A submarine expert has revealed that the five people onboard the OceanGate submersible were likely aware of their fate for about a minute before their death.
José Luis Martín, a Spanish engineer and underwater expert, suggested that the submarine was likely freefalling for between 48 and 71 seconds before it imploded — and that the passengers onboard were aware of their impending death as the submarine fell.
“During the controlled immersion of the Titan, there must have been an electrical fault, which left the craft without thrust,” Martín told the Spanish news outlet NIUS, according to news.com.au.
“Without thrust, the weight of the passengers and the pilot (about 400 kilograms), which was focused on the front end close to the viewport, would have disrupted the Titan’s longitudinal stability.”
“At this point, the submersible begins to fall headlong towards the sea floor, and with control and safety functions damaged, it can no longer be manoeuvred,” Martín suggested.
Because the pilot couldn’t activate an emergency level to drop weights and return them to the surface, the expert said that the submarine then fell “like an arrow vertically”.
“The Titan changes position and falls like an arrow vertically because the 400kg of passengers that were at the porthole unbalance the submersible,” he said.
“Everyone rushes and crowds on top of each other. Imagine the horror, the fear, and the agony. It had to be like a horror movie.”
The expert believes everything happened between a 48 to 71 second window, where the submarine free-fell.
Horrible shit, really.
“In that period of time, they are realising everything,” he said. “And what’s more, in complete darkness. It’s difficult to get an idea of what they experienced in those moments.”
Martín said that as the submarine fell to the depths of the ocean, the hull would have experienced a sudden increase in underwater pressure, which led to a “powerful compression” of the submarine’s hull. This rapid contraction of the hull led to a “micro-fissure and implosion”.
“After those 48 seconds, or one minute, the implosion and instantaneous sudden death occurs,” the expert concluded.
Family members have also shared details about their loved one’s final moments
Family members of the passengers aboard the doomed Titan submersible have also shared details about their final moments with their loved ones aboard the sub before it imploded.
The passengers aboard the sub likely spent their final moments in total darkness looking out at eerie bioluminescent creatures floating by and listening to their favourite music which sounds better than some of the theories that were being touted about online about how grim the situation in the sub would’ve been.
The new details about the passengers’ last moments alive surfaced as the wife and mother of fated father-son duo Shahzada and Suleman Dawood spoke to the New York Times about how the trip had been a culmination of the family’s obsession with the 111-year-old wreckage, which first began when they visited a Titanic exhibit in Singapore in 2012.
The Dawoods’ Titanic fever only grew after a 2019 trip to Greenland — where they became intrigued by glaciers that sheathed into icebergs, which are the exact same ocean hazard that took out the Titanic in 1912, the New York Post reports.
Christine said she then came across an OceanGate ad offering trips down to the wreckage aboard the Titan submersible.
She was initially supposed to accompany her billionaire husband on the voyage, but their 19-year-old son ended up taking her place. Suleman replaced his mum because the couple’s original excursion was delayed by the pandemic, and by the time it rolled around, he was old enough to go.
Christine also revealed that her husband and son nearly didn’t make the disastrous trip 3800 metres below the ocean’s surface when their flight to St. John’s, Newfoundland (which is where the mothership — Polar Prince —was located) was cancelled and their subsequent flight delayed.
“We were actually quite worried, like, ‘Oh, my god, what if they cancel that flight as well?’” Christine told the Times.
“In hindsight, obviously, I wish they did.”
But the father-son duo made it in time, and Christine and her 17-year-old daughter, Alina, were aboard on June 18 to watch Shahzada, Suleman and three others — OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush, famed Titanic explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and British billionaire Hamish Harding — crawl into the 6.7 metre sub and disappear into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
The grieving wife and mother said her husband and son were ecstatic about the trip, which OceanGate repeatedly peddled as a chance for the tourists to be “explorers, adventurers, and citizen scientists.”
“He was like a vibrating toddler,” Christine told the Times of her son’s excitement just before he set off on the Titan sub.
As for her husband, Christine said he longed to have the same adventures as Nargeolet, a famed Titanic diver who told the family of a time where he was trapped in a sub for three days.
“‘Oh, my god, this is so cool’,” she recalled her husband saying. “He was lapping everything up. He had this big glow on his face talking about all this nerdy stuff.”
But while the family had shelled out $250,000 per person for the father and son to take the trip, their days on board the Polar Prince in the lead up to the cast-off were nothing extravagant.
Christine said the family had to sleep in bunk beds in cramped rooms, eat buffet-style meals on trays and attend back-to-back meetings every day from 7am to 7pm. In between these meetings, viewings of the James Cameron hit flick Titanic were routinely offered to passengers.
Christine said most of the meetings involved learning about the controversial sub and its safety but noted that some of the lessons flew past everyone’s head.
“That engineering side, we just had no idea,” she said. “I mean, you sit in a plane without knowing how the engine works.”
Christine is not the only one who has admitted to being puzzled by the Titan sub’s mechanism.
Bill Price, who first boarded the sub in 2021, said his trip was aborted when Titan lost its propulsion system on one side.
He told the Times that Stockton Rush could not get the vehicle’s “drop-weight mechanism” to release for ascent, so he instructed the passengers to try rocking the sub to help.
“After several rolls, we got momentum going,” Price said.
“Then, we heard a clunk, and we all collectively knew one [weight] had dropped off. So we continued to do that until the weights were all out” and the vehicle slowly rose back to the surface.
Price said that despite the issue, the crew boarded the sub again the next day and embarked on a successful visit to the Titanic shipwreck.
He also noted that among the safety lessons, one covered implosions due to pressure – the very thing that apparently happened to the sub late last month.
Price said he and other passengers were told the pressure from the ocean would be like smashing a coke can with a sledgehammer or being crushed by an elephant standing on one foot — which sounds truly horrifying.
“In a macabre way, it was reassuring,” Price said of the suggested promise that death would be instantaneous, and it’s better than the alternative I guess?
Along with the engineering lessons, Christine said the tourists on the ill-fated trip were recounted with tales of the deep by Stockton Rush.
By the time the passengers reached their launch-off spot in the middle of the ocean, Christine said she felt well assured by the “well-oiled operation” that OceanGate ran, with the crew prepping the passengers on exactly what to expect on the submersible.
Rush told passengers they should have a “low-residue diet” the day before the trip, along with no coffee the morning of. He also recommended they wear thick socks and a beanie because of the cold temperatures of the Atlantic ocean.
The passengers were warned that condensation pools might build up on the floor of the submersible, so they should avoid getting their feet wet, Christine said.
They were also told to hold their expectations until they reached the wreckage of the Titanic, as the sub’s lights would be off to conserve battery but that they could still catch sights of bioluminescent sea creatures as they descended.
The passengers were also encouraged to load their favourite songs onto the sub’s music player, as the trip can last up to four hours.
But Rush apparently told them not to load any country songs — valid IMHO.
Christine said her family’s enthusiasm never waned, even when Shahzada complained about all the equipment he had to put on before entering the Titan sub.
After saying goodbye, Christine and her daughter watched the sub set off into the Atlantic Ocean until it disappeared, travelling about a mile per hour, so slowly that no sense of motion would be felt.
“It was a good morning,” Christine recalled, adding that her giddy husband repeatedly said the day before, “I’m diving tomorrow! I’m diving tomorrow!”
When contact with the vessel was lost fewer than two hours into the two-and-a-half-hour descent, she was told such glitches were known to happen. If contact wasn’t made within the hour, the sub would drop its weights and return to the surface.
The wreckage of the sub as well as presumed human remains were pulled from the ocean last week.
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