Debris Found Near Titanic Confirmed As Wreckage Of Missing Submarine; All Aboard Feared Lost In “Catastrophic Implosion”

Tom Tapp
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UPDATED with latest: The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed at a news conference today that “a debris field was discovered within the search area by an ROV near the Titanic” is, in fact, from the Titan submersible. The five people aboard are feared dead after what one official termed as a debris field consistent with a “catastrophic implosion.”

The Coast Guard briefing was led by Rear Adm. John Mauger, who offered his deepest condolences to the families. Mauger also offered the following details: The first piece of wreckage identified was the tail cone of the Titan. It was discovered 1600 feet from the bow of the titanic. The ROV subsequently found the front end barrel of the pressure hull.

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“The debris is consistent with catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” he added.

Multiple media outlets received a statement from OceanGate, the company which operated the sub, that read in part, “We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost.” Read its statement below:

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Titan dived Sunday to take adventurers on a pricey deep-sea exploration of the century-old wreckage of the ship that was the subject of James Cameron’s Oscar-winning 1997 blockbuster Titanic. Apparently, those analyses are now complete.

The 21-foot Titan submersible has been missing since Sunday, and officials worried its oxygen supply is running dangerously low.

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Mauger was interviewed on Today this morning. Watch that below.

An ROV, or remotely operated vehicle, is an unoccupied underwater robot that is connected to a ship by a series of cables. A release put out by the Coast Guard indicated that the ROV in question originated from the Horizon Arctic, a 307-foot anchor-handling vessel registered in Canada that has a hangar for ROVs with a launch and recovery system. It reportedly just arrived on scene today.

RELATED: CBS Story On Missing Titanic Sub Goes Viral After Reporter Got Jitters Over Its “Jerry-Rigged” Design

U.S. and international media have been covering the search since Titan was reported missing Sunday by the crew of the Canadian vessel Polar Prince, which launched the truck-sized sub and lost contact with them “about 1 hour and 45 minutes into its dive.” The five people aboard the Titan are Stockton Rush, CEO of Ocean Gate, the company leading the voyage; Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman Dawood; British businessman Hamish Harding; and veteran French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet. They reportedly paid for $250,000 apiece for the trip.

The search area was 7,000 square miles, which one official noted is “an area larger than the state of Connecticut.”

RELATED: Quickie Titanic Sub Documentary Set On British TV Just Hours After Air Onboard The Craft Is Expected To Run Out

On Wednesday, officials said that that a surveillance plane looking for the missing submersible “detected underwater noises in the search area,” described as “banging noises,” about 900 miles off Cape Cod.

“There have been multiple reports of noises and those noises are being analyzed,” Frederick said during a news conference Wednesday. “The noises were detected by a Canadian P-3 search plane today and yesterday. Frederick said recordings of those noises had been analyzed overnight by U.S. Navy experts, but the results were inconclusive.

“We need to have hope,” he said, “but I can’t tell you what the noises are.”

One piece of good news: While at least one previous sojourn with this submersible was made without supplies of food and water, this time there are “some limited rations aboard,” Frederick said.

CBS News’ David Pogue, whose excellent piece on the Titan sub last summer has gone viral, described the sub’s multifaceted breathing apparatus to News Nation this week.

“There are carbon dioxide scrubbers, exactly the same thing you would have in a spacecraft; then there are these emergency scrubbers that look like fly strips they hang from the ceiling and convert C02 to oxygen. And then if those get exhausted there are actual scuba oxygen tanks under the floor panels that they can put on.”

He also described the multiple ways the sub can resurface if there is an emergency.

“This thing has seven different ways of returning to the surface. It has different kinds of ballasts that can let go, it has an inflatable air bladder and has propellers.”

Even if it has returned to the surface, however, the sub has limited communication abilities. The Titan generally communicates with the Polar Prince mothership only by text message. On Pogue’s trip down in the sub, the craft lost touch with the Polar Prince and never found the wreck.

Another issue: opening the hatch.

“The crew closes the hatch, from the outside, with 17 bolts. There’s no other way out,” Pogue said in CBS Sunday Morning piece last year. That means there is no way for those inside the sub to open the hatch from the inside to get more air, should they surface.

Pogue reposted video from a CBS Sunday Morning piece he did while on an OceanGate expedition last summer, which he says “got lost for a few hours” while he was on board and never found the wreck. Watch it here:

Along with the ROV, the Coast Guard has deployed two C-130 Hercules aircraft in the search, while Canada has deployed one C-130, one P-8 Poseidon aircraft — which can detect craft underwater — and multiple sonar buoys. Mauger indicated that the Polar Prince also has sonar capable of reaching the ocean floor at the search site 13,000-feet below.

“Our entire focus is on the crew members in the submersible and their families,” reads a statement from OceanGate provided to The New York Times. “We are deeply thankful for the extensive assistance we have received from several government agencies and deep sea companies in our efforts to reestablish contact with the submersible.”

Per the Times, which did a piece on OceanGate last summer: “The dives last about eight hours, including the estimated 2.5 hours each way it takes to descend and ascend. Scientists and historians provide context on the trip and some conduct research at the site. … The team also documents the wreckage with high-definition cameras to monitor its decay and capture it in detail.”

Titanic sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912 after hitting an iceberg, killing about 1,500 passengers and crew. The wreckage was found in 1985, and inspired diving enthusiast Cameron to make Titanic. The film went on to win 11 Oscars and gross more than $2.26 billion worldwide. It remains among the Top 10 films of all time both domestically and worldwide, ranking No. 4 on the latter list.

“I made Titanic because I wanted to dive to the shipwreck, not because I particularly wanted to make the movie,” Cameron told Playboy in 2009. “The Titanic was the Mount Everest of shipwrecks, and as a diver I wanted to do it right. When I learned some other guys had dived to the Titanic to make an Imax movie, I said, ‘I’ll make a Hollywood movie to pay for an expedition and do the same thing.’ I loved that first taste, and I wanted more.”

Erik Pedersen contributed to this report.

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