Haunting audio capturing the doomed Titan sub’s final moments before its implosion has been revealed.
On June 18, 2023, OceanGate's Titan submersible embarked on its first planned dive of the year, heading to the wreckage of the Titanic with five crew members on board.
On its descent - around 320 nautical miles (590 km) south-southeast off the coast of Newfoundland - the vessel lost contact with its mothership, the Polar Prince. It then failed to resurface at the time it was expected to, leading to vast search efforts being launched to try and locate the sub, in case it had surfaced in a different location.
On board were tourists Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman Dawood, crew member and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and OceanGate founder Stockton Rush, who was the pilot of the sub.
Tragically, on June 22, 2023, it was confirmed that the submersible had imploded, killing all five people on board instantly.
Now, both Netflix and the BBC are airing documentaries that examine the troubling build-up to the disaster and its catastrophic conclusion.
In the BBC's upcoming film following the U.S. Coast Guard’s investigation, viewers will witness a gut-wrenching moment: Wendy Rush, Stockton’s wife, is seen tracking the sub’s dive live from the Polar Prince when a loud bang is heard at 3,300 metres. “What’s that bang?” she asks, according to the Times.
The USCG later confirmed the noise was the sound of the Titan imploding, likening it to a “door slamming.”
A routine message from Titan, stating it had dropped two weights, was sent just before the implosion, but it reached the surface after the bang due to slower data transmission speeds.
The recording is a central piece of the documentary, which tracks the sequence of events that led to one of the most shocking deep-sea tragedies in recent memory.
Netflix’s Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, which will be released on Wednesday (June 11), will look into the years leading up to the implosion, including eerie audio capturing the popping of carbon fibres moments before the sub was crushed by ocean pressure.
Filmmaker Mark Monroe, known for Icarus and The Cove, was drawn to the project partly because of the public’s callous reaction.
He was especially interested in the role of David Lochridge, a former OceanGate pilot and director of marine operations who was fired in 2018 after raising safety concerns. "He was front and centre in terms of the building of this company… He’s the reason I’m here," he said, per The Independent.
Lochridge claimed Rush was obsessed with ego and fame. In one revealing moment, he recalled how Rush endangered passengers on another OceanGate sub by steering too close to the Andrea Doria shipwreck. Lochridge eventually had to take over the controls to save the dive.
“The dynamic changed,” Lochridge said, noting that afterward, he was excluded from meetings and communications. He was later allowed to inspect Titan and found significant safety flaws, which he raised before being dismissed.
In the documentary, Tony Nissen, OceanGate’s former engineering director, slams the decision to keep the sub in sub-zero temperatures in Newfoundland instead of returning it to Washington for inspection. “If water gets in there and you sit it out in freezing conditions… it breaks [carbon] fibres,” he warned.
Stockton Rush studied at Princeton and envisioned a new era of deep-sea tourism. He rejected standard safety protocols, refusing to have Titan “classed” by independent regulators, insisting they didn’t understand his innovations.
“We’re doing weird s*** here and I am definitely out of the mould,” Rush said, per the outlet. “There’s no question. I’m doing things that are completely non-standard.”
In Titan’s first deep-ocean test, he halted the dive at 3,938 metres after hearing ominous cracking. “Close enough,” he muttered. Back on the surface, he declared success: “I could’ve easily gone to four [thousand metres], but for what?”
Monroe compares Rush’s attitude to Facebook’s old motto, “Move fast and break things,” adding: "There is an ambition in our culture led by a lot of Silicon Valley types that you can do things differently...You can change the way the world works. The rules don't apply to you.
“But as I like to say, there are rules of physics, there are rules of engineering, there are rules of nature, and those do apply to us. And so I don't know how safe it is to move fast and break things when other people’s lives are at stake," he added.
Titan: The OceanGate Disaster premieres on June 11 on Netflix.