Nearly two years after OceanGate Expeditions’ Titan tourist submersible imploded, killing all five passengers, investigators revealed the items found in the wreckage.
New details about from the Titan submersible tragedy continue to emerge.
Nearly two years after the implosion of OceanGate Expeditions’ small tourist sub killed all five passengers, investigators shared what was found in the wreckage, including personal items belonging to the company’s CEO Stockton Rush.
“Mr. Rush’s clothing—it was actually caked inside of sand,” U.S. Coast Guard investigator Lt. Kelly Steele said in the new Discovery documentary Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, which premiered May 28. “It was the piece of his sleeve that had survived. No, not the whole suit. And inside of the sleeve of it was ink pen, business cards and stickers for the Titanic.”
Steele continued, “And there was nothing else but that. But each one of those pieces, even the pen, was still intact. It hadn’t been broken. All of this debris, all of these things shattered, but his pen was still intact.”
The documentary detailing the doomed voyage to visit the Titanic wreckage also features footage of what the Coast Guard believes is the moment the Titan sub imploded.
While monitoring communications from the sub, Rush’s wife Wendy Rush—the director of OceanGate—is shown reacting to the sound of a muffled thump as the vessel reached 3,300 meters.
Addressing employee Gary Foss, she asked, “What was that bang?”
The Coast Guard, which released the OceanGate-recorded video just ahead of the film’s debut, noted in a Department of Defense news release that the sound the two heard from the monitoring station “later correlated with the loss of communications and tracking” and that it “is believed to be the sound of the Titan’s implosion reaching the surface of the ocean.”
Xinhua News Agency/ShutterstockIn addition to the CEO, 61, billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, 58, French oceanographer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood also died in the tragedy, which occurred more than two miles beneath the surface off the coast of Newfoundland.
Read on for more about the five victims of the Titan disaster…
Shahzada Dawood & Son Suleman Dawood
On June 18, 2023, a deep-sea submersible Titan, operated by the U.S.-based company OceanGate Expeditions and carrying five people on a voyage to the wreck of the Titanic, was declared missing. Following a five-day search, the U.S. Coast Guard announced at a June 22 press conference that the vessel suffered a “catastrophic implosion” that killed all five passengers on board.
Pakistani-born businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood, both British citizens, were also among the victims.
Their family is one of the wealthiest in Pakistan, with Shahzada Dawood serving as the vice chairman of Engro Corporation, per The New York Times. His son was studying at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.
Shahzada’s sister Azmeh Dawood told NBC News that Suleman had expressed reluctance about going on the voyage, informing a relative that he “wasn’t very up for it” and felt “terrified” about the trip to explore the wreckage of the Titanic, but ultimately went to please his father, a Titanic fan, for Father’s Day.
The Dawood Foundation mourned their deaths in a statement to the website, saying, “It is with profound grief that we announce the passing of Shahzada and Suleman Dawood. Our beloved sons were aboard OceanGagte’s Titan submersible that perished underwater. Please continue to keep the departed souls and our family in your prayers during this difficult period of mourning.”
