History repeats itself, says widow whose husband and son died in Titan sub implosion

On June 18, 2023, the Titan submersible disappeared during a dive to the iconic wreck of the Titanic. The world watched in shock as authorities mounted a laborious, four-day search-and-rescue operation that located debris on the sea floor, less than 500 metres from the bow of the Titanic. The submersible had imploded shortly after launch, killing all five on board. 

The Nature of Things documentary Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, coming to CBC Gem on June 6, examines a series of warnings and red flags that were raised in the years and months leading up to the tragic implosion. 

With unprecedented access to the United States Coast Guard's Marine Board investigation and interviews with key witnesses and experts, the film details the systemic issues and design flaws that led to the Titan's ultimate failure.

Who was OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush?

In this clip (see above) we meet Stockton Rush, the OceanGate CEO who died on the doomed expedition. He was an inventor with a grand vision of making deep-sea exploration more accessible. 

"His family legacy was really about the closest that you could get to royalty within the United States," says submersible pilot and designer Karl Stanley in the film. Two of his forefathers were signers of the Declaration of Independence, and his wife, Wendy, was the great-great-granddaughter of Isidor and Rosalie Ida Straus, the owners of Macy's department store who died when the Titanic sank in 1912. 

Rush was wealthy, with vast connections in the American business world, and deep-sea exploration was his life's passion.

Was the Titan submersible doomed to fail?

Rush had built the Titan submersible out of carbon fibre, an unconventional material for deep-sea exploration that, in hindsight, doomed the vessel. The sub had already made 13 trips to the wreckage of the Titanic, some 3,800 metres below the surface, before its final trip. 

The 15-month investigation into the tragedy revealed that each trip to the depths weakened the hull. "Hardly anybody in the public is familiar with carbon fibre," says OceanGate safety diver Tym Catterson in the film. "It's stable all the way up until this magic point that it is not. When it finally pops, it will catastrophically fail."

There were early signs that the Titan was unsafe; in 2020, a large crack formed during a dive and the hull had to be rebuilt entirely. In 2022, a loud bang was heard as Titan was surfacing from the depths, suggesting that the carbon fibre hull suffered structural damage. "In one of my emails, I tell [Rush] that the hull is yelling at him and he needs to listen," submersible expert Karl Stanley recalls.

In spite of all this, Rush continued his missions, undeterred. 

Titan's debris rests less than 500 metres from infamous Titanic shipwreck

"Why is arrogance more important than safety?" asks Christine Dawood, whose husband Shahzada and 19-year-old son Suleman died on the dive. "The irony is not lost on me that the Titanic sunk for exactly the same reason. So history repeats itself."

Watch Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster on CBC Gem and The Nature of Things YouTube channel now. Airing on CBC TV Wednesday, June 18 at 8 p.m.