Titan Sub Disaster | 12,000 Leagues Under the Sea | 1

American scandal uses dramatizations that are based on true events.

Some elements, including dialogue, might be invented, but everything is based on historical

research.

It's late on June 20, 2023, onboard a Royal Canadian Air Force patrol plane high above

the North Atlantic Ocean.

An airman hunches over a monitor, listening intently to an acoustic feed through his headphones.

Typically he's tasked with tracking the movements of potentially hostile submarines, but today

he has a different mission.

A small, civilian submersible with five people on board has gone missing on a dive to the

wreck of the Titanic, search teams from across the world have scrambled to help find it.

Aircraft cabin is dim, except for the blinking status lights and the soft glow of computer

monitors.

To search the murky waters of the Atlantic, the plane has deployed several solubuies.

These sensors sink to a certain depth, capture sounds, then transmit them back to the aircraft

circling above.

But it will take a skilled ear to pick out the sound of a small submersible against the

oceans background noise.

The Canadian airman adjusts a dial, there's nothing on Buie 2, who apart from the usual

sounds of the deep sea, Buie 5 is all acoustic clutter too.

But when he shifts to another channel, a sharper noise cuts through.

He lifts one earphone and glances across the cabin.

Sir, you may want to hear this.

The airman superior rises from his seat by the navigation console.

All right, what do you got?

I'm not sure yet, a noise, but it's repeating rhythmic.

He hands the officer a spare headset, listening intently to the officer's eyes narrow.

How long has that been coming through?

I switched to Buie 7 maybe 30 seconds ago?

This is the first time I've heard it.

Listen to this basic.

The two men weigh it as the sequence continues.

The officer leans over the airman's shoulder, watching the waveform on the screen bounce

in clean, distinct spikes.

Well, that doesn't look like random turbulence.

Exactly, it's too regular.

You think it could be a signal?

Someone banging?

No, it's loud relative to the ambient.

If they're using something inside the hole like a hammer, you would get this kind of resonance.

The officer removes the headset and exhales slowly.

All right, what's the interval?

It's difficult to say.

We didn't catch anything on our last pass, but it'd be easy to miss.

This could have been going on for hours.

All right, let's consider our options.

Could the Sano Buie be drifting?

Is there any possibility that this could be interference from ship traffic?

There are no surface vessels close enough to give us that profile.

It's coming from death, too, maybe 10,000 bead giver tape.

Hard to know precisely, though.

And you're sure it's not background noise?

Sir, I've been hunting subs for nine years.

I know what background noise is.

This isn't it.

All right, I'll inform Halifax.

They'll relay it up to change in the Americans, in the meantime, keep your headphones on.

If the pattern changes, tell me immediately.

Yes, sir.

Because if this is what we think it is, then they're alive.

And they're trying to call for help.

The airman returns his full attention to his headphones, straining to pick out any other

noise in the background.

Arithmic banging sound is the most promising sign yet that the crew of the missing submersible

Titan may still be alive.

But just finding the sub won't be enough.

If it is trapped at the bottom of the ocean, there won't be long to rescue the five people

on board, because the Titan's oxygen will run out in less than two days.

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From all double originals, I'm Lindsey Graham and this is American Scandal.

In April 1912, the British Ocean liner Titanic sank on its maiden voyage to the United

States.

Around 1500 people lost their lives in what was then the worst maritime disaster in history.

And then for more than 70 years, the ship lay undisturbed at the bottom of the North Atlantic

Ocean before it shattered remains were finally discovered in 1985.

But in the decades that followed, only a few people got to visit the wreck.

There weren't many submersibles capable of reaching it and the cost of mounting any

expedition was prohibitively high.

That all changed in 2021.

Stockton Rush and his company Oceangate began offering the public the opportunity to go

where only scientists, explorers and filmmakers had gone before.

For $250,000, wealthy thrill-seekers could book a seat on the revolutionary Titan submersible

and see the sunken ship of dreams for themselves.

Stockton Rush led the expeditions personally, but in June 2023, the exclusive adventure he

offered customers was transformed into a desperate rescue operation.

The search for the Titan would take place under the eyes of the international media and

in the end, Oceangate and Stockton Rush would become synonymous not with innovation or

deep-sea adventure, but with hubris, reckless decision-making and deadly disregard for safety.

This is episode 1, 12,000 feet under the sea.

It's 8.30am on June 18, 2023 in the North Atlantic Ocean, 325 miles southeast of Newfoundland.

An engineer tries to keep his balance as the floating platform he's standing on pitches

in the swell.

A few hundred feet away, the support ship Polar Prince looks almost serene, but out here

on this small platform, every wave feels like a new attempt to knock the engineer off his

feet.

Still he has a job to do.

He turns to the white cylindrical hull of the Titan submersible that's resting on the

platform.

It's 22 foot long body has a domed end cap at the bow and a tail fin on the stern.

Every time the engineer approaches the vessel, he can't resist running his hand over its

smooth surface.

There's nothing in the world like it.

Titan's innovative design and cutting-edge materials allow it to descend to death set

only a handful of subs can reach, but none of the others offer members of the public

the chance to come along for the ride.

After conducting his final checks of the stern, the engineer moves to Titan's front where

the domed end cap sits wide open.

He pokes his head inside and tells the five men on board, and it's time to close up

the hatch.

For the occupants smile back, there's the Pakistani businessman Shazada Dawood and his 19-year-old

son, Suleiman, who fidgets nervously with a Rubik's cube.

There's a beaming British millionaire, Hamish Harding, and the grey-haired Titanic expert

Paul Henri-Narjale, he's going to be their guide on today's trip.

The engineer shares a quick joke with all of them, but the fifth man inside the sub-pilot

just glares and snaps at him to get on with it.

The engineer's face flushes, he apologizes, and quickly withdraws, hurrying to complete

his work.

Man who's scolding him isn't just the sub's pilot, Stockton Rush is also the founder

and CEO of Oceangate, the owner of the Titan submersible, and the engineer's boss.

With a final wish of good luck, the engineer swings the end cap into place and begins tightening

the bolts that hold it there.

The next and the other four passengers are now sealed in, with no way of opening the

hash from the inside.

With the end cap bolted shut, the engineer climbs into a boat and returns to the polar

prince's support ship.

Then at 904 AM, a floating platform that Titan rests on slips beneath the surface of

the Atlantic.

Ten minutes later, after divers and scuba gear complete their final checks, the submersible

detaches from the platform, begins its slow descent to the bottom of the ocean.

The Titan is an experimental craft.

It's made fewer than 90 dives in total, and only 13 of those have reached the depth

of the Titanic.

The shipwreck is more than two miles beneath the surface, and reaching it typically takes

a few hours.

For the first 50 minutes of the descent, Titan is in regular contact with Oceangate staff

aboard the polar prince.

Every five to ten seconds, the submersible automatically checks in by sending an electronic

ping that gives the subm's position.

Stockton Rush also keeps in touch with the support ship manually, sending short coated

messages from his control console roughly every 15 minutes.

What it's not always easy to communicate between the surface and the bottom of the

ocean, at 9.53 AM, the Titan appears to veer off course, heading away from the Titanic's

coordinates.

On board the polar prince, the support team sends a message, asking Rush if he can still

see the ship on his display, but he doesn't respond.

For the next 13 minutes, polar prince sends the same message multiple times.

Finally, Rush answers with a single letter K, a code requesting a communications check.

The team onboard the polar prince confirms that they've received this message, and a few

moments later, they receive another message from the sub, informing them its communication

system briefly went offline earlier when everything's working again now.

The support crew aboard the polar prince isn't too worried.

They had suspected as much, and they soon receive another message from the Titan saying

all good here.

All throughout this exchange, the submersible continues its descent into the deep.

The automated pings continue to be erratic, though, giving contradictory positions that

make it difficult to plot the Titan's exact location.

But in one respect, at least, all instruments agree.

The Titan is closing in on the seafloor, and its intended destination, the wreck of the

Titanic.

A board the polar prince, Oceangate's control room, homes with electronics and soft chatter.

Wendy Rush sits at a workstation, focusing on a glowing laptop screen.

Wendy is stocked in Rush's wife, but she's also Oceangate's director of communications.

She's responsible for tracking the submersible's progress and keeping in contact with it throughout

the deep sea dive.

The Oceangate staffer nurses a cup of coffee, and glances over Wendy's shoulder at the

sub's GPS tracker.

So Wendy, how are we doing?

All good now the communication has been restored.

We should get another message in a few minutes.

Man takes a seat beside her.

We're almost there, about 500 meters away.

Wendy looks up as she hears an unfamiliar noise from what sounds like outside the control

room.

What was that bag?

But only seconds later Wendy's laptop beeps, and her attention returns to the screen.

She smiles.

The message from Stockton dropped two weights, and it must be slowing down.

Wendy picks up a walkie-talkie.

Control the top side, Titan reports dropping two weights, repeat two weights, confirm receiving.

She turns back to the staffer.

I was a little worried there for a moment.

About that noise?

Yeah, let's check the ping.

She clicks on the screen.

10,978 feet right on schedule, they should hit the seafloor in 10 or 15 minutes.

Let's see how dropping the weights slows the descent.

Wendy waits for the next automatic ping.

They should arrive every few seconds, but there's nothing.

The true member pushes his chair a little closer and squins at the screen.

We should have gotten another one by now, right?

Wendy refreshes the tracking panel, but nothing changes.

The last recorded point freezes on screen.

Oh, come on.

Have we lost tracking?

Yeah, it could be a packet loss.

Wendy shakes her head.

Her finger stands across the keyboard.

I'll request another comms check.

Hopefully it's just the same problem as last time.

For the second time in this time, communication between the Titan submersible and his support

ship has been severed.

That's happened on several other expeditions as well, so no one on board the polar prince

is panicking.

And with both the automated pangs and the manual messaging system down, Ocean Gate staff

conclude that there must be some kind of power issue on the submersible.

Probably the same one that took communication offline earlier in the time.

They assume that stock and rush is busy booting up Titan's backup systems and that they'll

hear from the subs soon.

In the meantime, the polar prince continues to send messages to the submersible two or

three times a minute.

None receives any reply.

The next two schedule communication checks go on answered as well.

These are all written up in the official notes as lost communications, but when the 45-minute

check-in arrives with no response from the Titan, the language and the log changes.

The entry no longer reads lost communications, but lost sub.

At this point, Ocean Gate's emergency procedures begin to activate, although there's still no

outright alarm on the polar prince.

Even if Titan has suffered some kind of mechanical or technical failure, the expectation is that

rush will simply have jettisoned the sub's remaining weights.

Once those are released, the submersible's natural buoyancy should cause it to slowly

ascend.

When it eventually resurfaces, the polar prince can locate it on both the hatch and recover

those inside.

So Ocean Gate staffs spread out across the deck of the polar prince, scanning the waves.

They watch for hours, but there's no sign of the submersible's white hull.

They begin to wonder whether perhaps rush has pressed on, continuing the trip to the Titanic

despite losing communications.

If that's the case, it should still surface by 3pm, but that hour comes and goes, the ocean

around them remains empty.

The next theory they consider is that the Titan has drifted in the underwater currents,

and resurfits somewhere farther away from the support ship out of sight.

So the polar prince begins a systematic search of the area, cutting through the waves in

a tight grid pattern, while crew members peer through binoculars and study radar screens,

searching for any trace of the missing submersible.

But still there's no sighting.

Hours have now passed since Titan was supposed to reappear.

The submersible has never been out of contact for this long before, and the Ocean Gate staff

aboard the polar prince realize they can no longer handle this situation alone.

They need help.

And soon, at a Coast Guard rescue coordination center in Boston, Massachusetts, a phone

starts ringing.

This center is responsible for supervising the waters that stretch for 200 miles off New

England.

It's not the biggest area compared with some other American Coast Guard centers, but it's

a busy lane for shipping traffic, and the phones are always ringing.

Most of the time, it's cargo ships with engine trouble or a fishing boat and rough weather,

but when the officer on duty picks up the phone this time, he quickly realizes this is

not a routine call.

The voice on the other end of the line identifies himself as David Ferguson, the captain of the

polar prince.

Over the next few minutes, the Coast Guard officer listens carefully, as Ferguson explains

the situation unfolding in the North Atlantic.

Ferguson says that the Titan submersible was supposed to surface at the latest almost

three hours ago, although they actually lost contact with a sub around five hours before

then.

Now, the polar prince wants help to search for it.

The Coast Guard officer outlines the first steps.

He offers to generate drift model calculations to predict where the Titan might have surfaced

if it is ascended without power.

He can also review what Coast Guard resources are available to respond and aid in the search.

Ferguson gravely accepts, because at this point, there is no ambiguity left.

The Titan isn't just overdue, it's officially missing.

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Within minutes of receiving the emergency call from the captain of the Polar Prince, the US

Coast Guard begins to deploy personnel and equipment.

The first to reach the scene in the North Atlantic are the crew of a C-130 Hercules search

and rescue plane.

They assist the hunt for the ocean gates missing submersible from the air.

What the Coast Guard really needs though is personnel at sea level as well, but the Titanic

rec site is 900 miles off Cape Cod and ships will take around two days to reach it from

New England.

There is a closer option though.

The Polar Prince is just over 300 miles from the coast of Newfoundland.

So the Coast Guard liaises with its counterparts in Canada, who immediately send an icebreakers

to support the search.

The Coast Guard is working on the same assumption as ocean gate, that the Titan has lost communication

and returned to the surface somewhere.

But even if that's true, Stockton Rush and the other four men on board are still in danger.

There's no way to open the sub's hatch from the inside.

So even on the surface, the occupants will suffocate if they're not found in time.

Ocean Gate informs the Coast Guard that the sub carries enough oxygen to last roughly

96 hours.

By the time night falls on June 18, 2023, Titan has been sealed for around 12 hours.

That gives the Coast Guard another 84 hours or 3 and a half days to locate the sub and

open its hatch.

The clock is ticking.

This little that rescuers can do at night, so at first light the following morning, a

Coast Guard aircraft takes off to resume the search.

But the Coast Guard pilots aren't the only ones rising early.

Rumors begin rippling through newsrooms around the world that there's a major story breaking

in the North Atlantic.

As the details are confirmed, reporters rush to be the first on the sea.

And with the Titan's disappearance now public knowledge, Rear Admiral John Mawger, commander

of the Boston Coast Guard, holds a press briefing.

He announces that the U.S. Navy has deployed three aircraft to scour the ocean.

The Canadian Air Force has agreed to support the search effort to putting another Hercules

in the air.

But there's still no sign of the Titan on the surface, and that leads the Coast Guard

to consider another possibility that the submersible is stuck on the seabed.

If that's the case, then the rescue mission has just grown vastly more complicated and

they're going to need expert help.

More than 1,000 miles away in East Aurora, New York, one such expert gathers a team of

engineers in a small conference room.

Ed Casano is the CEO of Pelagic Research Services, a company that operates remotely controlled

submersibles.

The atmosphere in the meeting room is tense.

The engineers have been glued to their phones all day following the news of Titan's disappearance.

Deep sea exploration is a small, tightly-knit industry, and many of Pelagic's employees

know their counterparts at Oceangate.

But unlike Oceangate, Pelagic only operates unmanned, remotely controlled submersibles,

so the thought of losing a crew at such an extreme death is almost unimaginable.

Casano claps his hands and calls the room to order.

Then he confirms what's being reported on the news is true.

He just received the call outlining the gravity of the situation and asking Pelagic for help.

Pelagic's flagship vessel is the Odysseus 6K, a cube-shaped submersible that can dive

down to 20,000 feet, far deeper than Titan's last known death.

So if Titan is stranded somewhere, Odysseus is exactly the craft to find it.

Normally, its researchers and surveyors who hire Odysseus to carry out deep-sea monitoring

using its array of cameras and sensors.

The subm has been deployed all over the world, but luckily for Oceangate, it is currently

at Pelagic's facility in the lab next door.

Their normal conditions, preparing and packing Odysseus for deployment takes two weeks.

Pelagic's engineers have standing instructions to work slowly and methodically with equipment

disspecialized, any mistake could cost millions.

But if they're going to rescue the Titan before its oxygen runs out, then Casano needs

his team to hurry.

He and his engineers quickly draw up a plan.

They prioritize the most important tasks and skip anything they can, but geography still

poses a major obstacle.

Pelagic's headquarters are in upstate New York, more than 300 miles inland.

There's no time to transport Odysseus to a port by road, but Casano has another idea.

He makes a call to a contact with the US Air Force, and soon there are three C-17 Globe

Masters waiting on the tarmac at the nearest major airport.

But Pelagic isn't the only company summoned to help the Titan.

There's another remotely operated submersible capable of reaching the depth of missing

sub is thought to be at.

This one is already in the Atlantic Ocean.

Just like Odysseus, the Victor 6000 is usually hired by scientific researchers and surveyors.

And when Oceangate staff reach out to Victor's owners, they learn that it's currently aboard

the French research vessel Let-Alente.

After he's made aware of the situation, the captain of that ship immediately sets course

for the Titanic rec site, but getting there will still take 48 hours.

Oceangate is running out of time.

And while the deep sea submersibles are mobilized, the surface search continues.

More ships arrive to sweep the area as well as aircraft, including a long-range patrol

plane operated by the Royal Canadian Air Force.

And during one flight on June 20th, an airman onboard monitoring a Sanabui hears a banging

noise.

The sound is clear and regular, and it's coming from about the depth where the Titan

was last detected.

After two days without any sign of the submersible, this noise suddenly raises hopes that the

passengers are still alive.

The banging sound might be the crew desperately trying to signal for help.

News of the mysterious noise breaks as the world's media is still descending on the Canadian

province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Its capital, St. John's, has become the staging point for most of the vessels in the search

and rescue effort, and among the reporters covering the story is local CBC journalist

Ryan Cook.

Having home from work late on June 20th, 2023, he witnesses the search effort enter in

new phase.

From his car, he sees three enormous U.S. Air Force cargo planes fly right over the top

of him.

They're heading in to land at the nearby airport.

Cook thinks from on, and then abandons his plans for a quiet evening.

Instead, he makes a U-turn and follows the three planes.

When he reaches the perimeter fans bordering the airport, Cook swings his car onto the gravel

shoulder and kills the engine.

Through the windshield, he can see that a cluster of reporters has beaten him to it.

There's already a group of camera operators and photographers by the fence, even one

man live-streaming the events on his phone.

Cook gets out of his car just in time to see the last of the three giant airplanes on

its final approach.

A thunderous shadow passes overhead, low enough that Cook instinctively ducks.

The huge slate gray plane drifts lower and lower until tire squeal and it touches down.

A voice then calls out from the group of reporters.

Hey, Ryan, thought you were going home.

Cook turns to see a fellow CBC journalist, a camera bag slung over his shoulder, cooked

smiles and shrugs.

Well, I was for about ten minutes, then those things flew over my car and I figured

something was happening.

Three American Globe Masters, one after the other, yeah, that'll catch anyone's attention.

They lead against the fence as ground crews swarm around the planes, offloading pallets

and steel containers onto waiting trailers.

Cook pulls out his phone to check for mismessages.

You hear anything about what's on board?

No, nothing concrete.

Someone said they might be unloading decompression chambers.

Someone else said remotely operated vehicles.

Well, ROVs would make sense, if they think the titans on the bottom.

The last Globe Master rolls to a halt, its cargo ramp opening with a hydraulic groan.

Inside, Cook can see more tarped crates or equipment.

Man, have you ever seen anything like this?

They're turning St. John's into a military staging ground or something.

Yeah, I guess that banging noise they heard lit a fire under everyone.

Cook wraps his jacket tire and yawons, his collied laughs.

You look like crap, by the way.

Well, thanks.

I've been running on adrenaline and coffee since Monday, when you should go home and get

some sleep.

Miss all the fun here?

They watch as the gate opens and police motorcycles roll out, followed by a convoy of trucks.

Cook checks the time.

Now they are moving fast.

Where do you think they're heading?

Gotta be the harbor, right?

Well, what are we waiting for?

Cook is a tired laugh.

Well, what's a few more hours, right?

Ryan Cook and his colleague jog back to their cars.

Although they don't know exactly what the three cargo aircraft were carrying, it's clear

that no expense is being spared in the hunt for the Titan.

But no matter how much money is thrown at the problem, there's one thing that no one can

change.

If ocean gates calculations are correct, there's barely a day left before the submersible's

oxygen runs out.

Unless they find the Titan soon, then the work of hundreds of people from across the globe

will all have been for nothing.

By June 21st, 2023, the surface search for Titan has expanded to an area twice the

size of Connecticut.

Another Canadian Coast Guard vessel has joined the operation, sweeping the waves with advanced

sensors.

Meanwhile, overhead, a U.S. Coast Guard C-130 Hercules zig-zags across the sky in a tight

search pattern.

Neither spots any sign of the missing submersible nor do any of the other ships replaying scouring

the area.

But the Titan is only 22 feet long, a tiny speck against the vast ocean.

Even if searchers pass close by, the craft could easily blend in among the choppy, white-tipped

waves of the Atlantic, all they can do is keep looking and keep hoping.

Beneath the surface, the search zone is smaller but no less daunting.

Titan may have drifted in the deep ocean currents, but the working assumption is that the

sub is stuck somewhere close to the Titanic wreck, the same area where the Canadian Air Force

picked up banging noises on a sonoboe.

If the sounds came from the Titan, the submersible might still be intact, rescuers just need a

way to get eyes on the seabed.

And in the early hours of June 22nd, the expert helped they need finally arrives.

Having been flown into Newfoundland by the U.S. Air Force two days earlier, the deep sea

specialists from pelagic research services in New York arrive at the search zone.

When cuts across the deck of the supply ship Horizon Arctic as pelagic engineers swarm

over the Odysseus 6K, floodlights bay the remotely operated submersible in a white glow.

The cube-shaped craft has its metal limbs folded in, its cameras covered, and its cables

all neatly coiled, but soon it needs to be in the water.

Watching from the rail as the boat lurches around him is pelagic CEO Ed Casano.

The sea and sky around him are pitch black.

The void broken only by scattered lights in the dark, coast guard cutters, research ships,

even private vessels that have been drafted into the rescue mission.

Casano is watching his team work feverishly to prepare the Odyssey.

When the Horizon Arctic's captain joins him at the rail, good timing, because Casano

has a question.

He nods across the deck toward the Odyssey, so you're crane and winch, I'm sure they

can handle the weight with this sea-state.

We've lifted heavier and worse believe me, we'll just need to time it with waves, where

your ROV is going to slam into the hull, we probably don't want that.

No, you neither, right?

Captain watches the engineers work from, you know, we were the Titan support ship for

the last two years.

Most of my crew know stocked him personally, so this isn't just another operation you

understand.

Now I understand, my whole team does, we're doing all we can to bring them home, that's

good, but be honest, really think it's possible that they're still alive, if they are we've

got one shot to save them.

I don't know, they've got what, five hours of oxygen left, yeah, maybe less, and it's

two hours to the bottom and two hours back.

Well that's not a lot of time to find them, now it's going to be very tight, and that's

assuming Titan's not resting on its side, or trap somewhere that's difficult to reach.

So the faster we get down there, the better, well we're not going to drag our feet, we'll

get you in the water as soon as you're ready, but after that, it's up to you guys, yeah,

but if Titan's on the seabed, Odysseus will find her, that's what she was built for.

Just after 4 a.m. on June 22nd, 2023, the Odysseus 6K finally enters the water.

Under normal circumstances, the submersible would descend at a gentle 80 feet a minute,

but this is no ordinary dive, so its operators push the sub to its limits, and the Odysseus

descends almost 50% faster than usual.

Even then, it's 6.15 a.m. before it reaches the seabed, and the speedy mobilization and rapid

descent have come at a cost.

Seconds after reaching the search zone, some of Odysseus' thrusters fail, and without

them, the submersible won't be able to maneuver safely through the hazardous debris field

that surrounds the wreck of the Titanic.

After nearly three days of non-stop work, it seems that the pelagic team has failed at

the last moment.

Under normal protocols, the Odysseus operators would abort the mission.

They would bring the submersible slowly back to the surface, diagnose the problem, and

only redeploy when they were sure it was fixed, but they don't have time for that.

So in a desperate gamble, the pelagic team raises the submersible to 65 feet above the

seabed, high enough to avoid it crashing into anything while they try a remote fix from

the surface.

With the sub suspended in the dark, they spend an hour trying to get the thrusters going,

but nothing works.

Eventually, they are left with just one option, power cycling the entire vessel.

Turning Odysseus off and on again at this depth is dangerous, though.

If the submersible fails to reboot, it will hang lifeless at the end of its long cable.

The pelagic team will then have no option, but to haul it back up, possibly destroying

its highly sensitive and expensive electronics in the process, but there is no other choice

so they give it a try.

Remarkably, this last-ditch effort works.

When systems restart on the Odysseus, the thrusters come back online, and the operators

have full control again.

Just as the submersible reaches the seabed a second time, the 96-hour countdown reaches

zero.

Titan will be out of oxygen at any moment, and if the men on board aren't already unconscious,

then they are living on borrowed time.

Inside a converted shipping container on the deck of the horizon Arctic, Jesse Doran

hunches over Odysseus' control panel.

Doran is pelagic's ROV manager and an experienced submersible pilot, his eyes flit across several

screens, showing the bottom of the ocean has captured by Odysseus' cameras.

Other monitors display depth readings and temperature data.

Doran needs all this information and his disposal, because at 12,000 feet below the surface,

the seabed is pitch black.

The only visibility comes from Odysseus' floodlights, which barely push through the gloom.

Behind him, pelagic CEO Ed Cassana watches over Doran's shoulder.

He doesn't say a word, but Doran knows he'll be scanning the screens too, searching

for any anomaly, any glimmer of hope.

And at 9.40am, a flash of white suddenly appears on one of the monitors.

Something is reflecting the Odysseus' lights, and it looks too clean and bright to be part

of the Titanic.

His mouth dry, Doran maneuvers the Odysseus closer.

He and Cassano both lean in, and as they get closer, they see that the object is not encrusted

or decayed by a century underwater like everything else in the debris field.

It's unmistakably modern.

Doran angles the submersible to get a better view and suddenly realizes exactly what he's

looking at.

It's the Titan's tail cone, but it's completely separated from the rest of the submersible.

After a three-and-a-half day search, the Titan has been found, and it's in pieces.

Doran's fingers stay on the controls, but his stomach twists.

There's only one explanation for what he's seeing, that the Titan has suffered a catastrophic

structural failure.

The enormous pressure of the water at this death must have crushed it in a sudden collapse

known as an implosion.

The only small comfort is that this would have happened in just milliseconds.

Stockton Rush and his four passengers would likely have been dead before they even realized

something had gone wrong.

After a long heavy pause, Doran turns to Cassano.

He picks up a radio and reports what they've found to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Now, the international effort will have to switch from rescue to recovery, but it won't

just be about retrieving what's left of the passengers for their families to bury.

There's sure to be an investigation, and the U.S. Coast Guard will want all the evidence

they can get, because it won't just be enough to establish what happened.

The families of the victims, the authorities, and the rest of the submersible industry will

demand to know why the Titan imploded, and whether this fatal accident could have been

prevented.

From Audible Originals and Airship, this is Episode 1 of the Titan submersible disaster

for American Scandal.

In our next episode, in designing and building the Titan Ocean Gate set a collision course

with catastrophe, driven by ambition, and convinced that the promise of innovation justifies

almost any risk, Stockton Rush champions a series of increasingly experimental submersibles.

Follow American Scandal on the Audible app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to all episodes of American Scandal ad-free by joining Audible.

And to find out more about me and my other projects, including my live stage show coming

to a theater near you, go to NotThatLinseyGram.com, that's NotThatLinseyGram.com.

If you'd like to learn more about the Titan submersible disaster, we recommend the Documentaries

Titan, the Ocean Gate Disaster from Netflix, and Implosion, the Titan sub-disaster from

the PPC.

This episode contains reenactments and dramatized details, and while in most cases we can't

know exactly what was said, all our dramatizations are based on historical research.

American Scandal is hosted, edited and executed produced by me, Lucy Graham for Airship.

This episode is written and researched by Scott Reeves, Senior Producer Andy Beckerman,

Managing Producer Emily Burke, fact-checking by Alyssa Jung Perry, Audio-editing by

Mohammed Shahzib, Original Music by Thrum, Sound Design by Gabriel Gould, Executive Producer

for Airship is William Simpson, Executive Producer for Audible is Jenny Lauer Beckman,

Head of Creative Development at Audible, Kate Naven, Head of Audible Originals North

America, Marshall Louis, and Chief Content Officer Rachel Giazza.

Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals LLC Sound Recording Copyright 2026 by Audible

Originals LLC.