Haunting final image of doomed Titan submersible has been released

A hearing into the disaster is taking place

Employees of OceanGate have been giving evidence during the inquest to help better understand the tragic disaster that saw five people die in June last year.

The submersible was heading to explore the wreck of the Titanic, but sadly never made it, imploding before reaching the famous ship which sits on the ocean floor at a depth of around 3,500m.

So far the hearing has revealed what the final messages between Titan and its mother ship, before contact was lost with the submersible.

The hearing also saw an image taken by a remotely operated vehicle of Titan's tail cone on the sea floor after the implosion.

This was the first time this image had been released.

Titan was less than two hours into its dive when it imploded, killing Stockton Rush, Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

The hearing has revealed that Titan had previously experienced serious problems on expeditions carried out before the disaster, the BBC reports.

Over 13 dives to the Titanic in 2021 and 2022, the Titan sub had 118 equipment issues.

This included the front dome falling off when it was brought out of the seas, the sub's thrusters failing at 3,500m down, and another occasion when its batteries died and passengers were stuck inside for 27 hours.

Other details such as a history of decompression and parts becoming sunk during testing were presented by officials to the hearing.

It was heard that in a 2023 expedition, an incident saw the vessel become “partially sunk” in the ocean during familiarisation training with no specialists on board. 

The Titan and its platform were found partially sunk with the tail cone fairing ripped off after a night of rough seas.

One witness, former OceanGate engineering director Tony Nissen, said that when he joined in 2016 the company had already built a model of the Titan submersible at a third of the size.

He said he had witnessed models implode in testing and saw a “rapid decompression” although claimed he didn’t know much about it “except there were two others they tested before”. 

“It wasn’t surprised that it failed where it did,” he said.

Upon being asked if the design was changed to rectify the problem he said that Brian Spencer, the chief executive of Spencer Composites, which had been contracted to make the hull for the submersible, was “not willing to change anything that he did”. 

The hearing is expected to last two weeks.