The American company OceanGate, which operated the submersible that imploded with five people on board near the wreck of the Titanic, announced Thursday that it had “suspended its explorations and commercial operations” in a message on its website. The Titan, a small submersible about 6.5 meters long, had dived on June 18 to observe the wreckage and was due to resurface seven hours later, but contact was lost less than two hours after its departure.
A large rescue operation, highly publicized, had been undertaken to try to find the passengers. Teams eventually discovered that the device had imploded shortly after its dive, killing all five men instantly, including OceanGate boss Stockton Rush. The debris, found on the seabed at a depth of nearly 4,000 meters, was brought back to earth for analysis. Several investigations were opened by Canada and the United States to determine the causes of the implosion.
Doubts about the safety of the submersible
As soon as the device disappeared, criticism focused on the company OceanGate, suspected of negligence. In court documents from 2018, a former executive of the company claimed to have been fired after raising serious doubts about the safety of the submersible. According to him, David Lochridge, the porthole of the device was not designed to withstand the pressure suffered at a depth of 4,000 m, which put the passengers in danger.
William Kohnen, an engineer at the head of an American committee on manned submersibles bringing together companies and researchers, told the BBC that his group had raised concerns about the “Titan” developed by OceanGate. OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Söhnlein said in late June that security was a “key element” of the company’s culture. For 250,000 dollars instead, the passengers of the Titan had engaged in an exploration of the remains of the Titanic, one of the greatest maritime disasters of the 20th century with nearly 1,500 dead.