The Lost Titanic Sub Didn’t Even Have a Basic Safety Beacon
SILENT ALARMS
Untethered by regulations, the vehicle wasn’t even equipped with some of the most essential tools. Its inexplicable design may end in tragedy.
Tony Ho Tran
Deputy Editor, Innovation & Tech
Justin Rohrlich
Reporter
Updated Jun. 20, 2023 5:41PM ET / Published Jun. 20, 2023 3:27PM ET
Search and rescue teams are racing against the clock as they attempt to find a missing submersible and its five-person crew that was slated to explore the wreck of the Titanic nearly 13,000 feet under the North Atlantic on June 18. The U.S. Coast Guard said that the 22-foot-long deep-sea vessel, dubbed the Titan, only has a few days worth of oxygen.
The craft is owned and operated by OceanGate, a private submersible company that offers chartered trips to the wreckage of the Titanic to customers for $250,000 a seat. It set out on its voyage on Sunday morning, but lost contact with its research ship the Polar Prince about 1 hour and 45 minutes into its journey.
Things are looking bleak. Even in the best conditions, voyages on and under the North Atlantic are fraught with the kinds of dangers that the Titanic itself faced including freezing water temperatures, chaotic weather conditions, and surging waves and currents. It’s not helped that the technology that went into building the Titan was experimental, unregulated, risky, and potentially life-threatening. This not only makes diving operations like the one undertaken by the Titan fraught, but it also dangerously complicates search and rescue operations.
“We are doing everything that we can do to make sure that we can locate and rescue those on board,” U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger said at a press briefing. He later told Good Morning America that the international team of search and rescue officials have scoured an area “about the size of Connecticut” so far.
Walt ‘Butch’ Hendrick, a former safety coordinator for the U.S. Army’s Green Beret Diver Trainer Program, told The Daily Beast that if the sub is entangled by the Titanic wreckage or something else, a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) could theoretically cut through four inches of steel to cut it loose—but it needs to be fitted with the right tools to be able to do so.
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https://www.thedailybeast.com/missing-titanic-sub-plagued-by-a-long-history-of-deadly-safety-issues