Latest news with #HamishHarding
Daily Mirror
3 days ago
- General
- Daily Mirror
The surprising everyday item that survived the OceanGate sub implosion
The Titan suffered a catastrophic implosion in June 2023, which killed all five of the passengers on board - but a few suprising items survived the horrorific incident While sifting through the remains of the ill-fated OceanGate Titan submersible the US Coast Guard recovered a surprising item that was still intact. The Titan submersible, a carbon fiber and titanium vessel The Titan sub offered people a chance to glimpse the Titanic's legendary resting place since 2021. But beneath its futuristic promise lay growing concerns over the vessel's unconventional design and safety features. The Titan suffered a catastrophic implosion in June 2023, which killed all five of the passengers on board. Those inside the sub at the time were OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, 61, British businessman Hamish Harding, 58, former French navy diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman, 19. It is reported that in one moment, those onboard the Polar Prince actually heard the Titan implode - unknowingly. The wife of CEO Stockton Rush, Wendy Rush, was filmed asking innocently, "What was that bang?" In the days following the disappearance, an international search and rescue mission captured global attention. A faint banging noise detected by sonar had sparked hope, with families clinging to the possibility the crew was still alive. But that hope soon faded. The wreckage was found just 330 yards from the Titanic's bow, confirming that the Titan had imploded and there were no survivors. Once recovered and drained of water officials were then able to take a closer look at the remains which included carbon fiber, fiberglass, electronic parts - only to discover a still intact sleeve of Stockton Rush's suit. In the video, posted to TikTok by Discovery, a member of the US Coast Guard broke down the process of sorting through the remains. Investigators recovered various items, including a pen, business cards, Titanic-themed stickers, clothing remnants and human remains. The recovered artifacts have been cataloged by the Coast Guard's Marine Board of Investigation. The survival of any item in such conditions was unexpected, but the ink pen's intact state stunned investigators. A Coast Guard official said: "Each one of those pieces, even the pen, was still intact. It hadn't been broken. All of this debris, all of these things shattered but his pen was still intact," reports MailOnline. They added: "We were all just kind of getting all-hands-in and separating what needed to be considered as human remains and what was just other wreckage pieces. As we were pulling it apart that is how we realized it was Mr. Rush's clothing. It was a piece of his sleeve that survived, not the whole suit, just that. Inside of the sleeve of it was the ink pen, business cards and stickers for the Titanic and there was nothing else but that." The MBI continues to examine recovered debris.
Toronto Sun
4 days ago
- General
- Toronto Sun
'WHAT WAS THAT BANG?': Titan submersible's implosion can be heard in new video
Published May 27, 2025 • 1 minute read This undated image courtesy of OceanGate Expeditions, shows their Titan submersible beginning a descent. The US Coast Guard on September 16, 2024, began a hearing over the implosion of the privately owned Titan submersible that killed five people on a journey to the Titanic last year. The two-week hearing into the catastrophe will feature evidence as to what went wrong and whether physical or design failure contributed to the accident, which garnered worldwide attention. Photo by HANDOUT / OceanGate Expeditions/AFP via Ge CONCORD, N.H. — U.S. Coast Guard officials investigating the disappearance of an experimental submersible on its way to the Titanic wreckage in 2023 have released video recorded aboard its support ship from the moment the sound of its implosion reached the ocean's surface. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account The Titan vanished June 18, 2023, on its way to the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean, setting off a five-day search that ended with authorities saying all five passengers had died when the vessel imploded. On board were Stockton Rush, CEO of the company that built the Titan, along with British explorer Hamish Harding, veteran French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman. The implosion sparked international debate about the future of private deep-sea travel and an ongoing Coast Guard investigation. After holding public hearings in September, the Coast Guard last week released a two-and-a-half minute video showing Rush's wife, Wendy Rush, and an OceanGate employee monitoring the submersible's descent from the Polar Prince support ship. The video shows Wendy Rush and Gary Foss sitting in front of a computer. After a faint sound like a closing door, Rush asks, 'What was that bang?' The Coast Guard says it believes it was the sound of the Titan's implosion reaching the surface of the ocean. About 2 minutes later, Foss says, 'We've lost tracking.' Concerns were raised after the implosion because of the Titan's unconventional design and its creator's refusal to submit to independent safety checks. OceanGate suspended operations in July 2023. Olympics Music Canada Columnists Relationships
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Who was Stockton Rush as BBC airs Titanic Sub Disaster documentary?
A BBC documentary on the Titan submersible implosion will be broadcast on Tuesday evening. The programme, Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, was given unprecedented access to the investigation into why the sub imploded during a dive to the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean on 18 June 2023. All five people on board tourist and expedition company OceanGate's craft were killed - British adventurer Hamish Harding, 58; British businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son Suleman; French deep-sea explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet and OceanGate chief executive Stockton Rush, 61. The ongoing investigation into the disaster by the US coast guard has centred on whether Rush ignored repeated safety warnings and near-misses involving Titan before its final fateful dive. Born Richard Stockton Rush III into a wealthy San Francisco family in 1962, Rush was a descendant of two men who signed the US Declaration of Independence. As a child, Rush talked about becoming an astronaut and wanted to be the first person on Mars. At the age of 12 he started scuba diving and became a commercial pilot when he was 18. In 1984, Rush completed a degree in aerospace engineering at Princeton University, followed by an MBA at Berkeley in California. Rush worked briefly as a flight-test engineer for the F-15 programme, then went on to manage a company specialising in remote control technology. By 2007, he had the idea of starting his own submarine company and co-founded OceanGate two years later. In a speech to the Explorers Club in New York in 2017, shown in the BBC documentary, Rush said: "I wanted to be an astronaut. That's why I got an engineering degree. I watched Star Trek, Star Wars, and I wasn't going to get to Jupiter or Mars but I did realise that all the cool stuff that I thought was out there is actually underwater. "The goal was where do you want to go in the ocean? Where is the most known site in the ocean? And it's clearly the Titanic." The BBC documentary shows the US Coast Guard's Titan Submersible Marine Board of Investigation trying to piece together what happened in the run-up to the submersible's implosion in June 2023. Rush insisted on using carbon fibre for the hull of Titan instead of titanium, something questioned by engineering experts because it was an untested material for deep dives. In 2019, OceanGate tested Titan in deep waters in the Bahamas, but after its 47th ever dive, submersible pilot Karl Stanley warned Rush that noises made by the hull meant it was no longer safe. Stanley emailed Rush and described "an area of the hull that is breaking down/getting spongy". Shortly afterwards, a pre-dive inspection of the hull found a crack in the carbon fibre, where layers of the material had begun to come apart, a process known as delamination. The damage meant the hull had to be replaced, but when this was done by Rush the following year, he again used carbon fibre. And when Titan was relaunched at the beginning of 2021, OceanGate disregarded US guidelines for carrying passengers and did not register their operation. Rush tried to justify this at a GeekWire summit in 2022, saying: "When you're outside the box, it's really hard to tell how far outside the box you really are. And we were pretty far out there." Rush and Titan had been scheduled to be the subjects of a Discovery Channel documentary, but TV presenter Josh Gates told the BBC documentary he pulled out of the project after the OceanGate chief played him audio of bangs from a previous dive. "It wasn't just a red flag for me, it was like a flare had gone up," said Gates. He said he called the president of his TV network and said: "We shouldn't do this. This is a mistake. Something bad is going to happen here." Adventurer and businessman Alfred Hagen, who had paid $200,000 in 2021 to try to reach the Titanic wreck on board Titan, was part of Dive 61, which was abandoned at 7m. After it was back above the surface, the submersible's titanium dome fell off. Hagen did get to see the Titanic on board Dive 80, on 15 July 2022, but while ascending there was a loud crack, which later turned out to be the carbon fibre delaminating and the hull started to break apart. This mean any subsequent expedition in the submersible was extremely dangerous. On 18 June 2023, OceanGate launched Dive 88, piloted by Rush, who was accompanied by Harding, Dawood and his son, and Nargeolet. All communication was lost with the submersible about 500m from the ocean floor, and recently retrieved footage from the support ship was shown to US Coast Guard investigators as part of the BBC documentary. It is believed it features the moment that Titan imploded. In the clip, Rush's wife, Wendy, OceanGate's head of communications, hears a sound on a monitor while sitting on the support ship. After the noise, described as "like a door slamming" by investigators, Mrs Rush asks colleagues: "What was that bang?" Wreckage from the submersible was recovered from the ocean floor near the Titanic after days of searching. The findings of the US Coast Guard are expected to be published later this year. No criminal charges have been brought involving Titan's implosion, but Rush has been widely criticised since the disaster. When the hearings opened last September, OceanGate's former operations director David Lochridge testified he believed an incident was "inevitable" and that the company "bypassed" safety rules. He said he warned the firm of safety issues but was ignored before he was sacked in 2018. The hearings were also told that Rush said in a 2018 meeting: "This is one of the safest things I will ever do. I'm not dying. No one is dying under my watch - period.' Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster is available on iPlayer and will be broadcast on BBC2 at 9pm on Tuesday.
Mint
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Mint
Titan The OceanGate Disaster: How to watch Netflix's gripping new documentary on the fatal 2023 deep-sea implosion
Nearly two years after the catastrophic implosion of the Titan submersible shocked the world, Netflix is releasing a sobering new documentary examining the ambition, controversy, and devastating consequences behind the deep-sea voyage that ended in tragedy. Titled 'Titan: The OceanGate Disaster', the feature-length documentary is set to premiere globally on June 11— just one week shy of the second anniversary of the incident that claimed five lives during a mission to explore the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic. The documentary film shines a harsh light on OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and his relentless pursuit of technological glory. On June 18 2023, the Titan submersible lost contact with its surface vessel less than two hours after submerging. Aboard were Stockton Rush himself, British billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, renowned French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood alongside his 19-year-old son, Suleman. Debris from the vessel was later found scattered on the ocean floor, confirming what experts now describe as a "catastrophic implosion." While the U.S. Coast Guard continues its investigation into the exact cause of the failure, early scrutiny focused on OceanGate's repeated defiance of conventional safety standards. Engineers and marine professionals had reportedly raised alarms over the carbon fibre hull and experimental construction methods long before the tragedy occurred. The documentary film will also examine the cultural obsession with exploration and extreme tourism, questioning whether the pursuit of greatness at any cost is worth the gamble.
The Sun
6 days ago
- The Sun
Doomed Titan submarine boss Stockton Rush was ‘psychopath' who ‘wanted fame' & it was a ‘certainty' vessel would implode
THE BOSS of the doomed Titan submarine has been labelled a "psychopath" who was desperate for fame by ex-OceanGate employees. Stockton Rush, 61, who died in the June 2023 disaster, had accused those who tried to raise safety concerns on the doomed sub of trying to stop innovation. 10 10 10 10 10 Brit Hamish Harding, 58, father and son duo Shahzada, 48, and Suleman Dawood, 19, and French national Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, also sadly died in the horror incident. A frantic search that captured the world's attention was sparked after contact was lost with the sub. While there was hope that the passengers might be found alive, it was later confirmed the vessel had imploded - killing all on board. A new bombshell Netflix documentary has revealed the events that unfolded in the run-up to the tragic 2023 incident, with those who knew the expedition company and its billionaire boss Rush sharing inside information on OceanGate. In 2018, OceanGate's then chief pilot David Lochridge was fired after his inspection report laid bare a series of safety risks. He has said that he believed Rush "wanted fame" to "fuel his ego". And a former engineering director at the firm Tony Nissen described the CEO as being "a borderline psychopath". Another ex-colleague to Rush, Bonnie Carl, also revealed a bizarre interaction she had with the OceanGate boss as she worked as a human resources and finance director at the firm. She recalled her reaction after Rush randomly announced she would be the company's next sub pilot. Carl said: "Are you nuts? I'm an accountant." 'What's that bang?' Chilling moment sound of doomed Titan sub imploding heard from support ship And despite there apparently being "no way of knowing" when the Titan would fail, there was "a mathematical certainty" that it would happen, another interviewee said. Rob McCallum, who has led seven dives to the Titanic, told The Sun last June that the tragedy was "unavoidable" as OceanGate received repeated warnings their sub wasn't safe. Titan was never certified or classed, and McCallum implored Rush to let an independent agency test his vessel. McCallum said the businessman refused to listen, however, and simply brushed aside warnings. He told The Sun: "I run an expedition company that had delivered over 1,500 expeditions - we are not cavalier, we manage risk as far as we can. "So when OceanGate say things like exploration involves risk, yes it does, but that doesn't give you carte blanche to ignore obvious danger." Rush accused those trying to raise safety concerns of trying to stop innovation. 10 10 10 10 10 The engineer, who co-founded OceanGate in 2009, created Titan with an experimental design made up of a carbon-fiber pod with titanium rings bolted on. McCallum, who founded expedition company EYOS, said carbon fiber material is not fit for submerging so deep underwater. But McCallum's warning that carbon fiber would not withstand such pressure, Rush informed him he was "going to carry on regardless". "He had a counter view, he figured he was being innovative," McCallum added. Rush had previously taken the sub down to sea off the Bahamas during testing four years earlier. Just days ago, a haunting video was obtained by the BBC and presented to the US Coast Guard's Marine Board of Investigation. It shows Wendy Rush – wife of Rush – staring at a computer used to receive messages from the Titan when a deep metallic thud rings out. Wendy, visibly startled, freezes before glancing up and asking the crew: 'What was that bang?' Seconds later, a message arrives from the sub: 'dropped two wts' – a reference to the Titan shedding weights to control its dive. But the timing of the message was tragically misleading. According to investigators, the sub had already imploded. The sound reached the surface faster than the delayed text, giving the false impression all was well. All five people onboard were killed instantly when the vessel collapsed under immense pressure at a depth of around 3,300m – just 90 minutes into the £195,000-a-head journey. Meanwhile, earlier this year, a 20-second audio clip recorded 900 miles from the implosion site emerged, capturing what experts believe was the actual moment the Titan was crushed. The eerie recording revealed the 'acoustic signature' of the vessel's final seconds. Rescue hopes were initially high when Titan vanished from sonar on June 18, 2023. But days later, its shattered remains were discovered scattered across the ocean floor – an area the size of six football pitches. How the Titan tragedy unfolded By Katie Davis, Chief Foreign Reporter (Digital) FIVE men plunged beneath the surface of the North Atlantic in a homemade sub in a bid to explore the Titanic wreckage. Four passengers paid £195,000 each to go on the sub, with the fifth member of the trip being a crew member. But what was supposed to be a short trip spiralled into days of agony as the doomed Titan vanished without a trace on June 18, 2023. The daring mission had been months in the making - and almost didn't happen at the hands of harsh weather conditions in Newfoundland, Canada. In a now chilling Facebook post, passenger Hamish Harding wrote: "Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023. "A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow." It would be his final Facebook post. The following morning, he and four others - led by Stockton Rush - began the 12,5000ft descent towards the bottom of the Atlantic. But as it made its way down into the depths, the vessel lost all contact with its mother ship on the surface, the Polar Prince. It sparked a frantic four-day search for signs of life, with the hunt gripping the entire world. There was hope that by some miracle, the crew was alive and desperately waiting to be saved. But that sparked fears rescue teams faced a race against time as the passengers only had a 96-hour oxygen supply when they set out, which would be quickly dwindling. Then, when audio of banging sounds was detected under the water, it inspired hope that the victims were trapped and signalling to be rescued. It heartbreakingly turned out that the banging noises were likely either ocean noises or from other search ships, the US Navy determined. Countries around the world deployed their resources to aid the search, and within days the Odysseus remote-operated vehicle (ROV) was sent down to where the ghostly wreck of the Titanic sits. The plan was for the ROV to hook onto the sub and bring it up 10,000ft, where it would meet another ROV before heading to the surface. But any hopes of a phenomenal rescue were dashed when Odysseus came across a piece of debris from the sub around 1,600ft from the Titanic. The rescue mission tragically turned into a salvage task, and the heartbroken families of those on board were told the devastating news. It was confirmed by the US Coast Guard that the sub had suffered a "catastrophic implosion".
