Coast Guard admits ‘explosion’ heard when Titanic sub lost contact

The US Navy detected an “anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost”, the US Coast Guard has confirmed.

The sound was “consistent with the incident” of the catastrophic implosion, which left the five men on board the vessel dead, a spokesperson for the US Coast Guard told The Independent, adding that no more similar sounds were heard throughout the search and rescue mission.

The information was “immediately shared” with the Incident Commander, and once it had been considered with all of the acoustic data that had been compiled, “the decision was made to continue our mission as a search and rescue” because the noise was “not definitive at the point”, the spokesperson said.

The four-day search and rescue mission that followed left the loved ones of those on board in a “torturous” yet still hopeful wait for news, said a friend of one of the stranded five, as the estimated 96-hour emergency supply of oxygen was thought to be running out on board the vessel but “tapping sounds” had been detected by sonar.

The US Coast Guard said the Unified Command – the US Coast Guard, US Navy, and Canadian Coast Guard – made its decision to not disclose the information on the “acoustic anomaly” because they did not want to disrupt the search and rescue mission when their priority was “making every effort to the save lives of all on board” the submersible. “So having unconfirmed information did not change that”, they said, adding: “We did not want to release any information that was unconfirmed.”

The Titan submerged at 8am EDT (1pm UK time) on Sunday and lost contact with its support vessel, the Polar Prince, one hour and forty-five minutes later. It was supposed to resurface at 3pm EDT (8pm UK time), but it did not, and the US Coast Guard said it received a report of the missing vessel at 5.40pm EDT (10.40pm UK time).

The US Coast Guard said it is unable to confirm the exact time of the “acoustic anomaly” but said it was “sometime after communications were lost between Sunday and Monday” when additional equipment, including from the US Navy, which could analyse and receive acoustic data, was deployed to the search site.

The noise “was consistent with an explosion but not definitive”, so “we cannot definitively say if the explosion sound was or was not the incident that killed those on board”, said the spokesperson, adding: “The sounds were not conclusive.”

All five men on board the missing Titan submersible were declared dead after it was found that the craft imploded near the site of the shipwreck, authorities announced Thursday.

OceanGate Expeditions founder and CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, renowned French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman were all aboard the Titan.

This comes after Hollywood filmmaker James Cameron revealed that he received the information within 24 hours of the disappearance of the submersible that it had imploded when it lost communication with its mothership.

The director of the 1997 Oscar-winning film Titanic, said he received confirmation of a “loud bang” within an hour and that the last week had “felt like a prolonged and nightmarish charade”.