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U.S. Rear Adm. John Mauger, the First Coast Guard District commander, speaks at a press conference at the US Coast Guard Base Boston in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 22, 2023.
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The Titan submersible imploded, killing all 5 on board, the U.S. Coast Guard says

AFP via Getty Images

The Titan submersible imploded, killing all 5 on board, the U.S. Coast Guard says

A submersible carrying five people to the Titanic imploded near the site of the shipwreck and killed everyone on board, authorities said Thursday, bringing a tragic end to a saga that included an urgent around-the-clock search and a worldwide vigil for the missing vessel.

Coast Guard officials said during a news conference that they’ve notified the families of the crew of the Titan, which had been missing since Sunday.

The sliver of hope that remained for finding the five men alive was wiped away early Thursday, when the submersible’s 96-hour supply of oxygen was expected to run out and the Coast Guard announced that debris had been found roughly 1,600 feet from the Titanic in North Atlantic waters.

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“This was a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” said Rear Adm. John Mauger, of the First Coast Guard District.

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After the submersible was reported missing Sunday, the U.S. Navy went back and analyzed its acoustic data and found an anomaly that was consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the TITAN submersible was operating when communications were lost,” a senior Navy official told The Associated Press on Thursday.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive acoustic detection system.

The Navy passed on the information to the Coast Guard, which continued its search.

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OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the submersible, said in a statement that all five people in the vessel, including CEO and pilot Stockton Rush, “have sadly been lost.”

The others on board were: two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood; British adventurer Hamish Harding; and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” OceanGate said in a statement. “We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”

OceanGate has been chronicling the Titanic’s decay and the underwater ecosystem around it via yearly voyages since 2021.

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Rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to the site of the disappearance.

Authorities were hoping underwater sounds detected Tuesday and Wednesday might help narrow their search, whose coverage area had been expanded to thousands of miles — twice the size of Connecticut and in waters 2½ miles deep.

But the Coast Guard indicated Thursday that the sounds were likely generated by something other than the Titan.

“There doesn’t appear to be any connection between the noises and the location (of the debris) on the seafloor,” Rear Adm. Mauger said.

Rear Adm. Mauger said it was too soon to say whether the implosion happened at the time of the submersible's last communication on Sunday. But it was not detected by sonar buoys used by search crews, he said, which suggests it happened before they arrived several days ago.

“We had listening devices in the water throughout and did not hear any signs of catastrophic failure from those,” he said.

The Coast Guard will continue searching near the Titanic for more clues about what happened to the Titan. Efforts to recover the submersible and the remains of the five men who died will also continue, Rear Adm. Mauger said.

The White House thanked the U.S. Coast Guard, along with Canadian, British and French partners who helped in the search and rescue efforts.

“Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives on the Titan. They have been through a harrowing ordeal over the past few days, and we are keeping them in our thoughts and prayers,” the statement said.

The Titan launched at 6 a.m. Sunday and was reported overdue Sunday afternoon about 435 miles south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, as it was on its way to where the Titanic sank more than a century ago. By Thursday, when the oxygen supply was expected to run out, there was little hope of finding the crew alive.

Questions remained about the eight hours between when the Titan lost communication with the surface and when its Canadian support vessel reported it missing to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The time delay has yet to be explained by OceanGate.

Sean Leet, head of the company that co-owns the Titan’s support ship, has refused to discuss the timeline, saying only that “all protocols were followed for the mission.”

But experts familiar with deep-sea exploration say those lost hours raise red flags.

The submersible used a rudimentary system that basically communicated with the surface ship through text message, and likely lacked an emergency radio beacon that could have floated to the surface and started beeping if there was an emergency.

The vessel had lost communication with the support ship, Canadian research icebreaker Polar Prince, during previous dives.

Broadcasters around the world started newscasts at the critical hour Thursday with news of the submersible. The Saudi-owned satellite channel Al Arabiya showed a clock on air counting down to their estimate of when the air could potentially run out.

At least 46 people successfully traveled on OceanGate’s submersible to the Titanic wreck site in 2021 and 2022, according to letters the company filed with a U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Va., that oversees matters involving the Titanic shipwreck. But questions about the submersible's safety were raised by former passengers.

One of the company’s first customers likened a dive he made to the site two years ago to a suicide mission.

“Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand. You can’t kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other,” said Arthur Loibl, a retired businessman and adventurer from Germany. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”

During the 2½-hour descent and ascent, the lights were turned off to conserve energy, he said, with the only illumination coming from a fluorescent glow stick.

The dive was repeatedly delayed to fix a problem with the battery and the balancing weights. In total, the voyage took 10½ hours.

The submersible had seven backup systems to return to the surface, including sandbags and lead pipes that drop off and an inflatable balloon.

Nicolai Roterman, a deep-sea ecologist and lecturer in marine biology at the University of Portsmouth, England, said the disappearance of the Titan highlights the dangers and unknowns of deep-sea tourism.

“Even the most reliable technology can fail, and therefore accidents will happen. With the growth in deep-sea tourism, we must expect more incidents like this.” 

First Published June 22, 2023, 4:34pm

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U.S. Rear Adm. John Mauger, the First Coast Guard District commander, speaks at a press conference at the US Coast Guard Base Boston in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 22, 2023.  (AFP via Getty Images)
The U.S. Coast Guard says a missing submersible imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five people on board. This photo combo shows from left, Shahzada Dawood, Suleman Dawood, Paul-Henry Nargeolet, Stockton Rush, and Hamish Harding.  (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Art school students give final touches to a painting depicting five people aboard a submersible named Titan, that went missing near the wreck of the Titanic, in Mumbai on June 22, 2023.  (AFP via Getty Images)
U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick, right, faces reporters as Royal Navy Lt Cdr Rich Kantharia left, looks on during a news conference, Wednesday, June 21, 2023, at Coast Guard Base Boston, in Boston.  (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
This undated image provided by OceanGate Expeditions in June 2021 shows the company's Titan submersible. Rescuers are racing against time to find the missing submersible carrying five people, who were reported overdue Sunday night.  (OceanGate Expeditions via AP)
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush emerges from the hatch atop the OceanGate submarine Cyclops 1 in the San Juan Islands, Wash., on Sept. 12, 2018.  (Alan Berner/The Seattle Times via AP)
Submersible pilot Randy Holt, right, communicates with the support boat as he and Stockton Rush, left, CEO and Co-Founder of OceanGate, dive in the company's submersible, "Antipodes," about three miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., June 28, 2013.  (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
FILE - In this image released by Action Aviation, the submersible Titan is prepared for a dive into a remote area of the Atlantic Ocean on an expedition to the Titanic on Sunday, June 18, 2023.  (Action Aviation via AP)
FILE - The U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Warren Deyampert is docked as a member of the Coast Guard walks past, Tuesday, June 20, 2023, at Coast Guard Base Boston, in Boston.  (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
The logo for an OceanGate Expeditions 2019 Titanic expedition is seen on a marine industrial warehouse office door in Everett, Wash., Tuesday, June 20, 2023.  (AP Photo/Ed Komenda)
This 2004 photo provided by the Institute for Exploration, Center for Archaeological Oceanography/University of Rhode Island/NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration, shows the remains of a coat and boots in the mud on the sea bed near the Titanic's stern.  (Institute for Exploration, Center for Archaeological Oceanography/University of Rhode Island/NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration)
AFP via Getty Images
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