In an undersea disaster that took the lives of all five people onboard, presumed human remains and wreckage of a tourist submersible were retrieved from the seafloor and transported to Canada on Wednesday, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The crushed remnants of the submersible Titan, which met its end while diving towards the remains of the Titanic, were transported by the Canadian-flagged vessel Horizon Arctic to St. John’s, Newfoundland, roughly 400 miles (650km) north of the accident site.
Upon arrival, the Coast Guard intends to move the collected evidence to a U.S. port, where a marine board of investigation will conduct thorough testing and analysis.
The board was assembled by the Coast Guard earlier this week to probe into the circumstances leading to the Titan’s downfall. Furthermore, the Coast Guard announced that U.S. medical professionals would formally examine the potential human remains in the wreckage.
Analysis of the Wreckage and Casualties of the Disaster
Canadian Broadcast Corp’s video footage revealed fragments of the submersible, including what appeared to be the nose, encased in a white tarp and lifted by crane from the deck of Horizon Arctic. The broken pieces of the Titan’s hull and machinery featuring loose wires were also unloaded at St. John’s, the starting point of the ill-fated Titanic expedition.
Four days following the Titan’s last contact with Polar Prince, 1 hour and 45 minutes into what was intended to be a two-hour descent on June 18, submersible fragments were discovered strewn across the seafloor approximately 1,600 feet (488 meters) from the Titanic wreck’s bow. The findings resulted from a deep-sea robotic vehicle scouring the ocean floor over 2 miles (3km) deep, concluding a global search and confirming the tragic fate of the five passengers.
Among the deceased were Stockton Rush, the pilot of the submersible and CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the U.S. company that owned and operated the Titan; British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58; Pakistani entrepreneur Shahzada Dawood, 48, along with his 19-year-old son, Suleman; and French oceanographer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77. This incident has sparked concerns about the lack of regulation for such ventures and OceanGate’s choice to bypass third-party industry review and certification of Titan’s unique design.
Pelagic Research, the company responsible for the robotic vehicle used in debris recovery, stated that offshore operations had been completed, and the process of demobilizing from the Horizon Arctic would begin that morning.
