POLAR PRINCE

General information

Course/Position

Latest news

Crew of Polar Prince felt shudder when Titan imploded

The U.S. Coast Guard reported that the crew aboard the 'Polar Prince', supporting the 'Titan', felt a shudder when the submersible imploded deep underwater. The five passengers aboard the sub were killed instantly: Stockton Rush, the co-founder and CEO of the sub's maker, OceanGate, French explorer Paul Henri Nargeolet, British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman. The statement was provided to the board, when the master was asked if he or crew members heard anything indicating the OceanGate submersible imploded: "The answer from the master was, 'With the benefit of hindsight, I now believe I felt the Polar Prince shudder at around the time communications were reportedly lost, but at the time, we thought nothing of it. It was slight,'" A former OceanGate employee testified during the hearing on Sep 28 that he resigned from the submersible company after Rush told him he would "buy a congressman" to make problems with its 'Titan' go away. Matthew McCoy was an active duty member of the U.S. Coast Guard prior to joining OceanGate as an operations technician in April 2017 as the company was building the first prototype, which was never used on Titanic dives. He said he quit six months later, in September 2017, a day after his conversation with Rush.

Hearing: Submersible malfunctioned days before fatal descent from Polar Prince

The submersible 'Titan' had malfunctioned days before its final voyage, the scientific director of the company that owned the craft said during a US Coast Guard investigation. Other testimonies indicated a lack of safety checks before the unconventionally designed craft set sail. Steve Ross, the scientific director for the company that owned the submersible testified on Sep 19 that the sub had malfunctioned just prior to the fatal dive. Appearing before a U.S. Coast Guard panel, He told the board about a platform issue the experimental submersible experienced in June 2023, just days before it imploded on its way to the 'Titanic'. The malfunction caused passengers onboard the submersible to tumble about, and it took an hour to get them out of the water. The submersible pilot, OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush, crashed into bulkheading during the malfunction, Ross said. One passenger was hanging upside down. The other two managed to wedge themselves into the bow end cap. Ross did not know if a safety assessment of the 'Titan' or an inspection of its hull was performed after the incident. An investigatory panel has listened to three days of testimony that raised questions about the company's operations before the doomed mission. Rush was among five people who died when the submersible imploded en route to the site of the 'Titanic' in June 2023. Earlier on Sep 19, Renata Rojas, a mission specialist for the company, told the Coast Guard that the firm was staffed by competent people who wanted to “make dreams come true." Rojas is a member of the Explorers Club, which lost members Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet in the implosion. “I knew what I was doing was very risky. I never at any point felt unsafe by the operation,” Rojas said during the public hearing that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. The public hearing began on Sep 16. Some of the testimony focused on problems the company had prior to the fatal 2023 dive. During the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said on Sep 17 that he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money. The hearing ran to run through Sep 20 with more witnesses still to come and resumes this week. Lochridge and other witnesses have painted a picture of a company led by people who were impatient to get the unconventionally designed craft into the water. The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and the 'Titan'’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community. OceanGate suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing. During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about the 'Titan'’s depth and weight as it descended. The 'Polar Prince' then sent repeated messages asking if the 'Titan' could still see the ship on its onboard display. One of the last messages from the 'Titan'’s crew to the 'Polar Prince' before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here.”

Hearing into loss of submersible Titan has commenced

On the first day of a hearing expected to last two weeks into the causes of the implosion of the "Titan" submersible on Sep 16, 2024, the US Coast Guard shared new findings about the last moments on board. Representatives of the Coast Guard testified that the 'Titan' had been exposed to the weather while in storage for a period of seven months between 2022 and 2023. In addition, the hull of the "Titan" had never been inspected by a third party in accordance with standard procedures. Shortly before the submersible "Titan" imploded on the way to the wreck of the "Titanic", the crew sent the message "Everything is fine here" to the surface. This is evident from an animation on the fate of the "Titan" in the North Atlantic, which was presented by the US Coast Guard on Sep 16. The presentation shows that the crew members of the "Titan" communicated with crew on board the "Polar Prince" via text messages. They exchanged information about the depth and weight of the "Titan". The crew on board the "Polar Prince" inquired whether the ship could still be seen on the on-board display, because as the submersible continued to descend, the crew lost the signal that indicated the depth and weight of the'Titan', but shortly afterwards contact was lost. According to the lawsuit, the 'Titan' had "lost weight" about 90 minutes after launch, suggesting the team had apparently tried to abort the dive. During the hearing, the first photo of the submersible wreck has been released to the public, showing a large portion of the hull sticking upright on the ocean floor. Report with photo: https://globalnews.ca/news/10759640/titan-sub-wreck-photo-image-coast-guard-hearing-titanic/