Pod Insights American Scandal Titan Sub Disaster | 12,000 Leagues Under the Sea | 1 About this episode In June 2023, the OceanGate submersible Titan vanishes during a dive to the wreck of Titanic, triggering a frantic multinational search involving ships, aircraft, and deep-sea robots.
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0:00 Lindsay Graham? Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of American Scandal early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. American Scandal uses dramatizations that are based on true events. Some elements, including dialogue, might be invented, but everything is based on historical research.
0:31 Lindsay Graham? 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 onboard has gone missing on a dive to the wreck of the Titanic. Search teams from across the world have scrambled to help find it. The 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
1:13 Lindsay Graham? several sonobuys. 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 ocean's background noise.
1:31 Lindsay Graham? The Canadian airman adjusts a dial. There's nothing on buoy two apart from the usual sounds of the deep sea. Buoy five 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's 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, the officer's eyes narrow. How long's that been coming through? I switched to buoy seven maybe 30 seconds ago. This is the first time I've heard it. Listen to this bassing. The two men wait as the sequence continues.
2:16 Lindsay Graham? The officer leans over the airman's shoulder, watching the waveform on his 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? Well, it's loud relative to the ambient. If they're using something inside the hull like a hammer, you would get this kind of resonance. The officer removes the headset and exhales slowly. All right, uh, 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. Uh, could the Sano buoy 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 depth, too, maybe 10,000 feet, give or take.
3:01 Lindsay Graham? 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 of 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.
3:26 Lindsay Graham? The airman returns his full attention to his headphones, straining to pick out any other noise in the background. The rhythmic 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. The international search and rescue operation in the North Atlantic is in a race against time.
4:30 Lindsay Graham? Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of American History Tellers. In our latest series, U.S. Army Lieutenant Adolphus Greeley and 24 other men embark on a scientific expedition to the Arctic in 1881. But despite achieving several triumphs of discovery, the men will soon face tragedy. Listen to American History Tellers on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts.
4:57 Lindsay Graham? From Audible Originals, I'm Lindsay Graham, and this is American Scandal.
5:21 Lindsay Graham? In April 1912, the British ocean liner Titanic sank on its maiden voyage to the United States. Around 1,500 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 its 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 Ocean Gate began offering the public the opportunity to go where only scientists,
6:04 Lindsay Graham? 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, Ocean Gate 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.
6:52 Lindsay Graham? It's 8:30 a.m. on June 18th, 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. Its 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.
7:37 Lindsay Graham? Titan's innovative design and cutting-edge materials allow it to descend to depths that 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, "It's time to close up the hatch." Four of the occupants smile back. There's the Pakistani businessman Shazad Awud and his 19-year-old son Suliman, who fidgets nervously with a Rubik's Cube. There's the beaming British millionaire Hamish Harding and the gray-haired Titanic expert Paul Henri N'Gelé. He's gonna be their guide on today's trip.
8:19 Lindsay Graham? The engineer shares a quick joke with all of them, but the fifth man inside, the sub's 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. The man who scolded 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. Rush and the other four passengers are now sealed in, with no way of opening the hatch from the inside. With the end cap bolted shut, the engineer climbs into a boat and returns to the Polar Prince support ship.
9:02 Lindsay Graham? Then, at 9:04 a.m., the floating platform the 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 ninety dives in total, and only thirteen 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 fifty minutes of the descent, Titan is in regular contact with Ocean Gate staff aboard the Polar Prince. Every five to ten seconds, the submersible automatically checks in by sending an electronic
9:45 Lindsay Graham? ping that gives the sub's position. Stockton Rush also keeps in touch with the support ship manually, sending short, coded messages from his control console roughly every fifteen minutes. But it's not always easy to communicate between the surface and the bottom of the ocean. At 9:53 a.m., the Titan appears to veer off course, heading away from the Titanic's coordinates. Onboard 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 thirteen minutes, Polar Prince sends the same message multiple times. Finally, Rush answers with a single letter, "K," a code requesting a communications check.
10:28 Lindsay Graham? 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, but everything's working again now. The support crew aboard the Polar Prince is 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.
11:12 Lindsay Graham? Aboard the Polar Prince, Ocean Gate's control room hums with electronics and soft chatter. Wendy Rush sits at a workstation, focusing on a glowing laptop screen. Wendy is Stockton Rush's wife, but she's also Ocean Gate's Director of Communications. She's responsible for tracking the submersible's progress and keeping in contact with it throughout the deep-sea dive.
11:38 Lindsay Graham? Another Ocean Gate staffer nurses a cup of coffee and glances over Wendy's shoulder at the sub's GPS tracker. So Wendy, how we doing? All good now, the communication's been restored. We should get another message in a few minutes. The 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 bang? But only seconds later Wendy's laptop beeps, and her attention returns to the screen. She smiles. Message from Stockton: "Dropped two weights." They must be slowing down. Wendy picks up the walkie-talkie. Control the topside, 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.
12:24 Lindsay Graham? 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 crew member pushes his chair a little closer and squints at the screen. We should've 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, could be a packet loss. Wendy shakes her head. Her fingers dance across the keyboard. I'll request another comms check. Hopefully it's just the same problem as last time.
13:08 Lindsay Graham? For the second time in this dive, communication between the Titan submersible and its support ship has been severed. That's happened on several other expeditions as well, so no one onboard the Polar Prince is panicking. And with both the automated pings 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 dive. They assume that Stockton Rush is busy booting up Titan's backup systems and that they'll hear from the sub 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 scheduled communication checks go unanswered as well.
13:51 Lindsay Graham? 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 in 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, unbolt the hatch, and recover those inside.
14:34 Lindsay Graham? So Ocean Gate staff 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 3:00 PM, but that hour comes and goes, and the ocean around them remains empty. The next theory they consider is that the Titan has drifted in the underwater currents and resurfaced 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.
15:19 Lindsay Graham? 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 in rough weather. But when the officer on duty picks up the phone this time,
16:02 Lindsay Graham? 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 the sub around five hours before that. 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 ascended without power. He can also review what Coast Guard resources are available to respond and aid in the search.
16:46 Lindsay Graham? Ferguson gratefully accepts, because at this point, there is no ambiguity left. The Titan isn't just overdue, it's officially missing.
16:59 Speaker 01 You stepped out for your morning jog. Except it's not your usual morning jog. You started listening to an epic sci-fi book on Audible. Thirty chapters later, you've accidentally run a half marathon. You've lost track of how far you've run, somewhere just past the city limits. You can't stop. You have to find out what happens next. Then it's over. The universe seems bigger. You feel different. You feel like you have no idea where you are. Audible. Stories that speak to you.
17:29 Lindsay Graham? By 1779, Benedict Arnold had sacrificed more for the revolution than almost any other man in America. One of George Washington's most effective commanders, he had nearly lost a leg in the Second Battle of Saratoga. But in return, Arnold believed he had been humiliated by Congress and cheated of his glory by lesser men, so he decided to make them pay. Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of the podcast American Scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history: presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, Benedict Arnold turns his back on his comrades in the Continental Army and secretly defects to the British. With the help of his wife, he plots to hand over the most important colonial fortress
18:13 Lindsay Graham? to the enemy and doom the revolution he once served. Follow American Scandal wherever you get your podcasts. Audible subscribers can binge all episodes of American Scandal early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
18:41 Lindsay Graham? Within minutes of receiving the emergency call from the captain of the Polar Prince, the U.S. 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 wreck 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 icebreaker to support the search.
19:24 Lindsay Graham? 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 three and a half days to locate the sub and open its hatch. The clock is ticking. There's little that rescuers can do at night.
20:09 Lindsay Graham? 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 scene. And with the Titan's disappearance now public knowledge, Rear Admiral John Mauger, 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 too, 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,
20:53 Lindsay Graham? 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 Cassano is the CEO of Pelagic Research Services, a company that operates remotely controlled submersibles.
21:18 Lindsay Graham? 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 depth is almost unimaginable. Cassano 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,
22:03 Lindsay Graham? far deeper than Titan's last known depth. So if Titan is stranded somewhere, Odysseus is exactly the craft to find it. Normally, it's researchers and surveyors who hire Odysseus to carry out deep sea monitoring using its array of cameras and sensors. The sub has been deployed all over the world, but luckily for OceanGate, it is currently at Pelagic's facility in the lab next door. Under normal conditions, preparing and packing Odysseus for deployment takes two weeks. Pelagic's engineers have standing instructions to work slowly and methodically. With equipment this specialized, any mistake could cost millions. But if they're going to rescue the Titan before its oxygen runs out, then Cassano needs his team to hurry.
22:47 Lindsay Graham? 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 Cassano has another idea. He makes a call to a contact with the US Air Force, and soon, there are three C-17 Globemasters 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 the 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.
23:34 Lindsay Graham? And when Ocean Gate's staff reach out to Victor's owners, they learn that it's currently aboard the French research vessel Letalant. After he's made aware of the situation, the captain of that ship immediately sets course for the Titanic wreck site. But getting there will still take forty-eight hours. Ocean Gate 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 twentieth, an airman onboard monitoring a sonobuoy hears a banging noise. The sound is clear and regular, and it's coming from about the depth where the Titan was last detected.
24:18 Lindsay Graham? 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. Driving home from work late on June twentieth, two thousand twenty-three, he witnesses the search effort enter a new phase. From his car, he sees three enormous US Air Force cargo planes fly right over the top of him. They're heading in to land at the nearby airport.
25:03 Lindsay Graham? Cook thinks for a moment, then abandons his plans for a quiet evening. Instead, he makes a U-turn and follows the three planes. When he reaches the perimeter fence 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 livestreaming 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.
25:38 Lindsay Graham? A thunderous shadow passes overhead, low enough that Cook instinctively ducks. The huge slate gray plane drifts lower and lower until tires 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. Cook 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 Globemasters, one after the other, yeah, that'll catch anyone's attention. They lean 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 missed messages.
26:22 Lindsay Graham? You hear anything about what's on board? Nah, 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 Titan's on the bottom. The last Globemaster rolls to a halt, its cargo ramp opening with a hydraulic groan. Inside, Cook can see more tarped crates bore 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 tighter and yawns. His colleague laughs. You look like crap, by the way. Well, thanks, I've been running on adrenaline and coffee since Monday.
27:04 Lindsay Graham? Well, you should go home, get some sleep, and miss all the fun here. They watch as a gate opens and police motorcycles roar out, followed by a convoy of trucks. Cook checks the time. Well, they are moving fast. Where do you think they're heading? Gotta be the harbor, right? Well, what are we waiting for? Cook gives a tired laugh. Well, once 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 Gate's calculations are correct, there's barely a day left before the submersible's
27:49 Lindsay Graham? 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.
28:01 Speaker 02 Journalist Tristan Redman goes where no son-in-law should ever go. Deep into his wife's family history, digging up the cold case of who murdered her great-grandmother. Because, I should mention, he thinks the murderer might actually be the beloved family patriarch. For the best binge-watch series like Ghost Story, listen to the Audible True Crime Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
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29:02 Lindsay Graham? 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 US Coast Guard C-130 Hercules zigzags across the sky in a tight search pattern. Neither spots any sign of the missing submersible, nor do any of the other ships or planes 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.
29:46 Lindsay Graham? 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 sonobuoy. If the sounds came from the Titan, the submersible might still be intact. The rescuers just need a way to get eyes on the seabed. And in the early hours of June 22nd, the expert help they need finally arrives. Having been flown into Newfoundland by the US Air Force two days earlier, the deep-sea specialists from Pelagic Research Services in New York arrive at the search zone. Wind cuts across the deck of the supply ship Horizon Arctic
30:29 Lindsay Graham? as Pelagic's engineers swarm over the Odysseus 6K. Floodlights bathe 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 Cassano.
30:55 Lindsay Graham? The sea and sky around him are pitch black, devoid broken only by scattered lights in the dark, Coast Guard cutters, research ships, even private vessels that have been drafted into the rescue mission. Cassano is watching his team work feverishly to prepare the Odyssey when the Horizon Arctic's captain joins him at the rail. Good timing, because Cassano has a question. He nods across the deck toward the Odyssey. So your crane and winch, you 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, or your ROV is gonna slam into the hull. You probably don't want that. No, you neither, right? The captain watches the engineers work for him. You know, we were the Titan support ship for the last two years.
31:40 Lindsay Graham? Most of my crew knowstocked them personally. So this isn't just another operation, you understand? No, I understand. My whole team does. We're doing all we can to bring them home. That's good, but be honest. You 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. No, it's gonna be very tight. And that's assuming Titan's not resting on its side or trapped somewhere that's difficult to reach. So the faster we get down there, the better. Well, we're not gonna 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, the Odysseus will find her. That's what she was built for.
32:27 Lindsay Graham? Just after 4 a.m. on June 22, 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's 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,
33:13 Lindsay Graham? 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.
33:57 Lindsay Graham? 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. But 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.
34:40 Lindsay Graham? Inside a converted shipping container on the deck of the Horizon Arctic, Jesse Doran hunches over Odysseus's 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 as captured by Odysseus's cameras. Other monitors display depth readings and temperature data. Doran needs all this information at his disposal because at 12,000 feet below the surface, the seabed is pitch black. The only visibility comes from Odysseus's floodlights, which barely push through the gloom. Behind him, Pelagic CEO Ed Cassano 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.
35:25 Lindsay Graham? And at 9:40 a.m., a flash of white suddenly appears on one of the monitors. Something is reflecting the Odysseus's 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 sentry 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.
36:09 Lindsay Graham? 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 depth 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
36:54 Lindsay Graham? 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.
37:16 Lindsay Graham? From Audible Originals and Airship, this is episode one, "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.
37:40 Lindsay Graham? "American Scandal" is only possible because of listeners like you, so thank you. And don't miss an episode. Be sure to follow "American Scandal" on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts. And Audible subscribers can binge new seasons of "American Scandal" early and ad-free right now. Join Audible in the Audible app or by subscribing on Apple Podcasts. And to find out more about me, including my other podcasts, my live show, the history tours I'm arranging, and all sorts of other things, go to historyishuman.com. That's historyishuman.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 Subdisaster" from the BBC.
38:24 Lindsay Graham? 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 executive 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 Mohamed Shazib, 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 Navin, head of Audible Originals North America Marshall Louis, and chief content officer Rachel Giatza. Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals LLC.
39:08 Lindsay Graham? Sound recording copyright 2026 by Audible Originals LLC.
39:19 Speaker 04 Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia spent her life exposing powerful people. Then, in 2017, she was killed in a car bombing. I'm Stephen Gray, and for the past nine years, I've been trying to find out who wanted her dead. That search took me to Malta through secret companies, organised crime, and eventually to one of the island's richest and most powerful men. Now, after years of waiting, this trial has finally happened. But when the verdict came in, the case took a turn that almost no one had expected. In a brand-new update to the multi-award-winning podcast Who Killed Daphne?, I'm returning to Malta to find out how we got there and where the search for the truth goes next. Listen to the new episode of Who Killed Daphne? wherever you get your podcasts,
40:04 Speaker 04 and you can hear the full six-part investigation from the beginning, ad-free with Audible. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app and by subscribing on Apple Podcasts.
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