CNN Original Series
Cnn original series explores “how it really happened” on sunday, april 28 at 9pm et/pt.
HOSTED BY JESSE L. MARTIN, SPECIAL TWO-HOUR PREMIERE REVISITS THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC
PROMO: https://youtu.be/mTG30TK4M1A
NEW YORK, NY – (April 9, 2024) – CNN Original Series will debut a new installment of the long running HLN Original Series How It Really Happened with Jesse L. Martin . Hosted by Jesse L. Martin, the series launches with a special two-hour episode investigating both the Titanic shipwreck of 1912 and the more recent underwater voyage to its ruins that cost even more human lives in “Titanic” on Sunday, April 28 at 9pm ET/PT on CNN. The series will regularly air on Sundays at 9pm ET/PT on CNN.
Jesse L. Martin is known for his Tony-winning role as Tom Collins in the Broadway run of Rent . He reprised his role in the 2005 feature film adaptation. Martin also starred on NBC’s Law & Order for nine seasons. He just completed his eight-year run on The Flash , where he played detective Joe West, and currently stars in NBC’s The Irrational .
How it Really Happened will stream live for pay TV subscribers via CNN.com, CNN OTT and mobile apps on Sunday, April 28. The series will also be available on demand beginning Monday, April 29 to pay TV subscribers via CNN.com, CNN connected TV and mobile apps, and Cable Operator Platforms. Past episodes of How it Really Happened are available to stream on demand now on Max.
Airdates and episode descriptions for How It Really Happened with Jesse L. Martin:
“Titanic Part 1: A Clear and Starry Night” | Sunday, April 28 at 9pm ET/PT
“Titanic Part 2: The Last Moments” | Sunday, April 28 at 10pm ET/PT
Diving to Titanic is similar to preparing for space travel – it’s a very hostile environment and less than 50 people have ever done it. Even more than 100 years later, the Titanic is still leading people to their death. Recent advances in science and technology have led to brilliant new discoveries and uncovered move of Titanic’s hidden secrets, and this episode of How It Really Happened examines how the latest Titanic learnings upend our previous thinking about many of the ship’s mysteries and myths. Weaving together the narratives of the shipwreck on April 14, 1912 and a recent underwater Oceangate voyage to the wreck that cost more human lives, this episode features interviews with Titanic historians, wreck analysts, descendants of Titanic passengers, and writer and producer Julian Fellowes ( Titanic ).
“Anthrax: Terror by Mail” | Sunday, May 5 at 9pm ET/PT
Following the 2001 terror attacks on 9/11 which shook the country to its core came a second wave of threats, potentially even more deadly. Anthrax has been called “the poor man’s nuclear bomb” – it is a spore-forming bacteria that is only a few microns in size and has the capability to kill millions. Both easy to make and easy to weaponize, these biological attacks gripped the nation with fear and launched one of the largest investigations in FBI history. This episode of How It Really Happened features interviews with former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, former Senate Democratic Majority Leader Tom Daschle, former CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding, Dr. Jean Malecki who identified the case in the Anthrax attacks, and US postal workers and members of the media who survived exposure to Anthrax.
“Oscar Pistorius: The Bladerunner” | Sunday, May 12 at 9pm ET/PT
The shocking shooting death of Reeva Steenkamp at the hands of Olympic superstar and convicted murder Oscar Pistorius on Valentine’s Day of 2013 pulled the curtain back on the storybook romance of a celebrated Hollywood couple. It started as a charming love affair between a world-famous athlete and a fashion model and ended with four hollow-point bullets through the bathroom door. This episode of How It Really Happened investigates whether this was a terrible accident, or a callous murder. Did Pistorius shoot Steenkamp mistaking her for a home invader, or did he intentionally shoot to kill? This episode features footage from the court in Pretoria, South Africa during Pistorius’s 2013 murder trial and 2023 parole hearing and original interviews with Steenkamp’s mother, modeling agent and family attorney.
“Gardner Art Heist: Stealing Beauty” | Sunday, May 19 at 9pm ET/PT
Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is known for its vibrant art collection depicting renaissance scenes. But on the night of Saint Patrick’s Day in 1990, robbers swept in, terrorizing the guards and taking 13 pieces of art which have never been recovered and are now worth half a billion dollars. This episode of How It Really Happened includes an interview with the museum security guard on duty who details the events of that night and his experience being held captive by the intruders, with never-before-seen museum security footage. FBI special agents, government officials and local journalists who covered the case provide expert insight into the international undercover operation attempting to recover the missing art and the key players in organized crime who have been suspected of the heist.
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Take Me To Titanic
A journey to visit the world’s most famous shipwreck sounds like a something from science fiction. But for the first time ever, a group of curious adventurers are taking a cutting-edge sub to visit the remains of the Titanic. This fascinating BBC documentary travels with the explorers as they view the spectacle that is the Titanic.
Watch Take Me To Titanic and more acclaimed documentaries on BBC Select today. Restrictions apply*.
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First Look At “Titanic: 25 Years Later With James Cameron” Special
Paramount and 20th Century Studios are re-releasing James Cameron’s “Titanic” in cinemas for Valentine’s Day for its 25th Anniversary. At the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour event, National Geographic announced that it will release a new special, “ Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron .”
This special will be an updated version of “Titanic: 20 Years Later with James Cameron” , which takes a look back at the critical choices he made when creating the blockbuster film, Titanic, and with a team of experts, puts those ideas to the test against a wealth of new Titanic research — underwater footage, computer-generated simulations, and scholarly discovery — continuing to unravel the many mysteries of this iconic and tragic event.
In “Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron,” the Academy Award-winning director and National Geographic Explorer-at-Large adds a postscript to his fictional retelling of the tragedy. After hearing fans continue to insist Jack didn’t have to die that night, he mounts tests to see, once and for all, whether both Jack and Rose could have fit on that raft and survived.
Here’s a clip from the upcoming special:
This new special will be released on the National Geographic channel in the United States on February 5th at 9/8c, and I’d expect the special to also be released on Disney+ at a later date.
Will you be checking out “Titanic: 25 Years Later With James Cameron”?
Roger Palmer
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The last great mystery of Titanic is unraveled, as an international team searches for the ship's lost Chinese passengers, uncovering an extraordinary tale of survival and dignity in the face... Read all The last great mystery of Titanic is unraveled, as an international team searches for the ship's lost Chinese passengers, uncovering an extraordinary tale of survival and dignity in the face of racism and anti-immigrant policy. The last great mystery of Titanic is unraveled, as an international team searches for the ship's lost Chinese passengers, uncovering an extraordinary tale of survival and dignity in the face of racism and anti-immigrant policy.
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The 10 Best Documentaries About The Titanic
Oct 19, 2023 | Best Of , Disaster , History
Have you ever been curious about the Titanic’s mysterious sinking? It is one of the most famous events of all time, and it has inspired countless stories about its passengers and crew. But if you want to get a deeper understanding of the tragedy, then this list of the 10 best documentaries about Titanic might be just what you’re looking for! From exploration of the ocean floor to analysis of survivors’ testimonies, these documentaries are sure to provide a unique insight into the story of Titanic. So grab some popcorn and get ready for an unforgettable journey! The Discovery Channel’s ‘Secrets of the Titanic’ takes you on an in-depth exploration of the wreck via high-tech underwater robots.
1. Investigating the Titanic
From its history to the emotional stories of survivors, these gripping films will bring you closer to this incredible tragedy than ever before.` The Unsinkable Ship` (2012): This award-winning documentary tells the story of the ill-fated Titanic disaster from the perspective of its passengers, weaving together rare archival footage, interviews with survivors and experts, animation, and period music to create an unforgettable experience.` Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron` (2012): In this two-hour special, Titanic director James Cameron teams up with experts to answer the longstanding questions around the sinking of the ship. Through underwater explorations, computer-generated imagery, and other investigative tools, they uncover surprising revelations about how it all happened.
2. The Best Titanic Conspiracy Documentary
It is an unforgettable look at the facts and theories surrounding this fateful voyage. The documentary also features interviews with survivors, relatives of passengers, archivists and experts to give a full picture of why one of the most luxurious ships in history sunk so quickly. This documentary will leave you wondering about the truth behind what really happened that night. It is a must watch for anyone interested in knowing the real story about the sinking of the Titanic. “Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron” is a two-part documentary that follows Academy Award winning director James Cameron on his quest to find out what really happened to the Titanic. In this feature-length docudrama, he interviews experts and survivors and uses state-of-the-art technology to explore the debris field and reveal evidence that was not available at the time of the disaster. In addition, he interviews Titanic survivors who tell their stories with amazing clarity and detail.
3. Titanic – Into the Heart of the Wreck
From the deep-sea divers to the scientists, this comprehensive list of documentaries about Titanic is sure to provide hours of entertainment and education on one of the greatest tragedies in maritime history. Get ready for an inspiring journey into the depths as you explore what lies beneath the waves. These are some of the best documentaries about Titanic that have been released over the years: “Titanic: The Final Word with James Cameron” (2012) – This is an in-depth journey into the depths of the Titanic, exploring its engineering and the technology that was used to find it. James Cameron himself dives into a submersible to explore its remains. “Exploring the Titanic” (1996) – This HBO documentary takes a look at the history of the Titanic and its fateful voyage, as well as a team of deep-sea divers’ attempts to find it in 1985. “The Real Titanic” (2000) – This National Geographic documentary follows scientists and explorers as they uncover new evidence about the sinking of the Titanic from its wreck site.
4. The Incredible Story Of The Heroes Of The RMS Titanic
This documentary shines a light on the forgotten heroes of Titanic, whose ultimate sacrifice may have saved countless lives. The ill-fated voyage of Titanic also provoked an important debate about maritime safety and responsibility – questions that remain relevant to this day. The critical examination of the disaster by experts and survivors is meant to inform and inspire, so that we can learn from our mistakes and strive to improve the safety standards of our vessels. This documentary is an important reminder that despite their differences, everyone shared a common humanity onboard Titanic. It’s a story of resilience, courage, and compassion amidst tragedy – a tale that will never be forgotten.
5.Titanic – The History & Maiden Voyage of the Luxury Liner
In addition to Thomas Lynskey, I would like to thank all of the wonderful documentary makers who have taken time to document this legendary story. Every film has a different take on the tragedy and gives insight into the events that occurred before, during and after the disaster. From James Camerons’ blockbuster, Titanic (1997) to IMAX’s Ghosts of the Abyss (2003) – there is something in each of these documentaries for everyone. If you want to know more about the Titanic, then I recommend watching the Discovery Channel’s documentary series, Into The Heart Of The Sea (2012). It contains interviews with family members and experts as well as rare footage from both inside and outside the ship. This docuseries really captures the human element of this tragedy. Finally, don’t forget to watch A Night To Remember (1958). This classic takes you back to 1912 and tells the story of the sinking with amazing accuracy. It’s a must-see for any Titanic fan, and it gives us a glimpse into what happened on that fateful night.
6. The Unsinkable Titanic
This documentary chronicles the Titanic’s harrowing voyage, drawing on extensive archival footage and personal accounts from survivors to paint a vivid picture of life onboard. It also examines how human arrogance combined with technology allowed the world’s most luxurious liner to become an iceberg’s victim. Along with some of Hollywood’s most memorable recreations, this must-see documentary offers a comprehensive look at the details that added up to one of history’s greatest tragedies. In recent years, there have been several documentaries produced about the Titanic and its legacy. These films explore a wide range of themes from the role of technology in society to the human costs of such a tragedy. One notable example is “Titanic: Death of a Dream” which looks at the ship from the perspective of those who lived through it, as well as other key players. The documentary features interviews with noted historians and experts on the topic, providing an engaging look into this iconic event in history.
7. Titanic Words of the Titanic
We all know the story of the Titanic, but few have seen it as described by those who lived through it. These documentaries take an in-depth look at what happened during that fateful voyage and its aftermath. From interviews of survivors to historical reenactments, these films will give you a unique insight into the tragedy.
8. The Titanic’s Lost Crew Who Died To Keep The Lights On
This documentary shows the courage, skill and ingenuity of those engineers who worked in extreme conditions to keep hundreds of people alive. The amazing story of the Titanic is told through interviews with survivors, archival footage, photographs and never-before-seen film of the ship’s maiden voyage. It’s a tribute to all those who risked their lives to save others. For those interested in the technical aspects of this tragedy, there’s also a comprehensive look at the Titanic’s power system and how it was kept running even as the ship went down. A unique look at the engineers who worked against all odds to keep electricity flowing in an incredibly dire situation.
9. The Lost Passengers Of The Titanic
From James Cameron’s multi-Oscar winning epic to the many lesser known documentaries about those who sailed upon her, uncover the truths behind one of history’s most famous tragedies. Dive into accounts from survivors and the descendants of those who lost their lives in pursuit of a new life, with an array of documentaries uncovering the depths of what happened that fateful night. From never before heard stories to riveting re-enactments and interviews with key players, The Best Documentaries About Titanic take you back in time and expose the complexities of this unique tragedy in vivid detail. Learn the tales of those who risked everything for a new life, and hear stories of hope amidst destruction that will leave you moved and inspired to learn more about this harrowing history.
10. Waking The Titanic – The Tragic Story of the Irish Emigrants
This documentary is an exploration of a group of Irish immigrants who set off on the Titanic in search of a better life. The film follows their stories, as well as that of one woman’s remarkable journey and her courage to survive. Through archival photographs and interviews with family members and survivors, this documentary brings the story of these brave passengers to life. It also includes footage from the wreck itself and interviews with experts on the Titanic’s voyage, in an effort to understand why these passengers chose to make this fateful journey. Waking The Titanic is a must-watch for anyone interested in learning more about this tragedy and the lives it touched.
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The deadly dive to the Titanic
Canadian authorities watched an experimental submersible come and go from St. John’s Harbour for three years before it imploded with five passengers onboard as they made their way toward the wreck of the Titanic.
The pressure was on. It was the spring of 2023 and Stockton Rush had been busy selling seats on his submersible for the adventure of a lifetime — a deep ocean dive to the most storied shipwreck on the planet — the Titanic.
Five planned dives had sold out for the season — at $250,000 US a ticket in his five-person sub fittingly named Titan. The expeditions left from St. John’s. But so far, the season was shaping up to be a bust.
Rush, the ever-optimistic CEO of OceanGate, a U.S. company with three submersibles, had already taken groups of paying customers 600 kilometres across the North Atlantic to the wreck twice over the last couple of weeks, only to be turned back by the weather and electrical problems with his sub.
Mission No. 5 would be the last of the season. And Rush, fuelled by hubris and freed by a lack of maritime oversight, was determined to make this dive a success. So he left St. John’s on June 16, bound for tragedy.
An investigation by CBC’s The Fifth Estate and the Radio-Canada’s Enqu ê te has uncovered new information about the doomed sub, including how Rush silenced critics while he boasted about breaking basic engineering rules and misled the public. And how, for three years, his experimental submersible was allowed to leave a Canadian port without any oversight to carry passengers to the Titanic.
- Watch the full documentary, “96 Hours ,” from The Fifth Estate on YouTube or CBC-TV on Friday at 9 p.m. It is also streaming now on CBC Gem .
Diving in the middle of the North Atlantic, 3,800 metres down to the Titanic, is no easy feat. The undertaking is fraught with danger and risk. At that depth, the pressure on any hull is unforgiving. To get down and back up safely requires tested and proven engineering, built-in safety redundancies and well-thought-out contingency plans.
Rush reassured everyone that his sub — Titan — was up to the job and that the risks had been factored and mitigated.
This was, after all, OceanGate’s third season launching paid Titanic tours out of St. John’s — the closest port to the wreck. Titan had successfully gone down to the Titanic 13 times. Rush and his sub had become welcome celebrities around town.
“Always a pleasure to be in the company of Stockton Rush, CEO and founder of OceanGate Expeditions, which offers dives to the #Titanic wreckage,” Newfoundland and Labrador Lt.-Gov. Judy Foote posted on Facebook after touring OceanGate’s support ship last May.
Memorial University’s marine institute had also struck up a relationship with OceanGate. Students who already worked with remotely operated underwater vehicles — or ROVs — would now get an opportunity to support the world’s first five-person deep sea submersible and, if they got lucky, maybe even dive to the Titanic.
“I guess if maybe one of the expedition members got cold feet and they felt like they didn’t want to go and there was an empty seat, you never know, they might get an actual seat on the dive,” Joe Singleton, interim head of ocean technology at the institute, said in a live CBC Newfoundland Morning interview last spring .
At first, local Titanic logistics expert Larry Daley thought the Titan trips were good for the province.
“For Newfoundland-Labrador, it was good to see another operation coming to St. John’s, you know, to go out to the Titanic,” he said in an interview with The Fifth Estate. “That was good for us for, you know, for tourism and exposure to the province for people to come and visit here.”
Last spring, Daley was looking forward to a visit with his old friend, the famous French explorer and submariner Paul-Henri Nargeolet. They had met in 1998 when Nargeolet dove in the French sub Nautile to recover a 17-tonne section of the Titanic.
PH, as he was known to his many friends around the world, had joined OceanGate’s dives over the last couple of summers.
Titanic had been Nargeolet’s calling since his first dive to it in 1987. He had 37 dives to the wreck. The 77-year-old’s mere presence had a calming effect on OceanGate’s paying passengers as they were bolted into the Titan’s 2.4-metre cylindrical hull before descending nearly four kilometres to the bottom of the ocean.
Thousands of kilometres away, high up in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, in the small principality of Andorra, Nargeolet’s daughter, Sidonie, was messaging with her father.
“He was telling me that the weather was bad and that there was a good atmosphere on the ship, and that they were hoping to have better weather after the 16th of June,” she said in an interview with Enqu ê te .
But while Daley was looking forward to reuniting with his old friend in St. John’s, he was nervous about OceanGate’s operation.
Last spring, he had watched the Titan being towed on its custom dive platform in the harbour behind the Polar Prince, a former Canadian Coast Guard ship co-owned by Miawpukek Horizon Maritime Service and Horizon Maritime.
In 2021 and 2022, OceanGate had chartered the Horizon Arctic, a large, modern offshore oil service ship that had ferried the Titan on its deck. The Polar Prince was smaller, cheaper and towed the Titan off its stern.
“First thing I said, you know, I won’t repeat it, but, you know, what the hell are they doing? You know, is that how they’re going to get that out to the Titanic site?” said Daley. “If this is what they’re doing, this is going to end poorly.”
But the federal agencies clustered in St. John’s Harbour that are responsible for maritime safety didn’t seem to share Daley’s concern.
For three years, the St. John’s Port Authority, the Canadian Coast Guard and Transport Canada all watched Titan being ferried and towed in and out of the harbour, in front of their offices. Pilot boats escorted the Titan and its support ship through the iconic narrows that shelter the harbour.
Aside from whether towing the Titan for 36 hours one way over the North Atlantic was advisable, none of those agencies had any say over whether the Titan was fit to take passengers to the Titanic.
The Titan was not certified to any internationally recognized safety standard and the Titanic was resting in international waters. Consequently, no official agency in Canada had jurisdiction over Titan leaving a Canadian port.
“It happened in plain daylight in front of everyone’s eyes, if you will,” former Canadian Coast Guard search and rescue co-ordinator Merv Wiseman said in an interview with The Fifth Estate .
Wealthy Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood was up for the adventure. He brought his wife and two children to St. John’s last spring. Shahzada and his 19-year-old son, Suleman, were booked on the Titan.
The year before, Toronto businessman Colin Taylor and his son, Richard, dove in the Titan and had laid their eyes on the haunting bow of the Titanic. Taylor had become friends with both Nargeolet and Rush, meeting the latter for dinner in St. John’s last June.
“He was someone who made things happen and was … the kind of person that was willing to step into the breach and take risks and try and push the edge of things,” Colin Taylor told The Fifth Estate .
Finally on June 16, 2023, there was a break in the weather and the Polar Prince towed the Titan out of St. John’s for what everyone involved hoped would be a successful Mission No. 5.
One of the paying customers on board was Hamish Harding, a British man who was reportedly a billionaire and who had posted to Facebook on June 17 that “this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023. A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow.”
It would be Monday morning quarterbacking to say the Titan should have never taken passengers. It would be — if sub experts hadn’t warned years earlier that the Titan was a catastrophe waiting to happen.
'I wanted to be an astronaut'
The Titanic was the world’s largest passenger ship on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City when it struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912, and sank in the early hours of the following day. The ship’s overconfident captain had ignored warnings of icebergs and steamed ahead, believing the Titanic was unsinkable. More than 1,500 passengers and crew perished.
Ever since the Titanic was located on the ocean floor in 1985, explorers, salvagers, historians, scientists, television and film productions have been drawn to it.
Getting to it is the hard part.
Stockton Rush was not obsessed with the Titanic — not at first. That was a business decision that would come later.
“ I don’t think he had any fascination with Titanic,” said OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein. “What drove him since childhood was going somewhere people have never been. ”
“I wanted to be an astronaut,” Rush told a 2017 gathering of the Explorers Club in New York City.
Rush came from a wealthy family — born, it seemed, to explore. At 19, he was a trained commercial pilot. He got an aerospace engineering degree at Princeton University.
“I wasn’t going to get to Jupiter or Mars, but I did realize that all the cool stuff that I thought was out there is actually underwater,” he said in 2017.
Rush’s widow, Wendy Rush, is the great-great-granddaughter of retailing giant Isidor Straus (Macy’s) who, along with his wife, Rosalie (Ida), were two of the wealthiest people to perish on the Titanic.
In 2009, Rush co-founded OceanGate with Sohnlein in Everett, Wash., north of Seattle. At first, the business plan was to buy submersibles and charter them to explorers and scientists.
“We bought an existing sub that was already old at the time,” Sohnlein said. “We got some practice operating the stuff … understanding how subs worked.”
But when they wanted to go deep, they ran into a problem. No one built a sub that could go down thousands of metres into the ocean and carry more than a couple of people.
“It wasn’t possible to build it in a way that made financial sense,” said Sohnlein. “Because if you’re going to build a titanium steel sphere to carry five people to 4,000 metres, it was going to weigh a lot, and it was just going to cost way too much money, which is why we ended up deciding to build our own sub.”
To build a lighter, cheaper and roomier submersible, Rush would use a novel material — carbon fibre.
No one had ever built a cylindrical deep sea submersible hull out of carbon fibre before, and for good reason — water pressure exerts immense force on the hull. At 10,000 metres, for example, the pressure is nearly one ton per square inch.
Until Rush came along, all of the pressure hulls in the deepest diving human-occupied submersibles were spherical, not tubular, and they were made with impenetrable titanium. The U.S. Alvin, the Russian Mir, the French Nautile — they have all carried humans 3,800 metres down to the Titanic and their spherical pressure capsules are all made of titanium.
WATCH | Diving down in a submersible:
Understanding how carbon fibre would stand up to the incredible pressure of the ocean would require testing, lots of it.
OceanGate’s promotional videos said the sub had been designed with the help of some engineering heavy-hitters.
“We partnered with aerospace experts at the University of Washington, NASA and Boeing on the design of our hull,” Rush said in one video.
The Fifth Estate contacted each of them. The University of Washington said it “was not involved in the design, engineering or testing of the Titan.” Boeing was “not a partner on the Titan and did not design or build it” and “NASA only provided virtual consulting…. The agency did not conduct any testing and manufacturing via its workforce or facilities.”
But before it was ever deemed fit to take paying passengers to the Titanic, you would think Titan would be scrutinized by a knowledgeable, independent third party.
You would be wrong.
Silencing the critics
Patrick Lahey was in a bar on vacation in the Bahamas in 2019 when some young people asked him about the Triton logo on his shirt.
“I said, ‘Oh, Triton Submarines is my company,’” he said.
“So we started chatting and they told me they had a submarine there that they were testing and would I like to come and see it,” Lahey recalled in an interview with Enqu ê te .
They were testing OceanGate’s fledgling five-person experimental sub — dubbed Titan.
Ottawa-born Lahey also had a sub and it was making headlines around the world. His sub, Limiting Factor, was being solo-piloted by billionaire Victor Vescovo to the deepest points in five oceans. In April 2019, Vescovo set a new record by diving 10,925 metres to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean.
“At, you know, 11,000 metres, the pressure on that hull … is equivalent to 292 fully fuelled jumbo jets sitting on top of it,” Lahey said.
When Lahey saw the Titan, he wasn’t impressed.
“I walked around it and I expressed alarm and concern about many of the things that I did see,” Lahey said.
“When I left, I sort of felt like that thing was probably so far from being ready to dive that it probably never would. And I guess I misjudged [Rush’s] tenacity.”
Lahey had seen the first version of the Titan — in 2017, Rush had bonded two titanium domes on a custom built carbon fibre pressure hull.
But in January 2018, just before Rush was to begin crewed deep dive tests in the Titan, OceanGate’s then-director of marine operations, David Lochridge, produced a 10-page report addressed to Rush and company executives that raised serious safety concerns that he claimed had been “dismissed on several occasions.”
“I feel now I must make this report so there is an official record in place,” Lochridge wrote.
Among the more than two dozen safety issues Lochridge said needed to be addressed: O-rings designed to connect parts that didn’t seal properly, flooring material that easily burned, the glass viewport on the front dome had only been certified by the manufacturer to a depth of 1,000 metres and visible signs of delamination and holes in the carbon fibre hull.
He concluded: “Until suitable corrective actions are in place and closed out, [Titan] should not be manned during any of the upcoming trials.”
Rush fired Lochridge the next day.
Lochridge then filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Department of Labour’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Through a U.S. freedom of information request, The Fifth Estate obtained hundreds of pages related to Lochridge’s complaint to the OSHA, as well as an audio recording of his meeting with an investigator in February 2018.
Speaking about the carbon fibre hull, Lochridge told the investigator: “You can see in it like Swiss cheese. So when you put a torch at the back of it, you can see all the way through. You can see all the delaminations where the resin has not bonded properly.”
LISTEN | Raising concerns about Titan’s design:
Lochridge was in Scotland for his father’s funeral in March 2018 when an OceanGate lawyer reached out to him, threatening to sue. That June, OceanGate sued Lochridge for breach of contract, fraud, unjust enrichment, conversion, injunctive relief and misappropriation of trade secrets.
The submersible community is a tight-knit world of engineers. Word of Lochridge’s break with OceanGate soon leaked out.
Will Kohnen, president of Hydrospace Group and chair of the Marine Technology Society’s (MTS) manned underwater vehicles committee, and his brother, Charles, grew up in rural Quebec, but for the past 30 years they have built human-occupied submersibles in southern California.
Kohnen told The Fifth Estate he tried in vain to convince Rush not to build Titan with a carbon fibre hull.
“The engineering of calculating what each layer is doing is almost impossible to do,” Kohnen said.
“If this goes bad, it’s not just bad for the company and the people involved, but the whole industry.”
In March 2018, Kohnen drafted a letter to Rush on behalf of the MTS. He wrote that industry members have “expressed unanimous concern regarding the development of Titan and the planned Titanic expedition” and the possible “negative outcomes from minor to catastrophic.”
The letter was circulated to dozens of experts, but the MTS board was opposed to it being sent out. It was eventually leaked to Rush, who then called Kohnen.
“Well, he was ticked off,” Kohnen said.
“And he says, ‘Well, what’s this?’ I was like, ‘Well, you can read it, you could see what it is and it says we’re really concerned.’ And it’s like, ‘Yeah, well, you know, we’re ahead of innovation and the rules are just holding us back.’ And I said, ‘Look, Stockton, I have as much desire as you to be able to innovate and come up with new ideas that maybe there are not any rules about, but there’s a way of going about it.’”
In December 2018, OceanGate and Lochridge reached a settlement — the lawsuit and the OSHA complaint were dropped. Lochridge has refused multiple interview requests from multiple media outlets to discuss his time at OceanGate.
According to documents obtained by The Fifth Estate , the OSHA did pass Lochridge’s complaint along to the U.S. Coast Guard.
When asked if they investigated Lochridge’s complaints, the Coast Guard told The Fifth Estate in an emailed response that “whether the Coast Guard received any such information or was contacted by OSHA will be investigated by the Marine Board of Investigation.”
Rush had survived the maelstrom of his critics and began test diving the Titan.
“I took it to 4,000 metres and it made a lot of noise, which is a sphincter-tightening experience,” Rush told the Geekwire Summit in 2022.
WATCH | The full documentary from The Fifth Estate:
The noise he was referring to was the hull cracking under pressure.
“We brought it back and it wasn’t getting quieter on the second dive. It should have been dramatically quieter…. So we scrapped it. We went back and we built another one.”
Rush said his new pressure hull was 12 centimetres thick — that’s 667 layers of carbon fibre — but that was the same design as the previous hull. However, Rush added an acoustic system to monitor cracking under pressure. If the cracking became too frequent, the sub could, in theory, resurface and avoid a catastrophe.
“So inside the sub when we were in it, there was a counter. It was counting the number of cracks that were happening in that sub, and you could see them ticking away all the way through the ride up and down,” Colin Taylor said after he dove in the Titan in 2022.
“It is a concern. But you know it’s happening and you know it’s being monitored. And you know that it’s natural that carbon fibre goes through stresses and does have those cracks in them.”
Rush may have built another pressure hull, but there was still the question of having Titan safety-certified by an outside agency.
Most subs are inspected and certified by independent and internationally recognized agencies like the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS).
In 2018, Lochridge said in court documents that he had “strongly encouraged” the company to bring in ABS to “inspect and certify the Titan.”
But that never happened.
In 2019, OceanGate said it was going to another agency instead — seeking classification from Lloyd’s Register.
The Fifth Estate contacted Lloyd’s, which said it “declined a request from OceanGate to provide classification following a preliminary observation of OceanGate testing a Titan submersible in 2019” and that it never did class the Titan.
“The OceanGate sub was not certified. It was an experimental craft,” said Patrick Lahey of Triton Submarines.
“And as such, it should have never carried human beings. It was not fit for purpose, frankly. And if you want to use it to carry human beings, you should be willing to submit your design, your engineering, your analysis, to a third-party review.”
Rush became publicly defiant about the fact that Titan was not safety-inspected.
“At some point, safety is pure waste,” Rush told CBS’s Sunday Morning program in 2022. “If you want to be safe, don’t get out of bed, don’t get in your car, don’t do anything. At some point you got to take some risk. I say I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.”
Lahey bristles at the idea that rule-breaking can be done safely when it comes to deep ocean diving.
“I disagree with this idea that somehow certification is an impediment to innovation or that it somehow hinders progressive thinking. It’s absolutely not true. I just think, you know, that’s a cop-out.”
In 2017, Rush said during an interview with CBC that OceanGate was selling seats to the Titanic for 2018 and 2019, but those dive seasons came and went in St. John’s with no dives. Rush conceded the Titan wasn’t ready.
Finally, in 2021, OceanGate came to St. John’s and launched six successful dives to the Titanic. In 2022, the Titan made seven successful dives to the wreck.
Passengers on the Titan were required to sign a waiver acknowledging they understood that “the experimental submersible vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body and may be constructed of materials that have not been widely used in human-occupied submersibles.”
The possibility of death was mentioned eight times in the waiver.
But going into the 2023 dive season, after multiple incident free trips to the Titanic, it seemed Rush was going to prove his detractors wrong.
No questions asked?
For three years, the St. John’s Port Authority, the Canadian Coast Guard and Transport Canada all watched the Titan go in and out of St. John’s harbour.
All three federal agencies declined to be interviewed for this story. And all of them said they did not have the authority to stop the Titan from leaving St. John’s.
Transport Canada said in emailed statement that “a highly specialized vehicle like Titan is currently not covered by the safety-related elements of the International Convention on the Safety of Life at Sea,” and referred The Fifth Estate to the International Maritime Organization guidelines on the design, construction and operation of passenger submersible craft.
The department further suggested The Fifth Estate contact the safety certification groups — including the ABS and Lloyd’s Register — “for details about these standards and certification process.”
Transport Canada also pointed out that “the flag state of the submersible, the U.S.A. in the case of the Titan, would be the lead for inspection and certification of the vessel.”
But The Fifth Estate found no evidence that Titan was flagged in the U.S., or in the Bahamas, as an OceanGate representative had claimed in legal documents.
The St. John’s Port Authority told The Fifth Estate it watched the Titan go out and back from the Titanic wreck site. It was standard safety practice for pilot boats to escort the Titan and its support vessel out of the harbour.
WATCH | Who was observing as the Titan came and went?:
The Marine Institute in St. John’s also declined to be interviewed about its relationship with OceanGate, citing ongoing investigations.
In an emailed statement, the institute said: “The extent of the Marine Institute’s involvement with OceanGate is that it provided OceanGate with storage and workshop space for its submersible…. Marine Institute was not a partner on the Titan expedition. There was never a formalized plan for Marine Institute employees or students to travel onboard the Titan.”
100% certainty
On Sunday, June 18, 600 kilometres from St. John’s, the Polar Prince had reached its destination in the North Atlantic.
It was finally dive day for the Titan.
The five passengers were bolted into the sub’s carbon fibre hull. Rush was joined by British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman. Their guide was the storied French submariner Paul-Henri Nargeolet. It seemed there would be at least one dive to the wreck in 2023.
An hour and 45 minutes into a 2½-hour descent, the Polar Prince lost contact with the Titan. Initially, it wasn’t a cause for alarm. Titan had lost communication with the surface ship on previous dives.
“I know that Stockton’s wife ... was on board the vessel and was unconcerned about the fact that they’d lost communication because it had happened times before. How many times? I can’t tell you,” said Horizon Maritime owner John Risley, who co-owns the Polar Prince and received a call from his company CEO.
Unlike the support vessel used by OceanGate in 2021 and 2022, the Polar Prince did not have a remote operated vehicle (ROV) on board that could be deployed to search for the Titan.
Asked what the contingency plan was if the Titan got into trouble, Risley told The Fifth Estate : “Call the Coast Guard. I mean, that’s, you know, when you’re in trouble at sea, there isn’t really a backup plan. You call for help, right?”
Nearly eight hours later, OceanGate left a voicemail with Pelagic Research Services. Located just outside Buffalo, N.Y., Pelagic operates a remote sub, Odysseus, that can dive to 6,000 metres.
Nine minutes later, OceanGate notified the U.S. Coast Guard — the Titan was missing.
“Why it took that long is a mystery to me. I just simply don’t understand that part,” said Wiseman.
“I mean, you can always stand down resources. You know, all it takes is just a quick call.”
And once that call was made, a massive search-and-rescue effort would be deployed, led by the U.S. Coast Guard.
“We understand from the operator of the vessel that the vessel was designed with a 96-hour sustainment capability if there was an emergency on board,” U.S. Coast Guard Admiral John Mauger told the news media in Boston the following day.
The countdown was on. An international armada of ships and planes searched thousands of square kilometres in the North Atlantic.
Three days after it disappeared, Pelagic’s remote-operated sub Odysseus was flown up to St. John’s from Buffalo. It was carried out into the North Atlantic by the Titan’s previous support ship, Horizon Arctic.
But as the search was underway, the U.S. Navy had already detected an anomaly in the ocean that was consistent with an implosion. An underwater noise, picked up by sonar, that occurred about the same time as the Polar Prince lost contact with The Titan.
WATCH | Picking up a banging sound:
“They were unable to tell us with 100 per cent certainty that that’s what it was,” U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick told The Fifth Estate ’s Mark Kelley. “And quite frankly, in the business of search and rescue, we work in certainties only.”
Subsequently the Royal Canadian Air Force sonar buoys picked up what sounded like banging in the ocean, but it was later determined not to be from a human source.
On Thursday, June 22, the Odysseus discovered debris from the Titan on the ocean floor.
“They first detected a tail cone,” said Frederick. “One of the next pieces of debris they found was the large capsule door and the glass window. And at that point … it was obvious that there had been a complete failure of the pressure capsule.”
The next day Mauger told the news media: “The debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.”
We knew we were test pilots
Nine months later, investigations by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and the U.S. Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation are ongoing.
The exact cause of the implosion is still not known, but it is comforting to Nargeolet’s daughter, Sidonie, to believe her father died quickly and pursuing what he loved.
“I think it’s much more better to know that the sub imploded at the moment they lost the radio,” she said. “For them it’s fine. It’s hard for the people who are still left.”
Sub builder Patrick Lahey said he didn’t understand why his friend Nargeolet ever agreed to dive in Titan and at one point had raised it with him “in as plain a manner as you could.”
“He was very smart, and he was highly experienced,” Lahey said. “And so when I asked him: ‘Why are you doing this?’ … he said: ‘Well, because, you know, maybe if I’m out there, I can help them avoid a tragedy, you know, maybe I can help enhance the safety of their operation.’ I believe he genuinely thought that he could do that.”
Rush believed the safety rules didn’t apply to him.
“I’d like to be remembered as an innovator,” he said in a YouTube video.
“I think it was [U.S. Gen. Douglas] MacArthur who said you’re remembered for the rules you break. And you know, I’ve broken some rules to make this. I think I’ve broken them with logic and good engineering behind me. The carbon fibre and titanium, there’s a rule you don’t do that. Well, I did.”
Today, there is nothing in place to stop it all from happening again.
Adventure tourism is in high demand and sub certification is still not mandatory.
Colin Taylor said that while he and his son will always have the memory of their Titanic visit, he now regrets exposing his son to that risk.
“I think the people that got on that, including us, we knew we were test pilots. You don’t get on a ship like that, on an oil rig service ship and, you know, motor out to the middle of the North Atlantic and get in a carbon fibre tube and go down four kilometres to the bottom of the ocean and not know there’s some risk involved.”
WATCH | The full episode from The Fifth Estate:
Top image: OceanGate,CBC/Allison Cake/CBC | Editing: Janet Davison
Clarification
A previous version of this story suggested pilot boats in St. John’s Harbour as being owned by the St. John’s Port Authority. In fact, the port authority is the federal agency responsible for administering the port but it does not own the pilot boats.
March 28, 2024 | 1:45 p.m. ET
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A remarkable new view of the Titanic shipwreck is here, thanks to deep-sea mappers
Rachel Treisman
Scientists were able to map the entirety of the shipwreck site, from the Titanic's separated bow and stern sections to its vast debris field. Atlantic/Magellan hide caption
Scientists were able to map the entirety of the shipwreck site, from the Titanic's separated bow and stern sections to its vast debris field.
A deep sea-mapping company has created the first-ever full-sized digital scan of the Titanic, revealing an entirely new view of the world's most famous shipwreck.
The 1912 sinking of the Titanic has captivated the public imagination for over a century. And while there have been numerous expeditions to the wreck since its discovery in 1985, its sheer size and remote position — some 12,500 feet underwater and 400 nautical miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada — have made it nearly impossible for anyone to see the full picture.
Until now, that is. Using technology developed by Magellan Ltd., scientists have managed to map the Titanic in its entirety, from its bow and stern sections (which broke apart after sinking) to its 3-by-5-mile debris field.
Newly released footage of a 1986 Titanic dive reveals the ship's haunting interior
The result is an exact "digital twin" of the wreck, media partner Atlantic Productions said in a news release.
"What we've created is a highly accurate photorealistic 3D model of the wreck," 3D capture specialist Gerhard Seiffert says. "Previously footage has only allowed you to see one small area of the wreck at a time. This model will allow people to zoom out and to look at the entire thing for the first time ... This is the Titanic as no one had ever seen it before."
The Titanic site is hard to get to, hard to see and hard to describe, says Jeremy Weirich, the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Ocean Exploration program (he's been to the site).
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"Imagine you're at the bottom of the ocean, there's no light, you can't see anything, all you have is a flashlight and that beam goes out by 10 feet, that's it," he says. "It's a desert. You're moving along, you don't see anything, and suddenly there's a steel ship in front of you that's the size of a skyscraper and all you can see is the light that's illuminated by your flashlight."
This new imagery helps convey both that sense of scale and level of detail, Weirich tells NPR.
Magellan calls this the largest underwater scanning project in history: It generated an unprecedented 16 terabytes of data and more than 715,000 still images and 4k video footage.
"We believe that this data is approximately ten times larger than any underwater 3D model that's ever been attempted before," said Richard Parkinson, Magellan founder and CEO.
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Experts in Titanic history and deep-sea exploration are hailing the model as an invaluable research tool. They believe it could help scientists and historians solve some of the ship's lingering mysteries — and learn more about other underwater sites, too.
Longtime Titanic explorer and analyst Parks Stephenson described the model as a "game changer" in a phone interview with NPR.
"It takes [us] further into new technology that's going to be the standard, I think, not just for Titanic exploration, but all underwater exploration in the future," he adds.
The effort yielded 16 terabytes of data and more than 715,000 still images, in what Magellan calls the largest underwater scanning project ever. Atlantic/Magellan hide caption
The effort yielded 16 terabytes of data and more than 715,000 still images, in what Magellan calls the largest underwater scanning project ever.
A project years in the making, featuring Romeo and Juliet
Explorers and artists have spent decades trying to depict the Titanic wreck, albeit in lower-tech ways.
After Robert Ballard — along with France's Jean-Louis Michel — discovered the site in 1985, he combined all of his photos to form the first photomosaic of the wreck, which showed the ship's bow and was published in National Geographic. Those efforts have been replicated in the years since.
"But the problem with all that is it requires interpretation," Stephenson says. "It requires human interpretation, and there are gaps in the knowledge."
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Flash forward to the summer of 2022. Scientists spent six weeks capturing scans of the site, using technology that Magellan says it had been developing over the course of five years.
The expedition deployed two submersibles, named Romeo and Juliet, some 2.3 miles below the surface to map every millimeter of the wreck site.
They didn't go inside the ship, let alone touch the site, in accordance with existing regulations, and paid their respects to the more than 1,500 victims with a flower laying ceremony.
And they describe the mission as a challenge, with the team fighting bad weather and technical challenges in the middle of the Atlantic.
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"When we saw the data come in it was all worth it," Seiffert says. "The level of detail we saw and recorded was extraordinary."
The scientists spent months processing and rendering the data to create the "digital twin," which the company says it's looking forward to sharing publicly.
Stephenson saw an early version of the model, when Atlantic Productions brought him on to consult on its validity. So did Ken Marschall, the maritime artist known for his Titanic paintings.
"We've both seen it with our eyes. We've both seen thousands of digital images of the wreck in imagery, moving imagery," Stephenson said. "But we'd never seen the wreck like this. It was different, but at the same time you just knew it was right."
Experts say the model will be a valuable tool for future Titanic research and deep-sea exploration in general. Atlantic/Magellan hide caption
Experts say the model will be a valuable tool for future Titanic research and deep-sea exploration in general.
There's still a lot left to learn about the Titanic
Can there really be that much left to discover about the Titanic, more than 110 years on?
Stephenson says "at the end of the day, none of this matters." But there's a reason people keep visiting and talking about the wreck, he adds, and it's not because of any buried treasure.
"It's fame, I guess," Stephenson says. "People can't get enough of Titanic. And as long as people can't get enough of the Titanic, people will keep going to ... these mysteries."
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In Stephenson's case, it's the unanswered questions that keep drawing him back.
"I've been grinding away at this for a while, and I'm not on a crusade to dismantle the Titanic narrative that has grown since 1912," he says. "But ... I have had enough experience and seen enough evidence that makes me seriously question even some of the most basic aspects of the Titanic story."
One example: Stephenson says there's reason to doubt the long-accepted conclusion that the ship hit the iceberg along its starboard side. He points to a growing body of evidence that suggests it actually grounded briefly on part of the iceberg that was submerged underwater instead.
Just looking at the preliminary modeling has helped Stephenson bring a lot of his evidence and questions into focus — it may be early days, but he says he already has a better understanding of how the ship's stern came to be in such bad shape.
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Stephenson sees this moment as a paradigm shift in underwater archaeology.
"We're essentially getting to the end of the first generation of Titanic research and exploration, and we're getting ready to transition into the next generation," he says. "And I think this tool basically signals a shift from that generation to the next."
Stephenson wants to use the model to document the extent of Titanic exploration up to this point, from Ballard to James Cameron and beyond. He says a "massive project" is underway, and will hopefully result in a scientific paper and online archive. Then, he plans to use the tool to answer whatever questions remain.
There have been "photomosaics" and other renderings of the shipwreck over the decades, but this is the first such 3D model. Atlantic/Magellan hide caption
There have been "photomosaics" and other renderings of the shipwreck over the decades, but this is the first such 3D model.
The Titanic is a gateway into deep ocean exploration
As a maritime archaeologist, Weirich is most interested in what the ship's condition can teach us about how to better preserve deep-sea shipwrecks in general. For example, how has it impacted the environment since it sunk, and how have the visits since its discovery impacted the site?
The Titanic site has been designated as a maritime memorial, which makes preservation even more important. And Weirich says research on everything from its rate of deterioration to the microbial environment can be applied to other such sites worldwide.
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There are estimated to be hundreds of thousands of wrecks in the world, from ancient wooden ships in the Black Sea to World War II vessels in the Gulf of Mexico, Weirich says.
And this kind of technology could play a crucial role in learning more about deep-sea environments in general, from undersea resources to geological features to unknown species.
Weirich says he hopes these images of the Titanic will give people a greater appreciation for the deep ocean, and a better understanding of just how much is left to explore.
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"The story of Titanic and the shipwreck itself is extremely compelling, but it is a gateway for people to understand what we know and don't know about the deep ocean," he adds.
Weirich remembers being personally captivated by those first images of the shipwreck in National Geographic when he was just 10 years old. That sparked his lifelong interest in ocean exploration — and he hopes young people seeing these latest images are inspired too.
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3d “digital twin” showcases wreck of titanic in unprecedented detail, “this is a new phase for underwater forensic investigation and examination.”.
Jennifer Ouellette - May 17, 2023 8:43 pm UTC
The RMS Titanic sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic in 1912, but the fate of the ship and its passengers has fascinated the popular imagination for more than a century. Now we have the first full-size 3D digital scan of the complete wreckage—a "digital twin" that captures Titanic in unprecedented detail. Magellan Ltd, a deep-sea mapping company , and Atlantic Productions (which is making a documentary about the project) conducted the scans over a six-week expedition last summer.
“Great explorers have been down to the Titanic ... but actually they went with really low-resolution cameras and they could only speculate on what happened," Atlantic Productions CEO Andrew Geffen told BBC News . “We now have every rivet of the Titanic , every detail, we can put it back together, so for the first time we can actually see what happened and use real science to find out what happened."
Further Reading
Titanic met its doom just four days into the Atlantic crossing, roughly 375 miles (600 kilometers) south of Newfoundland. At 11:40 pm ship's time on April 14, 1912, Titanic hit that infamous iceberg and began taking on water, flooding five of its 16 watertight compartments, thereby sealing its fate. More than 1,500 passengers and crew perished; only around 710 of those on board survived.
Titanic remained undiscovered at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean until an expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel and Robert Ballard reached the wreck on September 1, 1985. The ship split apart as it sank, with the bow and stern sections lying roughly one-third of a mile apart. The bow proved to be surprisingly intact, while the stern showed severe structural damage, likely flattened from the impact as it hit the ocean floor. There is a debris field spanning a 5-by-3-mile area, filled with furniture fragments, dinnerware, shoes and boots, and other personal items.
As reported previously , we've seen images and video footage of the wreck since it was discovered in the mid 1980s. That includes the footage shot by director James Cameron in 1995 for sequences featured in his blockbuster 1997 film —although much of the latter was actually miniature models and special effects filmed on a set, since Cameron couldn't get the high-quality footage he needed for a feature film.
Last year, a private company called OceanGate Expeditions released a one-minute video showcasing the first 8K video footage of the wreck of the Titanic , showing some of its features in new, vivid detail. One could make out the name of the anchor manufacturer (Noah Hingley & Sons Ltd.), for instance, and the footage also gave us a better look at the bow, hull number one, the number-one cargo hold, solid bronze capstans, and one of the single-ended boilers. The footage was shot during the company's 2022 descent, with guests forking over $250,000 apiece for a seat on the submersible. A second OceanGate expedition to the Titanic wreckage was planned for this year.
The joint mission by Magellan and Atlantic Productions deployed two submersibles nicknamed Romeo and Juliet to map every millimeter of the wreck, including the debris field spanning some three miles. The result was a whopping 16 terabytes of data, along with over 715,000 still images and 4K video footage. That raw data was then processed to create the 3D digital twin. The resolution is so good, one can make out part of the serial number on one of the propellers.
"This model is the first one based on a pure data cloud, that stitches all that imagery together with data points created by a digital scan, and with the help from a little artificial intelligence, we are seeing the first unbiased view of the wreck," historian and Titanic expert Parks Stephenson told BBC News . “I believe this is a new phase for underwater forensic investigation and examination.”
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How to Watch ‘Titanic Sub: Lost at Sea’ Documentary in the US
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The recent tragic developments of the missing OceanGate submersible , which first vanished on Sunday (June 18) have sparked widespread interest in the Titanic and the undersea dive that set out to get a glimpse of its wreckage. Individuals around the world are tuning into live updates as the vessel’s 96-hour oxygen supply dwindles.
The missing submersible is even the focus of a new documentary, ITN’s Titanic Sub: Lost at Sea , which will be hosted by Channel 5’s news presenter, Dan Walker.
ITN is “a go-to production company in the U.K. for fast-turnaround films that react to current events,” per Variety .
And fast-turnaround, indeed — the sub vanished on Sunday, and we’re already getting a film about it this week. Just how did they pull it off and what will the doc be about? Read on for more info about the Titanic sub documentary and how to stream Channel 5 in the U.S.
When Does Titanic Sub: Lost at Sea Premiere?
The documentary about the lost Titanic sub is set to air Thursday, June 22 at 7 p.m. local time (2 p.m. ET/1 p.m. CT) on Channel 5 , a broadcaster in the U.K. If you are living in the U.K, you may watch it live on cable television.
How Can I Watch Channel 5 In The U.S?
Need some help watching from the states? Not a problem! U.S. viewers may use a VPN (virtual private network) to watch the documentary when it airs.
A VPN protects you as an internet user by establishing a secure connection and encrypting your device’s IP address. This also protects your location, allowing you to browse and stream content from anywhere in the world.
The exact steps to accessing a VPN may differ depending on your respective device of choice. Check out resources like the U.S. News & World Report ‘s instructions on how to access a VPN through different devices.
What Is Titanic Sub: Lost at Sea About?
Titanic Sub: Lost at Sea will explore the missing Titan sub, which first lost contact on Sunday about two hours into a tourist dive off the North Atlantic to explore the Titanic wreck. Five people are aboard the vessel, which is operated by the company OceanGate Expeditions.
Ian Rumsey, ITN’s managing director of content, said in a statement shared with Variety that the doc “will chart everything from the exploration itself, to the rise of extreme tourism, to the rescue attempts, but above all it will tell a very human story that has captured the nation which is about 5 people, all with families, who are trapped at the bottom of the ocean.”
He added, “Our expertise and heritage in fast-turnaround documentaries and reputation for responsible filmmaking means we always treat such stories with great sensitivity.”
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Truth and Lies: Fatal Dive to the Titanic explores Titan sub tragedy
Take a closer look at the Titan sub tragedy that captivated the world.
In 2023, the Titan submersible vehicle lost contact with the surface, leading to an unprecedented rescue mission that ultimately ended in tragedy. Now, ABC News Studios takes viewers through the innovative technology that made the mission possible and the events that led to the mission's ultimate failure with Truth and Lies: Fatal Dive to the Titanic airing Thursday, February 8, at 8 pm ET/PT on ABC and streaming the following day on Hulu .
The tragedy of the Titan submersible revealed the dark side of adventure tourism. The technology that made the Titan vehicle possible was innovative and exciting, but with little oversight the mission soon turned into a tragedy that unfolded in real time as the world watched the countdown until the vehicle ran out of oxygen.
Ultimately, investigators determined that the Titan had been destroyed long before it ran out of oxygen. Now, Fatal Dive to the Titanic explores what happened to the Titan.
Here's the synopsis of Truth and Lies: Fatal Dive to the Titanic from ABC News Studios: "Entrepreneur Stockton Rush dreamed of a revolutionary submersible that could take adventurous tourists into the deep sea to view the fabled Titanic wreckage. Truth and Lies: Fatal Dive to the Titanic reports on how Rush's Titan submersible became a cautionary tale about the risks of innovation. Through interviews with Rush's friends, former Titan 'mission specialists' and adventure pioneers, the episode explores the groundbreaking technology behind the Titan, painting a picture of both the excitement and devastation surrounding the deadly venture. The program also takes viewers through the pivotal moments that ultimately led to the demise of the Titan and all on board its final tragic journey into the deep sea."
ABC News Studios' documentary series Truth and Lies first premiered in 2017. Now the series is back with three all-new episodes; in addition to the episode of the Titan submersible vehicle, there's an episode titled The Hunted about the hunt for a serial killer, and The Doomsday Prophet about the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints community and its founder, Warren Jeffs. Each two-hour episode features interviews and behind the scenes look at these chilling events. The Hunted is already available on Hulu and The Doomsday Prophet premieres Thursday, February 15.
Previous episodes of Truth and Lies , including the three original episodes, The Menendez Brothers , Jeffrey Epstein and Monica and Bill , are available to stream on Hulu.
Truth and Lies: Fatal Dive to the Titanic premieres Thursday, February 8, at 8 pm ET/PT on ABC and is available to stream on Hulu the following day.
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Sarabeth joined the What to Watch team in May 2022. An avid TV and movie fan, her perennial favorites are The Walking Dead, American Horror Story , true crime documentaries on Netflix and anything from Passionflix. You’ve Got Mail , Ocean's Eleven and Signs are movies that she can watch all day long. She's also a huge baseball fan, and hockey is a new favorite.
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13 Titanic Mysteries That May Never Be Solved
Was it even the titanic.
E veryone agrees that a luxury liner set sail on April 10, 1912, and sank five days later, taking the lives of around 1,500 of the 2,223 aboard. But that’s pretty much where the consensus ends. Some insist the ship that sank wasn’t the Titanic, but rather, the nearly identical R.M.S. Olympic. As the story goes, the Olympic had been damaged in an accident the year before, but in order to score a bigger insurance payoff, the ships’ common owners passed off the Olympic as the Titanic and then deliberately sank it. While there are lots of holes in this Titanic theory , serial numbers found on parts of the ship that didn’t sink support it . Here’s why we remain fascinated by the Titanic after more than a century .
Did a fire actually seal the ship’s fate?
A recent documentary offers credible evidence that the Titanic (let’s just call it that, for argument’s sake) had been damaged by a coal fire, which had been raging for three weeks before the ship even set sail. The damage would have weakened the hull of the ship, thus hastening the ship’s sinking when it collided with an iceberg. ( If it collided with an iceberg, which is another Titanic mystery we discuss below.)
Why was the captain speeding?
For decades, people believed that Captain Smith was speeding through the iceberg-heavy waters of the North Atlantic because he wanted the Titanic to cross the Atlantic faster than her sister ship, the Olympic. But in 2004, the Geological Society of America published an academic paper by engineer Robert H. Essenhigh with a different theory: It claimed the real reason the Titanic’s captain was speeding was to burn coal as quickly as possible in order to control the coal fire mentioned above. Did a full moon have something to do with the Titanic’s crash? Here are 10 more fascinating facts you never knew about the Titanic .
What caused the ship to break into two pieces?
On September 1, 1985, oceanographer Robert Ballard discovered the wreckage 2.5 miles below the ocean surface, along with the surprising news that the ship had broken in two before sinking. Previously, everyone had thought that the ship sank intact after colliding with an iceberg while speeding recklessly through icy waters near the coast of Newfoundland. Ballard’s discovery led to a new theory: that the ship’s splitting into two pieces, which “may have been the difference between life and death,” was the result of design flaws and the skimping on quality materials by the owners and/or builders.
Did a torpedo sink the Titanic?
Most believe that the Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg on April 14 (regardless of other contributing factors). But not everyone. Some think that the Titanic was torpedoed by a German U-boat . This theory doesn’t seem all that far-fetched considering that three years later in 1915, a German U-boat did sink a passenger ship, the Lusitania . However, it’s possible that torpedo theorists are confusing the Titanic with the Lusitania. It’s also possible that they’re confusing the Titanic with the Olympic, which had sustained damage after colliding with a military vessel in 1911. Still, the presence of several other ships in the vicinity of the Titanic’s sinking leaves the question open.
Was there even an iceberg?
Assuming the Titanic didn’t collide with, and wasn’t torpedoed by, another ship, it’s safe to believe that it hit an iceberg, right? Not necessarily. Professional mariner Captain L.M. Collins maintains that if the Titanic ha d hit an iceberg, it would have gone down in mere minutes. Instead, Collins and his followers believe that the Titanic must have hit a hidden floe of “pack ice” (multi-year-old sheets of ice floating near the ocean surface) that had made its way into the Atlantic from the Arctic Ocean. Collins points out discrepancies in eyewitness accounts, which may actually be due to various natural optical illusions. If only the crew had binoculars, right?
Why didn’t the crew have binoculars?
Surely, if the crew had binoculars, they would have seen the danger in time to change course. But the Titanic’s entire supply of binoculars was locked away in a storage compartment. And a crew member who had been transferred off the ship just before it set sail had the key. The crew member later claimed he “forgot” to hand over the key. But did he forget? Or did he deliberately hold onto it? And if so, was it to further the insurance fraud mentioned above? Or was it something else entirely?
If there was a warning, why didn’t anyone take it seriously?
Even without binoculars, the Titanic might have had time to change course before its collision if someone had warned the crew. But here’s the thing: Someone did warn the crew. An hour before the collision , a nearby ship, the S.S. Californian, had radioed to say that it had been stopped by “dense field ice.” However, the Titanic’s radio operator, Jack Phillips, never conveyed the warning to Captain Smith. Some say the message was deliberately conveyed as “non-urgent,” but we will never know for sure since Phillips went down with the ship.
Did the Californian have something to do with it?
This cruise liner was less than 20 kilometers away from where the Titanic sank. It sent a warning to the Titanic about the dangerously icy conditions, which may have been relayed as a non-urgent matter. Later, the Californian crew reportedly ignored the Titanic’s distress signals , although they claimed they were not aware of those signals because their radio operator had gone off duty . Did the Californian really not notice what was happening within plain view?
The “third” ship
The Californian may not have been the only ship that ignored the Titanic’s distress signals. A Norwegian ship, the Samson , may have been nearby as well. In fact, some believe that the Samson was closer to the Titanic than the Californian but ignored her distress signals in order to avoid prosecution for illegal seal-hunting. This is a popular theory among defenders of the Californian’s captain, but whether it’s true remains a mystery. Check out a few more of the strangest unsolved mysteries of all time.
Did J.P. Morgan plan the whole thing?
Some who believe the Titanic took the place of the damaged Olympic blame financier J.P. Morgan, who was one of the owners of the company that owned both ships. Morgan was one of the wealthiest people on the planet at the time, and he wielded considerable power. In addition, he was a last-minute no-show on the Titanic’s sole voyage. Why did Morgan—and his entire family—not end up on the ship? Did he know what was going to happen? Did he plan it? This is what life was really like aboard the Titanic before it sank .
Was it a murder plot?
Some believe the sinking had nothing to do with insurance money, but rather that J.P. Morgan engineered the sinking to kill off his rivals , Jacob Astor, Isidor Straus, and Benjamin Guggenheim, all of whom perished aboard. But how did Morgan plan to pull it off? Neither the insurance theory nor the murder theory takes that into account. What else would Morgan have needed to do in order to ensure his plan’s success? Here’s another theory…
Why weren’t there enough lifeboats?
“No matter what caused the Titanic to sink, such a massive loss of life could probably have been avoided if the ship had carried sufficient lifeboats for its passengers and crew,” notes History.com . So then why did the uber-luxury liner have only 20 lifeboats, the legal minimum? Why did the ship’s owners decide to ignore recommendations to carry 50 percent more lifeboats? If the sinking were “merely” an insurance scam, how can the devastating lack of lifeboats be explained? This seems to dovetail more with a murder plot. But it also could be nothing more than cost-cutting on the part of the ship’s owners. Next, find out about these 15 crime mysteries that will never be solved .
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LuckyChap , the producing team Margot Robbie , Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara behind Barbie and Saltburn will team with multiple-Tony-winning Broadway producing veterans Sue Wagner and John Johnson ( Stereophonic, Lempicka ) to present a world premiere stage musical next fall from Marla Mindelle , the co-author and original star of the Off Broadway hit musical-comedy Titaníque.
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The project marks the first stage venture for LuckyChap, whose other film and TV credits include Promising Young Woman, I, Tonya and the Hulu TV series Dollface .
The Big Gay Jamboree , according to the synopsis, “centers on Stacey, who after blacking out from 18 Jägerbombs, wakes up hungover in the most terrifying place of all: an Off-Broadway musical. With no memory of how she got there, Stacey is forced to put her BFA in theater to use, belt her face off, and figure out how the hell she’s gonna escape this 1940s golden age musical…while a live audience watches.”
In a joint statement, LuckyChap said, “We’ve been admiring Marla Mindelle’s work for quite some time and our adoration only grew when we were blown away by Titaníque . We knew that we wanted to be a part of bringing Marla’s The Big Gay Jamboree to the stage. We’ve been wanting to find a way into the theatre space and couldn’t be more thrilled for this to be our first foray alongside the incredible team involved.”
Said Wagner and Johnson, “Few things have given us greater hope in the future of the American theater than the recent renaissance we’ve seen happen downtown. We’re excited to bring Marla back to Off-Broadway audiences, and welcome LuckyChap into the theatrical fray.”
The creative team for The Big Gay Jamboree includes dots (set design), Sarah Cubbage (costume design), Brian Tovar (lighting design), and Aaron Rhyne (projection design). Musical Supervision and Arrangements by David Dabbon and Casting is by Stephen Kopel.
Titaníque , a jukebox musical parody of the 1997 film Titanic , features the songs of Céline Dion and includes a Céline Dion character who hijacks a tour at a Titanic museum and provides her take on what really happened to Jack and Rose that fateful night. The show premiered in Los Angeles in 2017, then began an Off Broadway run at the Asylum Theatre in 2022 (later transferring to the Daryl Roth Theatre, where it continues to play). Titaníque won the Off Broadway Lucille Lortel Awards for outstanding musical, lead performer (Mindelle) and costume design (Alejo Vietti).
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In "Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron," the Academy Award-winning director and National Geographic Explorer-at-Large adds a postscript to his fictio...
The most famous shipwreck in the world, the Titanic, lies more than 12,000 feet down in the icy waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Now, over a century on from thi...
The tenth-best Titanic documentary on our list is Return to the Titanic, a two-hour live television special that aired in 1987.In the special, host Telly Savalas discusses theories about the cause ...
Take Me To Titanic. A journey to visit the world's most famous shipwreck sounds like a something from science fiction. But for the first time ever, a group of curious adventurers are taking a cutting-edge sub to visit the remains of the Titanic. This fascinating BBC documentary travels with the explorers as they view the spectacle that is the ...
Past mission specialists have included a documentary camera operator, a comedy writer-podcaster, a planetary scientist and two investors who previously rode into space on Blue Origin's New ...
Paramount and 20th Century Studios are re-releasing James Cameron's "Titanic" in cinemas for Valentine's Day for its 25th Anniversary. At the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour event, National Geographic announced that it will release a new special, " Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron ."
The Six: Directed by Arthur Jones. With Matthew Baren, James Cameron, Grant Din, Tom Fong. The last great mystery of Titanic is unraveled, as an international team searches for the ship's lost Chinese passengers, uncovering an extraordinary tale of survival and dignity in the face of racism and anti-immigrant policy.
10. Waking The Titanic - The Tragic Story of the Irish Emigrants. This documentary is an exploration of a group of Irish immigrants who set off on the Titanic in search of a better life. The film follows their stories, as well as that of one woman's remarkable journey and her courage to survive.
The Titanic documentary charts the work of the ocean mapping company Magellan as they create a 3D scan of how the Titanic looks nowadays, work which took place in 2022. The scan consists of 700,000 different images of the ship, and it reveals lots of small and intricate details as well as wider overviews of the ship. Part of the scan of the ...
It was the spring of 2023 and Stockton Rush had been busy selling seats on his submersible for the adventure of a lifetime — a deep ocean dive to the most storied shipwreck on the planet — the ...
Newly released footage of a 1986 Titanic dive reveals the ship's haunting interior. The result is an exact "digital twin" of the wreck, media partner Atlantic Productions said in a news release ...
A fresh examination of the greatest expeditions to explore the remains of the Titanic, from their discovery in 1985, to James Cameron's remote-controlled rob...
Titanic met its doom just four days into the Atlantic crossing, roughly 375 miles (600 kilometers) south of Newfoundland.At 11:40 pm ship's time on April 14, 1912, Titanic hit that infamous ...
The documentary about the lost Titanic sub is set to air Thursday, June 22 at 7 p.m. local time (2 p.m. ET/1 p.m. CT) on Channel 5, a broadcaster in the U.K. If you are living in the U.K, you may ...
The series provides a detailed and comprehensive look at the history of the Titanic, exploring the design and construction of the ship, the social and cultur...
ABC News Studios' documentary series Truth and Lies first premiered in 2017. Now the series is back with three all-new episodes; in addition to the episode of the Titan submersible vehicle, there's an episode titled The Hunted about the hunt for a serial killer, and The Doomsday Prophet about the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints community and its founder, Warren Jeffs.
This cruise liner was less than 20 kilometers away from where the Titanic sank. It sent a warning to the Titanic about the dangerously icy conditions, which may have been relayed as a non-urgent ...
An upcoming documentary released audio of the mysterious knocking sounds originating from the area in the North Atlantic Ocean where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost.
A journey to visit the world's most famous shipwreck sounds like something from science fiction. But for the first time ever, a group of curious adventurers ...
Titaníque, a jukebox musical parody of the 1997 film Titanic, features the songs of Céline Dion and includes a Céline Dion character who hijacks a tour at a Titanic museum and provides her take ...
Virtual Tour of the Titanic "2024 Version" Complete Tour Titanic: Honor & Glory Virtual TourIn this video, we go through a virtual tour of the White Star Lin...