Titanic Submarine Imploded, 5 Passengers Believed to Be Dead

The debris field found near the Titanic wreckage has been confirmed to belong to OceanGate’s Titan Submarine.

“The debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the pressure chamber,” Rear Admiral John Mauger told the press. “Upon this determination, we immediately notified the families. On behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families. I can only imagine what this has been like for them, and I hope that this discovery provides some solace during this difficult time.”

OceanGate, the company in charge of the expedition, has also stated that the five passengers onboard are dead. A statement from the company reads, in part, “We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost.” See it in full below.

OceanGate: “We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost.” @ABC Special Report is moments away. pic.twitter.com/IumSBMpHM2

— Gio Benitez (@GioBenitez) June 22, 2023

The Titan set out on its multi-million-dollar ride to the center of the ocean floor to see the century-old wreckage of the Titanic on Sunday. Two hours into the adventure, the support vessel for the sub, Polar Prince, lost contact with the five-person crew. There were reports of noises beneath the waves of the North Atlantic Tuesday and Wednesday, giving the families hope that the crew may very well still be alive. The search area was 7,000 square miles, which one official noted is “an area larger than the state of Connecticut.”

Watch the Coast Guard press conference below.

The Titanic sank in April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg, resulting in the deaths of the crew and 1,500 of the ship’s passengers. The remains of the wreck were discovered in 1985 and served as the setting of James Cameron‘s Titanic starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.

“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself,” the Avatar: The Way of Water director told ABC News, “where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field.”

The multiple Oscar winner and longtime ocean-diving enthusiast, who made over 30 dives to the site wreckage, also stated, “As a submersible designer myself, I designed and built us up to go to the deepest place in the ocean three times deeper than Titanic. So I understand the engineering problems associated with building this type of vehicle and all the safety protocols that you have to go through. And I think [it] is absolutely critical for people to really get the take-home message from this from our effort here, which is deep submergence diving is a mature art from the early ’60s, where there were a few accidents. [But] nobody was killed in the deep submergence until now. [That’s] more time than between Kitty Hawk and the end of the flight of the first 747.”