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It was horrible to hear about the tragedy that befell OceanGate’s submersible craft the Titan and its five passengers, who have joined the 109-year-old ghosts of the Titanic some 2½ miles down at the bottom of the frigid Atlantic Ocean. It’s hard to imagine a worse fate.
The Titan’s “catastrophic implosion” sadly reminded me of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986, which disintegrated only 73 seconds after takeoff. I was a newbie daily newspaper reporter at the time working south of Atlanta, and I can still hear the 10 bells on the office’s soon-to-be extinct United Press International teletype machine loudly, and repeatedly, dinging that this was an emergency.
A big one.
None of us in the newsroom at the time made a sound while reading the UPI report; our breathing and the clattering of the machine typing faster than we could ever remember filled the room of a dozen desks. I felt that same sense of horror and sadness when we learned of the Titan’s final voyage, only today it was silently thanks to many more international media outlets breaking the news via the internet.
I understand the sense of adventure that drove those five souls to enter that submersible. I understand the thirst to learn more about what’s under our mysterious seas. What I do not understand is why safety wasn’t a higher priority on a dive that requires signing a death waiver.
As far back as 2018, OceanGate was warned in a letter sent by deep-sea explorers, industry leaders and oceanographers that the company’s “experimental” approach and decision to forgo a traditional assessment could lead to “catastrophic” problems with the Titanic mission. That letter turned out to be prophetic five years later, and the company’s arrogance led straight to it.
As reported by The New York Times, in an unsigned 2019 blog post titled “Why isn’t Titan classed?,” OceanGate said its Titan craft was so innovative, it could take years to get it certified by the usual assessment agencies. “Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation,” the company wrote, making its priorities clear.
Innovation is one thing; cutting corners to save a buck at the expense of safety is quite another. A 2018 lawsuit revealed the viewport on the Titan that allows passengers to see outside the submersible was only certified to work in depths of up to 1,300 meters – a far cry from the nearly 4,000 meters it takes to reach the Titanic.
So how did OceanGate get around these obvious red flags? It turns out that submersibles, unlike boats and other vessels, are largely unregulated – particularly when operating in international waters, The Times reported. Because the Titan was loaded onto a Canadian ship and then dropped into the North Atlantic near the Titanic, it did not need to register with a country, fly a flag or follow rules that apply to many other vessels.
The CEO of the company, Stockton Rush, obviously believed in his craft, as he was one of those aboard who lost his life on June 18. However, the people who put their lives at risk by signing on the dotted line and joining him inside the Titan still deserved better; surely the passengers thought such a dangerous venture would at least be regulated with minimum safety standards.
If you ever hear that I’m in any kind of submersible going to the bottom of the ocean floor, you can rest assured that I have been kidnapped and am being held hostage. Because there ain’t no way in Hades that I would ever use my free will to climb inside something that looks like a giant aluminum can and sit cross-legged in the darkness while staring down the Grim Reaper miles underwater.
David Brown is publisher of the Cherokee Scout. You can reach him by phone, 837-5122; email, dbrown@cherokeescout.com; or on Twitter @daviddBstroh.