The US Coast Guard's Official Report on the Wreck of the Titan Submarine is Even More Horrific Than You'd Imagine

It's been 26 months since the Titan submersible owned and operated by a company with the ironic, scandal-ready name of OceanGate, went missing with all five passengers and crew aboard while visiting the wreck of the Titanic. 

Now the United States Coast Guard has completed their investigation. And as if it wasn't frustrating enough that five people would be crushed to death just so they could brag that they desecrated the watery grave of 1,500 souls, the good people of USGC have revealed the most maddening aspect of the whole disaster. 

This accident was completely preventable. Which to my way of thinking, makes it not an accident at all. Just negligence:

Source -  The U.S. exploration company OceanGate used "intimidation tactics" to "evade regulatory scrutiny" in the years leading up to the June 2023 Titan submersible tragedy, according to findings released by the U.S. Coast Guard Tuesday. 

Those conclusions are part of an over 300-page report released by officials into the incident, which killed five people onboard when the sub imploded underwater while on an expedition to see the wreckage of the Titanic. 

"This marine casualty and the loss of five lives was preventable," Jason Neubauer, who led the Coast Guard's investigation into the incident, said in a statement Tuesday.

"For several years preceding the incident, OceanGate leveraged intimidation tactics, allowances for scientific operations, and the company's favorable reputation to evade regulatory scrutiny," the Coast Guard report said. "By strategically creating and exploiting regulatory confusion and oversight challenges, OceanGate was ultimately able to operate TITAN completely outside of the established deep-sea protocols." ...

The Coast Guard report also found that OceanGate had a "toxic" safety culture and corporate structure, and that its operational practices were "critically flawed."

That included a workplace environment which "used firings of senior staff members and the looming threat of being fired to dissuade employees and contractors from expressing safety concerns." 

       

In February 2018, OceanGate's former director of marine operations filed a whistleblower complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, alleging he was dismissed because he voiced safety concerns about the "first TITAN hull's development and testing plans."

In response to the complaint, OceanGate filed a lawsuit against the former employee, accusing him of violating a confidentiality agreement he had signed with the company. ...

Among those killed aboard the doomed vessel was Stockton Rush, co-founder of OceanGate, the Washington state company that owned the Titan. The implosion also killed veteran Titanic explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet; two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood; and British adventurer Hamish Harding. 

The Coast Guard's findings pointed the finger of blame largely at Rush, who investigators said ignored warnings about the hull damage that had been identified during a previous exploration in 2022. 

"Mr. Rush's overconfidence influenced OceanGate's personnel, contractors, and mission specialists, creating an environment where safety concerns were ignored or underemphasized in favor of operational continuity," the Coast Guard's analysis found. 

       

Had Rush survived the tragedy, the Coast Guard said that it would have recommended the U.S. Department of Justice to consider pursuing a criminal investigation into his actions, which the report said "exhibited negligence that contributed to the deaths of four individuals."

According to some outlets, the report is so damning toward OceanGate and Rush that it includes the word "failure" 99 times, which is more than three times per page. 

Even if you're tempted to say this is all just 20/20 Quarterbacking and Monday Morning Hindsightery, it's not. Rush got ample warning from deep legtimate sea experts like James Cameron and members of his own team, he went ahead and tempted fate. It was pure hubris. The stuff of SciFi and horror stories where someone gets so confident in their own power to play god that they think they can build something strong enough to withstand the pressure at a depth of 2 1/2 miles. From a carbon fiber material everyone told him would wear out and have a catastrophic "failure," and turned out to be right. 

So now five more names have been added to the already long list of people who perished in that spot in the North Atlantic. All thanks to men who got caught up in their own arrogance and thought they could outsmart nature. The Titanic and the Titan. Proving once again that history might not always repeat itself, but it does rhyme.