Less than two hours into its planned dive to tour the wreckage of the Titanic, the deep-sea submersible Titan suffers a catastrophic implosion, killing all five passengers on board.
Among the dead was Stockton Rush, founder and CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company that built the Titan and organized the undersea tours. Rush was an enthusiastic promoter of deep-sea tourism and called his passengers “mission specialists,” each of whom paid $250,000 for a chance to see the famous wreckage of the Titanic up close.
In 2018, dozens of experts signed a letter to OceanGate warning that the Titan’s “experimental” design put it at risk of “catastrophic” failure. They worried that the ship’s carbon-fiber hull—large enough to hold 5 passengers—couldn’t withstand the tremendous pressure of repeated dives to more than 12,000 feet below the surface. Several OceanGate employees also sounded safety alarms, but were fired or quit.
Their worst fears were realized on June 18, 2023. The OceanGate surface crew lost contact with the Titan 1 hour and 45 minutes into the dive. Four days of searching followed, followed by the grim discovery of Titan’s wreckage on the ocean floor. The 22-foot vessel had imploded, instantly killing all five people on board.
In addition to Rush, the other victims of the Titan disaster were Hamish Harding, a British airline executive; Shahzada Dawood, a Pakistani businessman, and his 17-year-old son, Suleman; and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French explorer who had made more than 35 dives to the Titanic.
In August 2025, the U.S. Coast Guard issued a more than 300-page report that concluded the disaster resulted from a number of safety and design failures and was "preventable."
