.
14:41Using carbon fibre was an option he never even considered.
14:46Hardly anybody in the public is familiar with carbon fibre.
14:51It's stable all the way up until this magic point that it is not.
14:57The failure happens catastrophically, nearly explosively.
15:06As you're diving down, the pressure's getting greater.
15:09They heard big pops.
15:12So you've got your fibres are like this.
15:13When this breaks like that, that would make some pretty loud pops.
15:18It's pulling apart from one side and is now starting to roll up underneath itself.
15:24That's delamination by its definition.
15:28The damage to Titan meant it would no longer survive the pressures of the deep ocean.
15:36So early in 2020, Stockton had no choice but to completely replace the hull, building once more with carbon fibre.
15:45He was convinced that with slight modifications to the processing of the carbon fibre, this sub would be able to repeatedly dive down to depths.
15:56It's been a long process to ensure that Titan can go to the Titanic repeatedly and safely.
16:05He was not going to be swayed from using carbon fibre.
16:07We've refined the process so that we have extremely uniform, five-inch thick carbon fibre.
16:13Stockton and Oceangate needed to maintain their company vision of taking people in a carbon fibre innovative submersible for the trip of a lifetime.
16:23I can't wait to get out to the Titanic.
16:28Titan was relaunched with its new carbon fibre hull early in 2021.
16:34The Titanic expedition plans were well underway, but Oceangate had disregarded US guidelines for carrying passengers.
16:43They did not register it.
16:45Why would they not register it?
16:47One reason to not register is to make sure that no one, from a regulatory standpoint, is monitoring your operations.
16:55You know, by design, to operate in a manner that you stay off the radar.
17:00The saga of the Titanic's sinking and rediscovery has captured...
17:04At this GeekWire conference, Stockton Rush attempts to justify why Titan was not properly certified.
17:10And today we're honoured to host one of the explorers who is literally bringing new light to that saga.
17:17Stockton Rush.
17:18There are certifying agencies, the Pressure Vessels for Human Occupation Committee, the Subsafe program in the Navy.
17:27These programs are over the top in their rules and regulations, but they had nothing with carbon fibre.
17:32So we had to go out and work on that.
17:35And one of the things I learned is, you know, when you're outside the box, it's really hard to tell how far outside the box you really are.
17:42And we were pretty far out there.
17:54Hey, Josh.
17:55Hey, how are you, man?
17:56Glad you made it.
17:57We had read about Ocean Gate, and we thought this would be a great story for Expedition Unknown.
18:05Here was this innovator that was going to come and break design barriers and to create a next-generation submersible.
18:14Discovery presenter Josh Gates saw Titan as his chance to take the trip of a lifetime.
18:21I'm on board.
18:23Hi, everybody. How are you?
18:24How's it going?
18:25Stockton was a really compelling salesman, and that's a good way to describe him, I think.
18:32So this is the largest viewport on any deep-diving sub in planet Earth.
18:39Stockton's answers felt rehearsed.
18:41They felt like they were the smooth answers that you were bound to get as you cruised the showroom floor for a new car.
18:49Carbon fibre will be one-third the weight of a similar titanium structure.
18:54Right.
18:54We all rely on that spidey sense.
18:57We all have that little voice that whispers to us.
19:00And that voice started whispering to me early on.
19:02All right.
19:04The only way to get in or out of Titan was through the front.
19:08Thank you, sir.
19:10Copy that.
19:12And so when you climbed inside of it, and they closed that door, they seal you in from the outside.
19:18Okay, the door is closed. Now what's happening to it?
19:20They're bolting it in.
19:21How many bolts go around it?
19:22Four bolts.
19:23Four bolts.
19:24So we're in.
19:27Yes.
19:27We're sealed up.
19:29You are a prisoner.
19:30My prisoner.
19:31I'm happy to be here.
19:32Stockton just didn't see, even psychologically, the need for a way out of this sub.
19:38This is Titan, top side, top side, Titan.
19:45There you go.
19:46There you go.
19:47It's going to take it pretty steep.
19:49That's where it gets interesting.
19:50We were in the sub for hours with Stockton.
20:00And the dive was interesting in that nothing really worked right.
20:06Well, I'm having trouble with our port horizontal thruster.
20:11Okay.
20:11Let's roll them that.
20:20Aft is unlocked.
20:22No UBT light.
20:24Got that?
20:24The sub didn't really do anything it was asked to do.
20:28This guy helped me down at Titanic, too, right?
20:30Yeah.
20:31Yep.
20:34They have an emergency overwrite on the VBT.
20:38Yes, we have a software problem.
20:39Then there was an issue with the software.
20:42The system crashed at one point.
20:44Hello?
20:44Can you copy?
20:47The motor doesn't even seem to be moving, but the control program says it's moving.
20:51No current.
20:52Yep.
20:53I don't like when thrusters go out.
20:54We may just go back to the platform rather than go to the bottom.
20:57Okay.
20:57We're pretty much here.
20:59Hey, top side.
21:02I mean, it was non-functional is a good way to put it.
21:07And so, eventually, it was decided that we had to scrub the dive and bring it back to
21:13the surface.
21:15Okay.
21:16We're up.
21:17We're going to get some good footage.
21:18Big time.
21:19And this will make a different story.
21:21On the way back to port, Josh quizzed Stockton about being in Titan on deeper dives.
21:27How noisy is it when it goes down?
21:29Is it pretty quiet?
21:30Oh, it'll be quiet.
21:30There's usually a bang somewhere.
21:32Most subs have a bang of some type.
21:33When I was in the sub before, and it was, you know, I'll play you what it sounded like
21:37when the carbon fiber's collapsing around you and you don't have much time left.
21:41This is what it sounds like.
21:42And what, you just were sending, sending, sending at that point?
21:45No, no.
21:45I was going down.
21:46I kept going down.
21:47Because, why not?
21:50I don't know if it'll play on the speaker.
21:55Those click sounds, that wasn't a mouse clicking.
21:59And you could feel it.
22:02I was in the dome.
22:02I could feel these things popping.
22:05Second dive, I put earplugs in.
22:07Right.
22:07And it worked much better.
22:08I just ignored it.
22:09Right.
22:09Yeah.
22:10It wasn't just a red flag for me.
22:12It was like a flare had gone up.
22:15Josh confronted Stockton about how much testing Titan had undergone.
22:20Okay.
22:21Ho-ho.
22:22We're back.
22:23So we've had 52 dives in the sub to date.
22:26Test dives.
22:27Test dives.
22:28Okay.
22:28We spent a year and a half in the Bahamas testing the sub.
22:30But we've done a massive upgrade of the software systems and some of the external components.
22:36And we're testing.
22:37And so those things, you test, test, test.
22:39And I was thinking, when did they go back and test this new sub in the Bahamas?
22:45And I couldn't quite make the dates line up in my head.
22:48What Stockton hadn't told Josh was that this Titan, with its replaced hull, had only been tested so far on three shallow dives.
22:59Pieces of it were tested in the ocean.
23:03But the main pressure hull, once it was refabricated, never went back to depth.
23:11All right.
23:11I suddenly realized, what would it mean if I made this kind of promotional documentary about Stockton and about Ocean Gate that maybe inspired other people to go and take a ride in this sub?
23:24And then something happened to it.
23:27And so I made the really difficult decision to call up the president of the network and to fall on my sword and say,
23:33I know that this is something that was a big deal for you to sign off on and I appreciate the opportunity, but we shouldn't do this.
23:40This is a mistake.
23:41Something bad is going to happen here.
23:42Well, I'll get there.
23:43In the very short time that I spent with Stockton, it absolutely seemed like he had something to prove.
23:50Apparently Stockton's directing this, too.
23:52Okay.
23:52He wanted to kind of, you know, damn the establishment and I'm going to kind of show them and I'm going to, you know, be this cutting edge entrepreneur and inventor and do it my own way.
24:10Certainly Stockton had the money.
24:13He had the vision.
24:15He had the drive to do this.
24:20He invited me once to go out flying with him.
24:25He's got an experimental aircraft.
24:29Experimental.
24:31And he said, do you want to fly?
24:34Give me that thing.
24:36So, you know, I'm flying the airplane a little bit.
24:40It's great fun.
24:40And then he says, do you want to do a barrel roll?
24:46Sure.
24:46He told me how to do it.
24:48And then I did one.
24:53Basically, we were just doing this stuff.
24:55And he said, you know, this is great.
24:57Nobody else ever wants to go and do this stuff.
25:00I said, well, it's either going to work or it's not going to work.
25:03You know, while we're doing it, it's going to be a, you know, a great fun time.
25:08Yeah, we could have crashed.
25:15Somewhere, somewhere in there, we were a kindred spirit.
25:19Why I kept working with him, I don't know, because I definitely did not say yes to him all the time.
25:31My dynamic with Stockton was interesting.
25:35We didn't agree on everything.
25:37You know, Stockton wasn't always right, but he was always sure he was right.
25:40Businessman and adventurer Alfred Hagen was one of the first to sign up for Stockton's Titanic expedition.
25:50I mean, he was a genius.
25:52And he had a very distinct vision of what he was going to build, how he was going to do it, and what he was going to achieve.
25:58I'm here with Stockton Rush, who is the CEO of OceanGate.
26:02You know, there's no doubt in my mind that his primary motivations were more ego-driven than financially driven.
26:10Well, Stockton was guilty of hubris, and he's, people accuse him of trying to prove himself and live up to his own ancestry, and those are relevant points.
26:21And his family legacy was about the closest that you can get to royalty within the United States.
26:28Stockton was a true blue-blood patrician, as was his wife, Wendy.
26:35You know, her great-grandparents were the people that owned Macy's, whose lives were lost on the Titanic.
26:42And she had that direct connection.
26:44They were of the upper crust.
26:46I don't think most people can even imagine the access that Stockton had to the uber elites of the world.
27:01Stockton's father had been the president-elect of the Bohemian Club,
27:05which owns a multi-thousand-acre reserve of old-growth redwood forest an hour outside of San Francisco that they use for their private campground.
27:21Who cares where the original funding came from?
27:25You know, it doesn't matter.
27:26It's what he was doing with it.
27:27That's what mattered.
27:28He pitched an idea to people at the right place in the right time that threw money at him,
27:36and he felt some kind of psychological need to accomplish something and impress these people.
27:43Don't miss the opportunity to be part of history.
27:48Ocean Gate Expeditions offers you the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a specially trained crew member safely diving to the Titanic wreckage site.
27:58Rushing things to market so that a business can become profitable or stay afloat is obviously dangerous.
28:09The Titanic is one of the most amazing brands in the world.
28:13People are so enthralled with Titanic that it became a must-do dive.
28:21And so, from a business perspective, it was very appealing.
28:23I understand the draw to go down and see the underwater world, the Titanic, firsthand.
28:31But how do you keep the person safe who doesn't understand submersible operations,
28:36who just knows they want to go see something unique, taking the ultimate risk like that?
28:41Especially in a kind of a commercial arrangement.
28:45They're paying passengers.
28:47So, to confirm, to become a mission specialist, did you pay Ocean Gate any money?
28:57I did.
28:59As a mission specialist, were you part of the submersible crew, or were you a passenger?
29:05Well, both.
29:06I was a passenger who was given the latitude to participate in the mission.
29:13I didn't do any of the, what I would say, critical items,
29:18but certainly, you know, Titan bolts on the dome and other things that I would qualify as what we would say in a slang version, monkey work.
29:30Alfred paid a discounted price of around $200,000 to join the first expedition in 2021.
29:38He was on deck as Titan was launched for its first attempt to reach the Titanic.
29:43The dive, number 61, was abandoned at 7 meters.
29:49But as the submersible was hauled back up the ramp, another, more serious failure occurred.
29:56Did you observe the incident as the dome fell off?
30:01Yes, I did.
30:04The titanium dome, there were only four bolts in it, and they just sheared, and they exploded like bullets.
30:09Suddenly, the people inside were looking out at the ocean down a ramp, and obviously a horrifying moment.
30:17Stockton and his team had taken the decision that only four of a possible 18 bolts needed to be used to fix the titanium dome to the carbon fiber hull before a dive.
30:29The thought with the four bolts was simply that once you went to depth, I mean, you didn't need anything to hold on.
30:35The pressure was so intense that you couldn't pry it off.
30:39Stockton wanted to appropriate any pictures or videos of the occurrence.
30:43So there was a dedicated effort to hush that up.
30:48Despite witnessing that incident, Alfred remained determined to get down to the Titanic.
30:53It did not deter me because I understood that they made basically a dumb mistake, and they had corrected it.
31:00It was not a safe operation.
31:02It was an experimental vehicle.
31:03It was clear to me from Mr. Higgins' testimony that he had a very high risk tolerance, and that he felt like there was a possibility that the worst could occur.
31:16And when Alfred did get his chance to go on Titan's next dive, they were forced to abort the attempt halfway down.
31:27Anyone that went down in it either knew or should have known how risky it was.
31:32They were either embracing that reality or they were delusional.
31:36Christine Dawood lost her husband and son in the implosion.
31:48This hearing is now back in session.
31:50She watched the hearings from her home in the UK.
31:54It felt like a real crime horror film, to be honest.
31:58The strain of flying there and staying and going there would have been, I think, too much.
32:04I guess that there was an element of doubt in myself.
32:10Like, did I miss something?
32:13What could I have done differently?
32:21Oceangate celebrated reaching Titanic depths six times that summer.
32:30Stockton, emboldened by their success,
32:33was back in the North Atlantic with Titan for a second season of dives in 2022.
32:40Hi, my name is Stockton Rush.
32:42I'm the CEO and founder of Oceangate.
32:44Let's take a look at Titan.
32:46So we're coming into the sub.
32:48This is the only toilet available on a deep diving submersible.
32:53Best seat in the house.
32:54You can look out the viewport.
32:55We put a privacy screen in, turn up the music.
32:57It's very popular.
33:00We have our control screen here, our sonar screen here.
33:05This is the second year we've been out to the Titanic.
33:08We're a completely privately funded operation.
33:10And we're funded by, we call mission specialists, who help support the mission.
33:14So they take quite a bit of money.
33:15We want to document what the wreck is like now
33:17and also try to predict what it will be like in the future.
33:19Midway through the season, Antonella Wilby joined the ship as a contract crew member.
33:31She is an expert in underwater, remotely operated vehicles.
33:36From the moment I stepped onto the ship, I never forgot it.
33:40I was signing, I had to sign the liability waiver.
33:43And Stockton was there.
33:45And two, a room full of people, some of them who had paid him lots of money to be there.
33:50All I really knew was a quarter million dollar price tag.
33:53He says, the company's registered in the Bahamas and they don't do punitive damages.
33:57So don't even bother suing me.
33:58And he says this with a laugh.
34:00And I was so shocked, I wrote it down.
34:01That's a verbatim quote because I wrote it down right after this meeting
34:05because I was just shocked.
34:07I wasn't even aware the extent of how ridiculous and unsafe their operation was.
34:17Even just the level of attention to detail in inspecting the sub or pre-diving the sub.
34:23You know, I'd walk around right before a dive and just find, you know, cables that were loose or unplugged.
34:29We wouldn't send an ROV down like that.
34:30And I don't have people on an ROV.
34:34It's entirely remotely operated.
34:38How does this guy keep taking this sub down?
34:42Delusion or desperation?
34:43Someone who is so deep into this and has so many creditors at the door and has their personal reputation on the line
34:54that they have to move forward and keep forging ahead because there's no other path.
35:01Basically, it's like, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
35:06We're going to work on to talk about all these different little things.
35:09No one actually notices, wait a second, like, there's a bigger problem here.
35:14It felt like watching some really bizarre surrealist movie or something and I'm the only one going,
35:21this is insane, right?
35:27All right, good morning, everyone.
35:29Headed back to the Titanic.
35:32Right now, we did vessel checks this morning.
35:35A couple of very minor anomalies, which is great.
35:42On the morning of 15th of July, the Titan crew prepared for dive 80.
35:50Alfred was back in the hope of finally seeing the Titanic up close.
35:54It was one of those moments where you embrace the possibilities, you embrace the unknown.
36:05Platform target line, we'll get you in place.
36:07Titan is a go for a dive to the Titanic.
36:10In that moment, you're living a life trembling with joy.
36:14That's the essence of what I felt.
36:17Unlock.
36:17We're unlocked.
36:19Unlock.
36:19We're unlocked.
36:20We're unlocked, okay?
36:20Unlock.
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36:41oh my god that's it yeah yeah pretty close yeah yeah that's it that's it
37:01oh my god we're pretty close here
37:11above here oh yeah that's the final number one
37:17it's a devastating thing to look at but it's also all inspiring
37:28and and an inspirational in some ways and deeply sobering
37:36and that's where they were launching the light bulbs yeah
37:44after the dive it took two hours for Titan to return to the surface
37:50right now we're doing three knots and we're trying to get back to the sub
37:58we were ascending in the Titan we were actually fairly close to the surface as I remember
38:04and we heard a loud crack
38:06sounded like the ship breaking apart
38:13it was very loud it was very dramatic and everyone sat up and like what was that
38:19I spoke to a member of the Horizon Arctic crew about the bang that was heard
38:40because I was you know just concerned and kind of shocked that this had happened
38:45and he told me that he heard this bang he was able to hear it from the surface it must have been loud
38:51when we got to the surface Scott was piloting he heard a really loud bang
38:56not a soothing sound
38:58no
38:59but on the surface and as Tim and PH will attest almost every deep diving sub makes a noise at some point
39:06you have dissimilar shapes and metals that are expanding due to thermal interaction due to pressure changes
39:13and it's quite common to have a noise
39:16I heard that and I was just like shocked and no one else really sort of reacted and then Stockton sort of shut it down and
39:22you know just oh we'll talk about that later and you know
39:25but for me my initial reaction was like hold on you know you don't
39:29even if you heard your car make that sort of noise you'd probably stop and go wait a second we need to like see what happened here
39:35At the US Coast Guard Headquarters Lieutenant Commander Katie Williams has been studying the data from Dive 80 obtained from Oceangate
39:50This picture here is of the placements of the acoustic admission sensors on the Titan
39:57These acoustic sensors pick up and record any noise from the carbon fiber hull
40:04Ocean Gate recorded this data and they plotted it
40:08On Dive 80 this purple line was a loud bang
40:12There is this huge amplitude
40:15When they heard this loud bang there should have been all stop do not continue investigate further to make sure that that carbon fiber hull was still safe for people to operate in
40:30The data reveals that the loud noise was in fact the carbon fiber delaminating
40:38Titan's hull was beginning to break apart
40:42You don't need to be a composites expert
40:48To think okay maybe we need to step back and stop the operation until we figure out what this actually means
40:56But of course as with anything with Oceangate
40:59The response was to just go oh okay and then just keep going
41:03Their system said there has been a fundamental change in the material of your carbon fiber and it was no longer structurally sound
41:13Delamination at Dive 80 was the beginning of the end
41:17And everyone that stepped on board the Titan after Dive 80 was risking their life
41:21I've gone back and forth a lot like whether I should have done more you know whether there's some moral obligation to do more
41:33Antonella contacted the Coast Guard and volunteered to give evidence at the hearing by video link
41:39I felt like it was the right thing to do to you know share what I knew and tell that part of the story
41:45Lieutenant Commander Williams
41:47So as I understand it you were present during Dive 80 on July 15, 2022
41:51Where a loud bang was heard upon servicing
41:53Am I correct?
41:55Yes
41:57Can you please tell me in detail about what you know about that dive?
42:01Um I wanted to say something before the next dive because they were going to be diving the sub a couple days later
42:15I went to Amber Bay, the director of administration
42:21I told her I was really concerned that they were going to continue diving the sub
42:25Her initial response was yes people are concerned about you two
42:29You don't have an explorer mindset
42:31Talking about explorer mindset like this is not a mindset that you should have for doing anything
42:35I did also talk to Phil Brooks
42:37He's the director of engineering
42:39And I asked him are you going to keep diving the sub
42:41And he said yeah, we'll do the next mission
42:43And then we'll visually inspect it
42:45And I was just shocked by this
42:47I'm like you're going to continue diving it
42:49Like you don't know what's wrong
42:51And you've seen evidence that something has happened in the hull
42:53And I said something has gone really wrong here
42:59The hull itself
43:01You're not going to hurt the hull
43:03From the standpoint of the passenger safety
43:05You're going to be alive because the hull
43:07Nothing is breaching the hull
43:09It's the safest spot on the entire planet
43:11But the stuff around it can get smashed and mangled
43:13And then that can delay launches and dives and all kinds of stuff
43:17They offered to send me home and I said yes
43:19You know no one even looked at me
43:21Like I just grabbed my duffel bag and walked off the ship
43:23People wouldn't make eye contact with me
43:27After dive 80
43:29Stockton was undeterred
43:31And over the following week
43:33Titan carried passengers on three further deep dives
43:41Two and a half miles down
43:43And it's difficult
43:45That's why no one else does it
43:47After dive 80
43:49Every single time you would go down to depth
43:52You were further damaging that hull
43:54Eventually
43:55Something bad was going to happen
44:01You guys should be able to see it
44:03All right
44:04Right now they will cruise around the bow
44:06And they'll spend about two hours on that
44:08And then they'll come up
44:09Taking about two and a half hours to get to the circles
44:10Okay
44:11Next up Titanic
44:12Titan reports on bottom
44:14The unique thing that we're doing here
44:16And we're in a unique spot
44:17Where a site where so many people pass away
44:19There are a lot of parallels
44:20That was a ship that was
44:21You know more the finer ships of its day
44:22And I think we have a sub
44:23It's one of the finer subs
44:24We want to make sure we do things safely
44:25And have a good outcome
44:26And are able to take people down to the wreck
44:28For many years to come
44:29I think he painted himself in a corner
44:44And if he admits defeat and failure
44:47And then has to tell this to the people that had given him so much money
44:51What's the rest of his life look like?
45:01There's no possible way that Stockton didn't know how this was going to end
45:05It was just a matter of is it going to fail with me in it or with other people
45:11It was obvious that it was going to fail in some way
45:14This arrogance of the people in charge
45:22When they think they're above everything
45:25That really gets to me
45:29Like why is ego and arrogance more important than safety?
45:36The irony is not lost on me that the Titanic sunk for exactly the same reason
45:43In May 2023, Stockton and the Ocean Gate team brought Titan back to the North Atlantic for its third season
45:54For the first few weeks, poor conditions meant four dives were cancelled or aborted
46:00Then, one morning, the weather finally broke
46:06It was a perfect day for diving
46:12The seas were calm, the wind was down
46:15What was your responsibility on that day?
46:19Basically, I did all the dive checks for the platform
46:24Stockton was the pilot
46:26He was doing all the internal checks
46:28He's like, this is great, this is great
46:31We get to dive
46:33We get to dive
46:36On board Titan with Stockton was adventurer Hamish Harding
46:42Titanic expert Paul-Henri Narjalee
46:45And Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleiman
46:51Suleiman knew nothing about it
46:54This was just his grand adventure
46:56As the same for his father
46:58Suleiman was close to the last to going in
47:02And when he came up, I grabbed him by the back of his flotation device
47:08You know, pull him and make sure he's not going to go sliding off into the water
47:13And I helped him get in
47:17I helped him get into the sub
47:20And then I said, have a good dive
47:23At 9.14 a.m. local, according to the Polar Prince deck log
47:39The Titan disengaged, maneuvered away, and proceeded to dive with five persons aboard
47:50They're going down to see the Titanic
47:52You have this young boy, you know, who's excited
47:57His dad's excited for him
47:59The quiet, right?
48:03What questions, what conversations were they having?
48:09For the next 90 minutes, Titan descended towards the Titanic
48:16Communications continued throughout the descent
48:19There were no transmissions which indicated trouble or an emergency aboard the Titan
48:25At 10.47.33 a.m. local, the Titan was pinged for the final time
48:34With Titan just 500 meters from the ocean floor, all communication was lost
48:39Recently retrieved video from the support ship cameras has allowed the Coast Guard to see that moment for the first time
48:51Okay, so what you're going to see is Miss Rush, as she is on the comms and tracking
49:00She leads that team, right?
49:01Yes
49:02You will hear a noise that is external to the ship
49:04Okay
49:05Or external to the room, I should say
49:07And you will see their reaction to the noise
49:09Okay
49:10We first go
49:12Um, yeah, yeah
49:14It should be about 500 meters
49:18What was that like?
49:25So at that point you said, what was that bang?
49:27What was that bang?
49:28I'm going to back up and play it one more time
49:29It sounds like a door slamming
49:31Um, yeah, yeah
49:32It should be about 500 meters
49:40Yeah
49:41What was that bang?
49:42Now next, she's going to look at the computer and she says, drop two weights
49:48Drop two weights was the last message from the Titan up through
49:52Right
49:53The message actually comes in after they heard the noise of what could possibly have been the implosion noise
49:59Right
50:00Okay
50:01Drop two weights
50:06Right, drop two weights
50:09It appears that she thinks something happened or she senses something and then the relief once she sees drop two weights
50:16What we believe is an implosion sound came first before the computer message of drop two weights
50:24Based upon the speed at which the acoustic telemetry modem chat and the speed of actual sound
50:31That final text took several seconds to arrive on screen
50:36Longer than the sound of the implosion took to reach the ship
50:41That is, I mean, you figure it's a fatal moment, you know, all...
50:47Mm-hmm
50:48It is, it's very sovereign
50:52Seven hours after communication was lost with Titan, Oceangate notified the US Coast Guard and a four-day search began
51:06The search and rescue mission is underway after an underwater vessel used to take people to view the wreck of the Titanic went missing in the Atlantic Ocean
51:16The Canadian Coast Guard have new ships that have just arrived on scene
51:19The Horizon Arctic, a ship that can drop a remotely operated vehicle
51:23But if they find that sub, they've got a huge challenge
51:26Lifting it up out of the water, maybe from a depth of two and a half miles
51:35There's no other explanation for losing comms and tracking when they weren't yet at the bottom other than implosion
51:45They found what they were looking for
51:47It was no longer a search and rescue, but a recovery
51:57They found debris
52:06Stockton would have understood the reality of an implosion being instantaneous and painless
52:15You're talking about something happening in a fraction of a second where you're exposed to temperatures hotter than the sun
52:23And pressures more than double what's inside a scuba tank
52:28So they, you know, they didn't feel a single...
52:32It's basically the perfect painless way to die
52:35This was a moment in time when their sub was there and then it was not
52:53This is the life of my son and my husband they're talking about
52:56This is the life of Hamish and two others who died there, right?
53:02So it's...
53:04It was deeply personal
53:08I would never want anybody to go through that pain
53:11So here is a picture of the aft dome
53:25That came up, it is filled with carbon fiber, fiberglass, electronic parts
53:31As we're pulling each item out, we have to individually separate it
53:35And we placed it out onto tarps
53:40So we're sifting through and we realized what it was, the clothing material
53:47It was a portion of Mr. Rush's suit
53:51A piece of his sleeve that had survived
53:54No, not the whole suit, just that
53:56And inside of the sleeve of it was ink pen, business cards, and stickers for the Titanic
54:16My belief with the dead is just leave them alone
54:20Same goes for Stockton
54:21I wish he was here right now and I would smack him one, you know
54:30It does no good to speak ill of the dead, you know, it's...
54:41Their voices are still in the house
54:43Their memories are in the house
54:45I think I will never be the same person, ever
54:55I don't think that anybody who goes through loss and such a trauma can ever be the same
55:04As the US Coast Guard investigation draws to a close, Christine has to face their conclusion
55:10It doesn't change the fact that they are dead
55:15No matter what the investigation is, the rooms are still empty
55:21They're not going to come back, they're never going to come back
55:25So, do I need to know exactly what happened in order to come to terms with these empty rooms?
55:31Or not? And I don't know the answer yet
55:34It's a process
55:48After almost two years investigating the tragedy
55:51The Marine Board of Investigation reviews the findings
55:53Which will eventually inform their report and recommendations
55:58Ocean Gate gave this idea that they were safe
56:03But when you look at all of the things that Ocean Gate bypassed and didn't do
56:08Safety was not their priority, it was a monetary gain
56:11It was arrogant and he felt that his way was the only way and the best way
56:15And I mean, I don't know why he felt that way, but he did
56:17Five people perished because of it
56:22There were so many opportunities for Stockton to stop this operation from happening
56:28And he always chose to continue the operation
56:32Instead of thinking about it from a safety perspective
56:36With regards to the actions and the inactions of Mr. Rush
56:40Continued failures to properly inspect the hall
56:44Failures to properly identify risks and risk mismanagement
56:50So many steps and so many failures that got to where this happened
56:54So really what we have here is not an accident
56:57It's a potential crime
57:01He knew the risks he was taking with that carbon fiber haul
57:04And with the Titan
57:06But he didn't tell anybody else about those risks
57:08Because he had to make the money
57:09Because he had to make the money
57:15When people are doing things like spending a quarter million dollars
57:19In a death tube controlled by a game controller
57:24That wasn't tested by a guy that's telling you
57:27How he wants to be remembered for breaking rules
57:30It's a message to the super wealthy, the oligarchy, if you will, that your money can't buy everything
57:39If you want to be an explorer, an inventor, an innovator, that's awesome
57:46But when you start inviting the public, when you bring a kid into this thing you've invented
57:55You have a responsibility at that point to be totally forthright about what it is that you're offering
58:02We all know who the culprit is
58:07It's not changing anything, does it?
58:13The culprit died with them, right?
58:17So...
58:19Who am I to blame?
58:20No problem
58:50MUSIC PLAYS
59:20MUSIC CONTINUES
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