10 Disturbing Revelations About the OceanGate Titan Disaster

10 Disturbing Revelations About the OceanGate Disaster

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today were looking at the most shocking things weve learned about the OceanGate Titan implosion since it happened in June, 2023.

The Logitech Controller

This was one of the first things the public found out about the submersible when it initially disappeared on June 18th. You can clearly see the controller, a Logitech F710, in a lot of the promotional and news coverage of the sub before the disaster, though its been modified. To the wider public, this was emblematic of janky engineering and cost-cutting  but its not as alarming as it seems. Its actually very normal for video game controllers to be used for applications like this and wasnt the part of the design that raised red flags for anybody knowledgeable about underwater vehicles. Despite this, the lawsuit from Paul-Henri Nargeolets family suing OceanGate for wrongful death has cited the controller.

Waiver

As we just said, Nargeolets family is suing OceanGate for wrongful death, despite the fact everybody on board was made to sign an extensive waiver that acknowledged they could die in a variety of ways. The waiver reads: any failure of the vessel while I am aboard could cause severe injury or death, among other things. Lawsuits are ongoing, but it seems like the waiver could itself be waived if its proven in court that there was gross negligence, and not enough was done to mitigate the risks of going aboard Titan. Investigations are also still continuing, but as well talk about later, OceanGate was warned many times about the subs dangers. This four-page document may not be enough to protect the company in court.

Salvage

It is undeniable that corners were cut during the manufacturing of Titan, and nothing shows that more clearly than CEO Stockton Rushs insistence that they use salvage. In 2021, following 50 dives, the hull became damaged and a new one was required. But rather than build from scratch, Rush made them reuse the salvage from the previous one. It seems doubtful that any other organization would have done something like this; you certainly wouldnt expect an aeronautics company to salvage and then reuse parts of a plane that had crashed. Titan had also received damage already during an incident where its batteries had failed, making it even more dangerous to use.

Personal Insult

In 2018, over five years before the subs implosion, a deep sea specialist named Rob McCallum had warned Stockton Rush about the sub. These email exchanges were made public by the BBC over in the UK, and reveal that McCallum gave extensive and detailed criticisms and warnings about the safety of Titan. Rushs responses, however, were frightening. He said, and we quote: We have heard the baseless cries of you are going to kill someone way too often. I take this as a serious personal insult, end quote. McCallum spent years trying to persuade OceanGate to test the submersible properly, while Rush insisted that he didnt need to because doing so would stifle innovation.

The Whistleblower

Like Rob McCallum, David Lochridge was another person who warned Rush early except that Lochridge actually worked for the company as its director of marine operations. Also in 2018, but before McCallum got involved, Lochridge sent Rush a list of over two-dozen flaws with Titan, refusing to approve it for further testing. Rushs response was to fire Lochridge, who went on to blow the whistle on OceanGate to regulators  only to then get sued by Rush and forced sign an NDA. In the aftermath of the disaster, all of this came to light. Without Lochridge, crewed testing of Titan went ahead, and it eventually if temporarily  succeeded at becoming a commercial endeavor.

No Classification

There were still more experts who contacted Rush to warn him, including a large group of members of the Marine Technology Society, an organization of industry professionals. They were extremely concerned about Rushs refusal to get Titan classified by any regulatory body, with Rush instead coming up with his own way to classify Titan  by having one expert observe a dive and say, based on that alone, whether it was safe. OceanGate also refused to validate its designs to withstand pressure. Finally, Mark Negley, who worked for Boeing and had briefly helped Rush with designing Titan, also warned him that there was a, quote, high risk of significant failure. All of this was also in 2018, years before the fatal disaster.

Carbon Fiber

It wasnt the Logitech controller horrifying engineers in the wake of the implosion, but the news that the hull of Titan was made of carbon fiber. Stockton Rushs justification for using a carbon fiber composite was that its used in planes and works fine there, but planes are pressurized from the inside-out, and also dont need to withstand the pressure of the ocean 4000 metres deep. In 2022, a year before the incident, there was a loud acoustic event during Titans ascension, which was eventually determined to have been the carbon fiber hull delaminating. Essentially, this means its already come apart inside, and is just waiting to collapse completely, which is exactly what happened the following year.

Note: Used metres instead of converting to feet because thats what all the other sources use and is the industry standard here.

The Alarm

One of the most chilling details about Titan was its RTM, real-time monitoring system. According to OceanGate, this would pick up a sound like the loud acoustic event in 2022 that indicated delamination had happened, and the sub would then be able to ascend. But as we later found out, this alarm would only sound moments, perhaps even less than a second, before a catastrophic implosion, giving nobody in the sub time to react  let alone time to reach the surface, which takes hours from the Titanic wreck. We may never know for sure whether any of the passengers had time to process what was about to happen before it did.

James Cameron Speaks Out

One person whos talked frequently about the disaster is world-famous director James Cameron, also known for his extensive interest in ocean exploration, particularly the wreck of the Titanic. Cameron was all over the news in the aftermath talking about OceanGate and Stockton Rush, explaining that unlike Rush, hes always taken regulations and safety rules extremely seriously, as do most people working in the field. Cameron himself has been to the Titanic over thirty times. He also said that he and other people in the community realized extremely early into the disappearance that an implosion had almost certainly already happened.

Wendy Rush Heard the Implosion

We know now that the Navy had tracked the implosion when it happened, but, according to James Cameron, the US Coast Guard was unable to investigate because it didnt actually have any remote operated vehicles on hand. But it wasnt just the Navy that heard it. In 2024, footage was released showing Wendy Rush, Stocktons widow, monitoring the sub from the surface. Its hard to hear, but theres a small sound, and she reacts by asking the people around her what it was. Unbeknownst to everybody, that was the exact moment the submarine imploded, all of it happening in less than a second.

Let us know if youll be watching Netflixs documentary about the Titan implosion.