Pieces of the doomed Titanic tourist submarine are being brought ashore, seen for the first time since the "catastrophic" implosion that destroyed it.
The Titan submersible went missing earlier this month, prompting a major search before debris from the vessel was eventually recovered.
Pictures showed the pieces being unloaded from the US Coast Guard ship Sycamore and Horizon Arctic at the Canadian Coast Guard pier in St John's, Newfoundland. It is now set to be pieced together 'like a jigsaw' by British officials.
A debris field was found by the Coast Guard last week around 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic.
All five people onboard the submersible were killed after it suddenly lost contact with its surface ship. Their families now have the chance to see the clear damage that was caused.
Once the Horizon Arctic had docked, the debris was quickly covered in large tarpaulins before being lifted by cranes onto waiting trucks.
The pieces included a large, white section of curved metal appearing to show the outer casing of the 21-ft Titan submersible.
Another piece showed cables, the vessel’s onboard computers and other mechanical parts. A large circular part of the Titan, which appeared to be the dome-shaped front section, was also retrieved.
One of the five killed was Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate, the company that owned the vessel.
The four other victims consisted of three British citizens including billionaire Hamish Harding. Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood were also onboard along with French national and renowned diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
The investigation
In the wake of the horror incident, US maritime officials said they will issue a report aimed at improving the safety of submersibles worldwide.
Authorities are still trying to sort out what agency or agencies are responsible for determining the cause of the tragedy, which happened in international waters.
Captain Jason Neubauer of the US Coast Guard, said the British agency, the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch, is helping its counterparts in North America.
All precautions are being taken, Neubauer added, in case the bodies of the victims are found on the sea floor.
A coastguard source from St John’s in Newfoundland, from where the ill-fated adventurers set off on June 16, told the Mirror the debris will now be pieced back together.
He said: "To gain the greatest understanding of the implosion, investigators will now forensically piece together the Titan as best they can."
OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the Titan, is based in the US but the submersible was registered in the Bahamas. Meanwhile, the Titan’s mother ship, the Polar Prince, was from Canada, and those killed were from England, Pakistan, France, and the US.
Investigators from the US, Canada, France and the United Kingdom are working closely together on the probe of the June 18 accident, which happened in an “unforgiving and difficult-to-access region" of the North Atlantic, said US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, of the Coast Guard First District.
The big clues for investigators are five "major pieces" of debris.
Undersea expert Paul Hankin said: “We found five different major pieces of debris that told us that it was the remains of the Titan.
“The initial thing we found was the nose cone, which was outside of the pressure hull. We then found a large debris field, within that debris field we found the front-end bell of the pressure hull.
“Shortly thereafter we found a second smaller debris field. Within that debris field we found the other end of the pressure hull. We continue to map out the debris field, and as the admiral said, we will do the best we can to fully map out what’s down there.”
"That was the first indication that there was a catastrophic event.
The USCG previously confirmed that debris found at the wreck of the Titan showed signs that a devastating loss of pressure occurred in the submersible.
In a press conference after the debris field was found, Rear Admiral John Mauger, of the First Coast Guard District, did not confirm when the vehicle became irreparably damaged but said the sonar buoys deployed by teams would have picked up an implosion.
“This was a catastrophic implosion of the vessel which would have generated a significant broadband sound down there that the sonar buoys would have picked up,” he said.
He added: "The debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber."
Officials confirmed that Titan's debris field was found only 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic.
Carl Hartsville of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said the location wreckage was found was "consistent with the last location of communication for an implosion in the water column."
Hartsville, who believes all of the debris has been found, continued: "The size of the debris field is consistent with that implosion in the after column." He added the area was a place where "there is not any debris of Titanic."
The debris was located by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) named 'Odysseus' on Thursday last week.
The search took place in a complex ocean environment where the Gulf Stream meets the Labrador Current, an area where challenging and hard-to-predict ocean currents can make controlling an underwater vehicle more difficult, said Donald Murphy, an oceanographer who served as chief scientist of the Coast Guard’s International Ice Patrol.
Hartsfield, however, has since said he doesn't expect currents to be a problem, based on the data he's reviewed and the performance of the remote vehicles so far.
Safety
Significant questions over the safety of the submersible remain.
Rob McCallum said he told Rush that the Titan submersible was a risk until it had been classified by an independent body.
McCallum, a consultant for OceanGate when the company started in 2009, was threatened with legal action by Ocean Gate's lawyer.
In an email seen by the BBC, McCallum told Rush: "I think you are potentially placing yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic.
Rush told McCallum that he took the doubts over Titan's safety as a "serious personal insult".
We have heard the baseless cries of 'you are going to kill someone' way too often," he wrote.
McCallum said he urged OceanGate repeatedly to get some form of independent accreditation, the world of deep-sea exploration is not well-regulated and Rush had previously complained that any existing regulations were restrictive.
The Titan operated in international waters, far from the reach of many laws of the United States or other nations. It wasn’t registered as a US vessel or with international agencies that regulate safety, nor was it classified by a maritime industry group that sets standards on matters such as hull construction.
In a re-surfaced podcast with CBS, Rush talked about the submersible vessel he claims safety is a "pure waste".
In an interview in November 2022, he said: "You know, at some point, safety is just a pure waste. I mean, if you just want to be safe, don't get out of bed, don't get in your car, don't do anything."
Guillermo Sohnlein, co-founder of OceanGate Expeditions, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that Titan had undergone 14 years of "rigorous" and "robust" checks during development.
The victims
The recovery of Titan brings another landmark in life after the event for the devastated families of the victims.
Experts say wrongful death and negligence lawsuits are also likely next in the Titan case — and they could be successful. But legal actions will face various challenges, including waivers likely signed by the Titan passengers that warned of the myriad ways they could die.
The Dawood family
Shahzada Dawood's widow, Christina Dawood, was on board a support vessel on June 18 when she got word that communications with the Titan submersible had been lost during its voyage to the ocean floor.
She said when young Suleman was born, her husband was happy like other fathers but “when he held his son for the first time, I just knew these two belong together,” the wife and mother said. She sensed then that he had “found a long-lost companion for his adventures to come.”
Alina Dawood, Suleman's sister, said she refused to believe her father and brother had passed away.
Christina said her daughter, 17, "Didn't lose hope until the call with the Coast Guard. When they basically informed us that they found debris."
Suleman was "terrified" of going down in the submersible, but hoped to please his father on Father's Day weekend. Shahzada has a big passion for the Titanic, according to his older sister Azmeh.
Azmeh told NBC News: "The thought of a 19-year-old trapped in that was just next level, because you know the other crew members were older, they were there of their own interests.
"But Suleman was just there for a Father’s Day bonding experience, and to be honest, as terrible as it sounds, at least knowing that they wouldn’t have had time to know, they would’ve just been sat there enjoying themselves then suddenly boom, and it was over ... to know that my Sule didn’t feel a moment of pain. That his brain didn't even realise..."
She continued: "The thing about Suleman, is that he had a sense about things, and he had a sense that this was not, that this was not okay. He was not very comfortable about doing it.
The Nargeolet family
Sidonie Nargeolet, the 39-year-old daughter of French explorer Paul-Henri, said before her father was publicly confirmed dead that he will have died doing what he "loved doing.
She said: "If they are not found, it will be very sad for us because we will not see him again.
"What he liked the most was to be in a submarine, (near) the Titanic. He is where he really loved being. I would prefer him (dying) at a place where he is very happy."
Nargeolet was a renowned diver with over 20 years of experience in the French Navy.
Another Titanic obsessive, he led several expeditions to the ship and was the first to recover a silver plate from the wreck site.
The Harding family
Billionaire Hamish Harding leaves behind his wife Linda, two sons Roy and Giles, stepdaughter Lauren and stepson Brian Szasz.
Szasz made waves on social media amid the ongoing search for attending a Blink-182 concert, arguing with Cardi B and telling an OnlyFans model she should "sit" on him.
Harding's friend Victor Vescovo told him he "shouldn’t get in that damn sub."
"I had told Hamish my significant concerns about OceanGate's design and the safety and their operations," he said.
"I think he probably thought about it when diving with me, but then he convinced himself they were improving and maybe that people like me were too conservative or that it was worth the risk.
"He decided to roll the dice. I was surprised Hamish went. He texted me from the ship saying ‘I’m going down tomorrow to Titanic’.
"The attitude I had was ‘OK, I've said my piece ... that was the last text.’"
