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(Trends Wide) — The Titan suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” the United States authorities reported Thursday, in the midst of an operation to find the whereabouts of the submarine that less than a week ago had departed on an expedition to the remains of the Titanic. Here is a timeline of what happened.
Friday June 16: The expedition departs from Newfoundland, Canada, on the support ship Polar Prince, which takes participants to the site of the Titanic wreck.
Sunday June 18: the Polar Prince launches the Titan submarine at around 9 am, and there it begins its two-hour dive to the wreck of the Titanic. She loses contact with the ship after 1:45 hours of descent. Her last communication with the surface occurs at 11:47 am. The US Coast Guard is alerted and search operations begin that same day.
The US Navy detects an acoustic signal compatible with an implosion and transmits that information to the commanders who direct the search tasks, a senior official explained to Trends Wide. But the sound is determined to be “not definitive,” the official says, and the search continues.
Monday June 19: US and Canadian coast guards continue surface and deep searches. A Canadian aircraft and two C-130s conduct aerial and radar searches and buoys are deployed to listen for sounds in the water column. According to the authorities, if the submarine remains intact, it is estimated that it will be able to support life between 70 and 96 more hours. The US Coast Guard says their priority is to locate the vessel. British businessman Hamish Harding is identified as one of the passengers.
Mars: the sonar detects underwater banging noises at 30-minute intervals, according to an internal government memo. The US Coast Guard says the underwater noises were also picked up by a Canadian P-3 aircraft, but searches “returned negative”.
The search broadens to a massive international operation with submarine capability. More ships and planes join the mission. The other crew members have already been identified as Stockton Rush, CEO and founder of OceanGate, Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Wednesday: The US Coast Guard is expanding the search area, at a time when it is believed that the levels of oxygen available in the submarine have risen to critical levels. A fleet of specialized ships and equipment is deployed, including a US Navy salvage system capable of retrieving vessels from the ocean floor. More banging is heard and ROV crews relocate to try to locate them, but to no avail.
Questions are raised about the safety of the submersible, including the fact that the operator, OceanGate Expeditions, refused a safety review of the Titan.
Thursday: A remote-controlled vehicle reaches the bottom of the sea for the first time, as new high-tech ships and medical personnel move to the search site and the search efforts come to a head. Around noon, the US Coast Guard says a debris field was discovered in the search area and authorities later say it is from the outside of the missing submarine. OceanGate says it believes the passengers have “sadly died.” In an update to the information, the US Coast Guard says five large pieces of debris from the submarine have been found and are “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber.” At around 3 pm Miami time, Rear Admiral John Mauger says the ship suffered a “catastrophic implosion”, killing all five passengers on board. Officials say they are working to piece together a timeline of what happened.
