How the submersible's 'catastrophic implosion' and 4-day rescue effort was years in the making

• Parts from the Titan submersible were found on the sea floor, indicating a "catastrophic implosion."
• New details reveal an ill-equipped submersible and an inventor who shrugged off safety regulations.

Five years ago, a prominent deep-sea explorer warned OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush that his efforts to ferry tourists 12,500 feet down to the wreck of the RMS Titanic in an uncertified, unclassed submersible vessel would meet the same fate as the doomed ocean liner.

The Titan, named after the shipwreck it was designed to visit, failed to meet safety and stability standards set by prominent marine organizations, and it was crafted from an experimental carbon-fiber material known for tearing under stress, Rob McCallum explained to Rush in a series of 2018 emails, according to the BBC.

"You are mirroring that famous catchcry: 'She is unsinkable,'" McCallum told Rush. But the OceanGate CEO did not appreciate the criticism.

"We have heard the baseless cries of 'you are going to kill someone' way too often. I take this as a serious personal insult," Rush told McCallum at the time.

The Titan and its five passengers dipped below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean for the last time at about 8 a.m. on June 18. Roughly one hour and 45 minutes into its descent to the Titanic wreckage, the vessel lost communication with its command ship, the Polar Prince.

What followed was a frenzied multinational search-and-rescue effort over four agonizing days as the world watched and waited for news. The fates of the five men aboard became fodder for a macabre debate — were they already dead from a pressure leak? Or were they huddled at the bottom of the ocean inside a 22-foot watercraft, slowly running out of oxygen?

On Thursday, Rush and his four passengers were presumed dead after a remotely operated underwater vehicle found a debris field with parts from the Titan resting on the seafloor, just 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic. Officials told reporters the debris was consistent with a "catastrophic implosion of the vessel" that would have killed the men aboard instantly.

In the aftermath of the implosion, a host of industry leaders, deep-sea experts, oceanographers, and even former Titan passengers came forward to describe major flaws with the vessel's construction and safety features, and fatal hubris on the part of the man who created it. Together, their stories and complaints paint a picture of a disastrously ill-equipped submersible created and operated by a CEO who gloated in his disdain for safety regulations.

"I think it was General [Douglas] MacArthur who said, 'You're remembered for the rules you break,'" Rush said in a 2021 interview with vlogger Alan Estrada. "And I've broken some rules to make this."

Bizarre details about the Titan submersible

As word spread that the Titan was missing, news that the submersible was equipped with 96 hours of oxygen prompted a feverish countdown for the mission to rescue the five men aboard.

Accompanying Rush on the trip to the bottom of the ocean was Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a famous French diver who'd visited the Titanic dozens of times; Hamish Harding, a British billionaire and explorer who has journeyed to the deepest part of the ocean and traveled to space on a Blue Origin flight last year; Pakistani-British tycoon Shahzada Dawood, who had grown up with a keen interest in the Titanic; and Dawood's 19-year-old son Suleman, whose relative later told NBC News that the young man had been "terrified" to board the submersible but wanted to please his father.

Search-and-rescue officials at first presented an optimistic front, emphasizing that the mission was first and foremost to rescue the five men rather than recover the Titan's remains. Vessels from the US, Canada, France, and the United Kingdom arrived to scour the ocean's surface, searching through an area twice the size of Connecticut. US and Canadian military officials also sent multiple aircraft to the scene, deploying sonar buoys that can detect underwater noise up to 13,000 feet deep.

As scrutiny over OceanGate and the Titan intensified, each new detail revealed about the watercraft seemed more shocking and disturbing than the last. The vessel was piloted with a modified Logitech gaming controller, outfitted with an interior light from Camping World, and sealed with 17 bolts that could only be removed from the outside. It had lost communication with its command ship on every mission it had taken and was once even lost for two-and-a-half hours while CBS filmed a TV segment from the command ship.

The vessel seemed to have a "MacGyver jerry-riggedness," CBS correspondent David Pogue noted in his segment last year.

On land, the response to the crisis was no less bizarre. Amid the public curiosity about Harding, the British billionaire aboard the Titan, his 37-year-old stepson Brian Szasz made headlines of his own, tweeting a photo of himself at a Blink-182 concert amid the ongoing search-and-rescue efforts. Szasz then began feuding with the rapper Cardi B, who criticized him for attending a show instead of staying home and comforting his mother.

Public criticism of OceanGate's CEO also increased as old interviews from Rush began resurfacing, showing him laughing off safety concerns and flaunting his rule-breaking.

"You know, at some point, safety is just 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," Rush told Pogue in an interview. "At some point, you're going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question."

Experts and former passengers had sounded the alarm about the Titan

June 18 was not OceanGate's first trip to the Titanic with a submersible vessel, and several of its former passengers have spoken up about mishaps on their journeys.

"The Simpsons" showrunner Mike Reiss told multiple media outlets he took four trips with OceanGate, one of which was to the Titanic wreckage. He told ABC News his submersible lost communication with the command ship on all four trips.

"Every time they lost communication — that seems to just be something baked into the system," he said.

Reiss recalled being asked to sign a "massive waiver that lists one way after another that you could die on the trip," noting that the word "death" was mentioned three times on the first page of the waiver.

The safety concerns far predated the Titan's initial journeys. In January 2018, some three dozen industry experts sent Rush a letter expressing "unanimous concern" about OceanGate's approach to developing the Titan. The letter urged Rush to subject the Titan to third-party testing and accused him of misleading the public about its safety features.

"The current 'experimental' approach adopted by OceanGate could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry," the letter warned.

Karl Stanley, a submersible expert, told The New York Times he made one 12,000-foot descent in the Titan in 2019, off the coast of the Bahamas, and heard a cracking noise that grew louder over a period of hours. He pleaded with Rush in an email the next day to cancel planned expeditions to the Titanic.

The noises "sounded like a flaw/defect in one area being acted on by the tremendous pressures and being crushed/damaged," Stanley wrote, adding that the sounds revealed there was "an area of the hull that is breaking down," according to emails obtained by The Times.

Stanley told The Times he never received a response from Rush, but the CEO did call off the planned dives that year and built a new hull.

The deep-sea explorer and Oscar-winning director James Cameron was among those skeptical of the Titan's capabilities. Cameron said he even declined an invitation directly from Rush to dive to the wreck on the Titan this season.

Cameron, who has dived to the Titanic 33 times himself, told Reuters that OceanGate "shouldn't have been doing what it was doing." He said he regretted not speaking up more vehemently against the submersible's carbon-fiber hull and lack of certifications.

"Now there's one wreck lying next to the other wreck," he said. "For the same damn reason."