Latest news with #HamishHarding
Daily Mirror
25-06-2025
- General
- Daily Mirror
New theory explores how one simple part may have doomed Titan submarine
Experts have revealed why using the wrong substance to help create the submarine could have contributed to the implosion of the Titanic Oceangate vessel last year A new theory exploring why the Titan submarine imploded during a deep sea tour has emerged and it could all be down to the glue used to stick the parts together, it has been revealed. British explorer Hamish Harding and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood were killed on board the Oceangate vessel in June last year, alongside French national Paul-Henri Nargeolet. Stockton Rush, who was the chief executive of OceanGate Expeditions – which ran the expedition, was also killed. The vessel was heading to see the Titanic wreckage around 435 miles south of St John's, Newfoundland, when it lost contact with the tour operator an hour and 45 minutes into the two-hour trip. Days later, wreckage was uncovered from the ocean floor close to the Titanic. Now, it has been revealed that the glue used to piece the disastrous vessel together was like "peanut butter" and wasn't certified to work in deep sea water. Henkel, the German adhesive and sealant company which manufactured the glue, said it had only ever advertised its goods to the aerospace sector. The company said that although glue can be used correctly "in other applications", it was "not specified for usage under water". A spokesperson said: "It is the end user's responsibility to test their design to ensure proper performance." It has been reported that the company were unaware that their glue was used on the deadly submarine. Now questions have formed on whether the choice of adhesive was part of the reason the vessel exploded on June 18, 2023. On June 17, the maintenance log for the vessel stated that there was an issue with "unsightly" sealant connecting the titanium to the carbon fibre. Expert Dr Christian Stone, who specialises in corrosion, said the glue would have transformed the submarine into a huge battery. He said he wouldn't have advised OceanGate to use the glue. The specialist, who is based at Loughborough University, told MailOnline: "If you put two metals together and they're connected electrically to a media which conducts electricity like seawater you make a battery. "One side of that battery will corrode and give up ions. The other side will actually be protected. At the corroding side, we call this the anode and that makes acid. The other side is the cathode in which case in our case that will be carbon fibre or titanium and that will make alkaline." He added: "I would have advised them to use a filler material that was inert and does not conduct electricity." The National Transportation Safety Board previously took a look at the wreckage which was recovered from the disaster. They found that: "Most of the adhesive originally used to bond the hull to the titanium segment had disbonded from the machined end of the hull piece, but there was an approximately 3.5-inch-long patch where some adhesive bits were still attached." Despite the glue failing to strongly hold the vessel together, investigators believe it is not the cause behind the tragedy. They suspect that the submarine had failed at the front.
Al Arabiya
19-06-2025
- General
- Al Arabiya
Two years on: What the Titan submersible teaches the world about wealth inequality
Two years ago, OceanGate's Titan submersible implosion killed all five men on-board and during that same week, over 600 migrants died off the Greek coast in attempts to reach Europe. While the world reacted to both tragedies with solemnity, there were key differences in how public sentiment received the news of each incident. On-board the Titan submersible was OceanGate's CEO Stockton Rush, British explorer Hamish Harding, veteran French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman. Many people who followed the news at the time can share at least one name or fact about at least one of the Titan submersible passengers. However, it would be surprising if anyone is able to name any man, women or child who died in the migrant shipwreck near Greece. Did a migrant's life cost less than that of individuals who paid $250,000 for their fateful adventure? Is it fair that one tragedy drew more attention than the other? Is it unrealistic to expect an impeccable collective conscience from a world that is doused in imperfections? After all, prominence is one of the key criteria to decide a story's newsworthiness. And a once-in-a-lifetime exploration trip to see the Titanic shipwreck was undeniably notable; however, the death of hundreds of individuals in search of a better life ought to be equally prominent – if not more. All questions aside, the world would be amiss if it did not at least attempt to reflect on some lessons about wealth equality and the costs of human life. If the American tourism and expedition company was treading the line between bravery and carelessness, are we responsible for the way the world has come to earn and celebrate wealth? How much is too much in this cruel game of disparity, where most struggle in desperation while few engage in excessive indulgence? On the contrary, maybe such arguments only arise in hindsight. If the Titan journey was successful, it would have been met with excitement and awe – as the previous two similar journeys were. In that case, should high-budget exploration be deemed irresponsible just for the seemingly unjustified cost? And if yes, then how would humanity continue its pursuits in science and technology, which have at times proven to be extremely beneficial? When we get down to the brass tacks, was it just a matter of ensuring safety and ruling out any negligence? In a philosophical sense, was it mere fate? Is it worth understanding and unpacking layers of what-ifs? Or maybe two years on, is it time to learn what the Titan submersible teaches the world about wealth inequality? A report by the Pew Research Center published in January 2025 outlines the grim state of wealth inequality across the world. Not much about the findings is surprising, but it might be time to concede that things don't need to be how they are. If individuals and civil societies are willing to make changes about their relationships with wealth, then international organizations and nation states are likely to follow suit. That is not to say that the greater responsibility in the grand scheme of things lies on common citizens, but that it is important to remember that people have the agency to affect change – should they make the brave choice to exercise it. Conducted across 36 countries, the Pew Research Center survey finds data to back this call for change, with a majority of responders projecting 'deep global anxieties about the economic future and a strong desire for economic reform.' While 54 percent of people said that economic inequality is a 'very big problem' in their country, 30 percent said it was a 'moderately big problem' – that is over 80 percent people agreeing that it is indeed a problem, irrespective of how big. In financially developed countries such as Australia, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, Spain, the United Kingdom and the US, a median of 57 percent adults responded that they expect the next generation to be in worse economic standing than their parents. Meanwhile, in some South Asian and Southeast Asian countries including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand, people were more optimistic about their outlook on the economic prospects of their children's generation. A key finding of the study shows that 33 out of the 36 nations polled agree that their country's economic system either needs major changes or a complete reform. This shows that most of us is more likely to believe that wealth inequality needs to be addressed than those who say it is not a problem at all. The discussion probably raises more questions than it answers, which is not the worst thing to jolt a world in need of some active introspection. Because when push comes to shove, money is at the heart of all that happens. The press follows the money. Individuals work around money all their lives. And because nation states chart their path with money in mind, we give rise to poverty, war and injustice - all things that the hundreds of migrants on the fishing boat to Europe were trying to flee.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
‘Absolutely shocking': Netflix documentary examines how the Titan sub disaster happened
If you were sentient in the summer of 2023, you probably remember the feverish speculation, vicarious horror, snap consternation and armchair sleuthing after the disappearance of the submersible called Titan during a commercial voyage to the wreck of the Titanic. The Titan sub disaster was inescapable for weeks as the story evolved from critical rescue mission – the best-case scenario being a mechanical failure deep in the North Atlantic with 96 hours of oxygen for the five passengers, which you better believe became a countdown clock on cable news – to tragic recovery operation. Related: 'Incredibly disturbing': docuseries goes inside jaw-dropping LA mortuary scandal The sub, it turned out, had imploded at 3,300 meters beneath the surface, 90 minutes into a dive that was supposed to reach 3,800 meters deep. All five passengers – British explorer Hamish Harding, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet and submersible owner Stockton Rush – were killed instantly. Even as the search for the sub, whose wreckage was eventually returned to land, continued in earnest, concerning reports about the safety record at OceanGate, the company which operated the vehicle, began to emerge: that a whistleblower had declared implosion of the sub's trademark carbon fiber hull a mathematical certainty years earlier. That Rush, the company's founder and CEO, pursued commercial voyages anyway, eluding any type of third-party certification. For the majority of the public, the story ended along those lines: a preventable tragedy, another sin of human hubris at arguably the most famous shrine to the folly of human hubris in history. That is not wrong; according to the new Netflix documentary Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, the sub's implosion was virtually guaranteed by its design. 'I'm convinced, based on the research and the discussions that I've had, that the submersible Titan could have imploded at any time,' said the film's director, Mark Monroe. In fact, it was 'absolutely shocking' that Titan made as many successful dives – 80 attempts, 13 to Titanic depth, between 2021 and 2022 – as it did. But for those who either worked at OceanGate, were tasked with the investigation or loved someone lost on board, the story is much more complicated, and concerning, than a design flaw. Another film would proceed through an exact timeline of Titan's final mission on 18 June, 2023; include footage of the wreckage or diagrams of its descent coordinated to text messages sent to its surface-level team; play the audio of its implosion, recorded 900 miles away by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration device; or allow viewers to see Rush's wife Wendy hear the implosion, whose sound reached its support ship, Polar Prince, before their last text message, allowing them to mistakenly assume the sub was fine. The Netflix film, made by the veteran production company Story Syndicate, doesn't do any of that, eschewing a Seconds from Disaster-type narrative and instead focusing on the nearly decade-long procession toward disaster, through numerous decisions prizing flashy ambition over safety. 'It's scarier, in a way, to understand the decision-making over the 10-year period that led to that moment,' said Monroe. 'I feel pretty strongly if the civilians' – the paying customers OceanGate called 'mission specialists' to skirt around commercial maritime safety regulations – 'had seen the decisions made along the way, they would have been a lot more reticent to get into that submersible. And I think that was not clear, or made clear, to the public.' With access to company footage, data, files and several former employees and whistleblowers, the 111-minute documentary paints a fuller picture of a company with idealistic ambition and plenty of scientific backing – at least at first. Founded outside Seattle in 2009 by Rush, an entrepreneur with a rich family and an engineering degree, OceanGate attracted talent from the fields of engineering, diving and marine exploration with its ambition to revolutionize deep sea travel for the masses. The question of how to make deep subs, usually made of very heavy titanium steel, lighter and nimbler – and thus commercially viable – was an appealing puzzle to an array of scientists, deep-sea divers and exploration enthusiasts. It's what drew David Lochridge, a highly experienced submersible pilot, to uproot his family and move to Everett, Washington, to become OceanGate's operations director. In the film, Lochridge explains that he didn't initially understand, on a technical level, OceanGate's answer to the lightweight, deep-sea sub conundrum: carbon fiber, a lightweight but high-strength composite material of tightly pack carbon threads cemented with resin, used in everything from sports cars to deluxe skis. But in time, the material's problems became clear. For one, carbon fiber had never been tested at extreme depths, and thus had no reliable safety record. And two, its integrity naturally degrades with repeated use. 'There is a fatigue aspect to carbon fiber – once you use it, it won't be as good the next time you use it, by increments,' Monroe explained. The documentary includes ample footage from OceanGate's years-long test phase, as various carbon fiber designs failed in experiments simulating high pressure. Nevertheless, Rush persisted, dismissing safety concerns from engineers on staff and continuing to insist to credulous media that commercial ventures to the Titanic were soon within reach. Lochridge and others attest to Rush's hardheaded approach, at times openly hostile to any intra-company dissent. He openly admired Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, expressing a desire to, as one employee recalled, be a 'big swinging dick'. In that vein, Rush claimed to be working with Boeing, Nasa and the University of Washington, though no formal partnerships existed. (In fact, a Boeing engineer involved in Titan's early designs emailed Rush in March 2012: 'We think you are at high risk of a significant failure at or before you reach 4,000 meters. We do not think you have any safety margin.') Rush also elected to withhold any OceanGate craft from third-party safety inspections, the industry standard for submersibles. That decision proved to be a breaking point for several employees; Lochridge was fired after he inspected Titan himself, and said in a written report to Rush that he had no confidence in the submersible. The documentary includes remarkable audio of a 2018 senior staff meeting in which Rush fires Lochridge and quashes his concerns as a discrepancy of vision – 'I don't want anybody in this company who is uncomfortable with what we're doing. We're doing weird shit here and I am definitely out of the mold. There's no question. I am doing things that are completely non-standard.' 'There is a danger in the kind of cult of personality, particularly the tech bro, 'move fast and break things,'' Monroe said. 'When other people's lives are in the balance, I think we should all take a step back and be careful about that. It's one thing to put unmanned spacecraft into space, but you're taking money to provide an expedition.' One has to wonder, given all the dissent, given the fact that the sub would produce loud cracking sounds with each descent (which Rush called, unscientifically, the carbon fiber 'seasoning' with use) – did the CEO actually believe it was safe? 'I'm not in Stockton's mind, so I don't know,' said Monroe. But he took into account Rush's public personality as a maverick, the media tailwinds in his favor. 'When you say you're going to go to Titanic in a new submersible that no one's ever done before, and the sound of your own voice resonates year after year while you're trying to figure out how to do it, I think there's a pressure that builds, that suggests 'I have to do this.'' What is clear, from numerous interviews, was that 'if you went against the boss, there were going to be repercussions.' Lochridge knows this well; after he filed a whistleblower complaint with the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha), OceanGate sued him for improperly disclosing confidential information to regulators. The legal costs, and Osha's protracted investigation, forced him to withdraw his complaint, ending what could have been the one regulatory oversight on the company. OceanGate continued apace; the film lingers only briefly on the dive in 2022 which seemed to damage the sub, even according to the company's own 'real-time monitoring system'. Titan imploded on its next dive to Titanic depths a year later, after several aborted attempts due to inclement weather. Though the 'delamination' of the carbon fiber hull is the presumed cause, the US Coast Guard's official written report, including recommendations for the prevention of a similar tragedy, has yet to be publicly released. 'I don't know what those recommendations could be,' said Monroe, 'but you would think they would have to do with how to run an experimental submersible when offering it to the public.' Such as, perhaps, oversight, or a healthier sense of skepticism when the only safety assurances come from the company itself. Rush 'believed in the ethos of move fast and break things. Rules don't apply when you want to change the way things work,' said Monroe. 'That's dangerous when other people's lives are at stake. There are certain rules that do apply, like the rules of physics, the rules of science – these rules do apply to all of us.' Titan: The OceanGate Disaster is now available on Netflix
The Guardian
11-06-2025
- General
- The Guardian
‘Absolutely shocking': Netflix documentary examines how the Titan sub disaster happened
If you were sentient in the summer of 2023, you probably remember the feverish speculation, vicarious horror, snap consternation and armchair sleuthing after the disappearance of the submersible called Titan during a commercial voyage to the wreck of the Titanic. The Titan sub disaster was inescapable for weeks as the story evolved from critical rescue mission – the best-case scenario being a mechanical failure deep in the North Atlantic with 96 hours of oxygen for the five passengers, which you better believe became a countdown clock on cable news – to tragic recovery operation. The sub, it turned out, had imploded at 3,300 meters beneath the surface, 90 minutes into a dive that was supposed to reach 3,800 meters deep. All five passengers – British explorer Hamish Harding, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet and submersible owner Stockton Rush – were killed instantly. Even as the search for the sub, whose wreckage was eventually returned to land, continued in earnest, concerning reports about the safety record at OceanGate, the company which operated the vehicle, began to emerge: that a whistleblower had declared implosion of the sub's trademark carbon fiber hull a mathematical certainty years earlier. That Rush, the company's founder and CEO, pursued commercial voyages anyway, eluding any type of third-party certification. For the majority of the public, the story ended along those lines: a preventable tragedy, another sin of human hubris at arguably the most famous shrine to the folly of human hubris in history. That is not wrong; according to the new Netflix documentary Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, the sub's implosion was virtually guaranteed by its design. 'I'm convinced, based on the research and the discussions that I've had, that the submersible Titan could have imploded at any time,' said the film's director, Mark Monroe. In fact, it was 'absolutely shocking' that Titan made as many successful dives – 80 attempts, 13 to Titanic depth, between 2021 and 2022 – as it did. But for those who either worked at OceanGate, were tasked with the investigation or loved someone lost on board, the story is much more complicated, and concerning, than a design flaw. Another film would proceed through an exact timeline of Titan's final mission on 18 June, 2023; include footage of the wreckage or diagrams of its descent coordinated to text messages sent to its surface-level team; play the audio of its implosion, recorded 900 miles away by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration device; or allow viewers to see Rush's wife Wendy hear the implosion, whose sound reached its support ship, Polar Prince, before their last text message, allowing them to mistakenly assume the sub was fine. The Netflix film, made by the veteran production company Story Syndicate, doesn't do any of that, eschewing a Seconds from Disaster-type narrative and instead focusing on the nearly decade-long procession toward disaster, through numerous decisions prizing flashy ambition over safety. 'It's scarier, in a way, to understand the decision-making over the 10-year period that led to that moment,' said Monroe. 'I feel pretty strongly if the civilians' – the paying customers OceanGate called 'mission specialists' to skirt around commercial maritime safety regulations – 'had seen the decisions made along the way, they would have been a lot more reticent to get into that submersible. And I think that was not clear, or made clear, to the public.' With access to company footage, data, files and several former employees and whistleblowers, the 111-minute documentary paints a fuller picture of a company with idealistic ambition and plenty of scientific backing – at least at first. Founded outside Seattle in 2009 by Rush, an entrepreneur with a rich family and an engineering degree, OceanGate attracted talent from the fields of engineering, diving and marine exploration with its ambition to revolutionize deep sea travel for the masses. The question of how to make deep subs, usually made of very heavy titanium steel, lighter and nimbler – and thus commercially viable – was an appealing puzzle to an array of scientists, deep-sea divers and exploration enthusiasts. It's what drew David Lochridge, a highly experienced submersible pilot, to uproot his family and move to Everett, Washington, to become OceanGate's operations director. In the film, Lochridge explains that he didn't initially understand, on a technical level, OceanGate's answer to the lightweight, deep-sea sub conundrum: carbon fiber, a lightweight but high-strength composite material of tightly pack carbon threads cemented with resin, used in everything from sports cars to deluxe skis. But in time, the material's problems became clear. For one, carbon fiber had never been tested at extreme depths, and thus had no reliable safety record. And two, its integrity naturally degrades with repeated use. 'There is a fatigue aspect to carbon fiber – once you use it, it won't be as good the next time you use it, by increments,' Monroe explained. The documentary includes ample footage from OceanGate's years-long test phase, as various carbon fiber designs failed in experiments simulating high pressure. Nevertheless, Rush persisted, dismissing safety concerns from engineers on staff and continuing to insist to credulous media that commercial ventures to the Titanic were soon within reach. Lochridge and others attest to Rush's hardheaded approach, at times openly hostile to any intra-company dissent. He openly admired Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, expressing a desire to, as one employee recalled, be a 'big swinging dick'. In that vein, Rush claimed to be working with Boeing, Nasa and the University of Washington, though no formal partnerships existed. (In fact, a Boeing engineer involved in Titan's early designs emailed Rush in March 2012: 'We think you are at high risk of a significant failure at or before you reach 4,000 meters. We do not think you have any safety margin.') Rush also elected to withhold any OceanGate craft from third-party safety inspections, the industry standard for submersibles. That decision proved to be a breaking point for several employees; Lochridge was fired after he inspected Titan himself, and said in a written report to Rush that he had no confidence in the submersible. The documentary includes remarkable audio of a 2018 senior staff meeting in which Rush fires Lochridge and quashes his concerns as a discrepancy of vision – 'I don't want anybody in this company who is uncomfortable with what we're doing. We're doing weird shit here and I am definitely out of the mold. There's no question. I am doing things that are completely non-standard.' 'There is a danger in the kind of cult of personality, particularly the tech bro, 'move fast and break things,'' Monroe said. 'When other people's lives are in the balance, I think we should all take a step back and be careful about that. It's one thing to put unmanned spacecraft into space, but you're taking money to provide an expedition.' One has to wonder, given all the dissent, given the fact that the sub would produce loud cracking sounds with each descent (which Rush called, unscientifically, the carbon fiber 'seasoning' with use) – did the CEO actually believe it was safe? 'I'm not in Stockton's mind, so I don't know,' said Monroe. But he took into account Rush's public personality as a maverick, the media tailwinds in his favor. 'When you say you're going to go to Titanic in a new submersible that no one's ever done before, and the sound of your own voice resonates year after year while you're trying to figure out how to do it, I think there's a pressure that builds, that suggests 'I have to do this.'' What is clear, from numerous interviews, was that 'if you went against the boss, there were going to be repercussions.' Lochridge knows this well; after he filed a whistleblower complaint with the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha), OceanGate sued him for improperly disclosing confidential information to regulators. The legal costs, and Osha's protracted investigation, forced him to withdraw his complaint, ending what could have been the one regulatory oversight on the company. OceanGate continued apace; the film lingers only briefly on the dive in 2022 which seemed to damage the sub, even according to the company's own 'real-time monitoring system'. Titan imploded on its next dive to Titanic depths a year later, after several aborted attempts due to inclement weather. Though the 'delamination' of the carbon fiber hull is the presumed cause, the US Coast Guard's official written report, including recommendations for the prevention of a similar tragedy, has yet to be publicly released. 'I don't know what those recommendations could be,' said Monroe, 'but you would think they would have to do with how to run an experimental submersible when offering it to the public.' Such as, perhaps, oversight, or a healthier sense of skepticism when the only safety assurances come from the company itself. Rush 'believed in the ethos of move fast and break things. Rules don't apply when you want to change the way things work,' said Monroe. 'That's dangerous when other people's lives are at stake. There are certain rules that do apply, like the rules of physics, the rules of science – these rules do apply to all of us.' Titan: The OceanGate Disaster is now available on Netflix
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Here's the 1 Netflix Movie I Can't Wait to Watch in June 2025
Two years ago, the world was gripped by the story of the Titan submersible disaster, in which an unregulated undersea vessel was crushed during an attempt to visit the wreckage of the Titanic. Everyone on board the vessel was lost, including Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet and Stockton Rush, the pilot of the Titan and the CEO of its parent company, OceanGate. The story behind this tragic event is told in Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, a new documentary coming this month. It's also my pick for the one Netflix movie I can't wait to watch in June. These events played out in the public eye in June 2023, but the backstory of Rush and his apparent disregard for the dangers involved are part of the film's primary focus. Missing Titanic Submarine Pilot Is Married to Descendent of Shipwreck's Victims Director Mark Monroe spends a good deal of time unraveling Stockton Rush, a man whose dreams of fame were only truly achieved by his death and by the way it happened. The people who worked alongside — and for — Rush describe him as someone who wanted to be known as the next Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. He was also, by his own words, less than concerned about the safety of his company's activities. The portrait of Rush that emerges in Titan: The OceanGate Disaster isn't very flattering, as he refused all warnings and silenced all whistleblowers who tried in vain to rein him in before it was too late. In the trailer above, one of the documentary participants says that Rush was "a borderline psychopath" who was impossible to manage as the boss of his own company. He paid the price for his hubris, but he wasn't the only one. This question is explored at length in the documentary itself, but the short answer is that Rush opted to have the Titan constructed with materials that weren't meant to be used for a deep-sea submersible vessel. There's a reason why there aren't many underwater excursions to the Titanic's wreck. It's nearly 3,800 meters beneath the surface of the ocean, and that's a depth that the Titan could only reach so many times before it imploded from the pressure. James Cameron Reacts to Titan Submersible Tragedy: 'I'm Struck by the Similarity of the Titanic Disaster Itself' There are several pictures and video clips of the Titan itself in this documentary, and you may be horrified to learn that Rush and his other pilots controlled the vessel's movements with an off-the-shelf video game controller. Rush catered the Titan to wealthy tourists, but some of them were understandably horrified by how unsafe the vessel appeared to be. That response may have saved their lives. No. For the most part, the film's focus is on Rush and the creation of the Titan and the origin of OceanGate. There's always room for more documentaries about the other victims in the future, but almost everything about this event centers on Rush himself. It seems inevitable that someone will make a scripted movie about Rush in the future. For now, Titan: The OceanGate Disaster may be the definitive word on what happened. Titan: The OceanGate Disaster will stream on Netflix on June 11.
