For years, there have been people wanting to explore the lost city of Atlantis, the remains of the Titanic. Well, it finally came to reality and didn’t go as planned. A company named OceanGate Inc. decided to start a submersible service for the exploration of the ruins of the Ship Titanic. After charging an amount of $250,000, a ship with 5 people would go to, what possibly is the bottom of the ocean, and see the great sunken ship. But this particular ship containing 5 explorer passengers did not see the ship go down.
What is OceanGate?
OceanGate Inc is a US-based company. Founded in 2009, it recognizes itself as “an ocean exploration venture focused on providing crewed submersible services to enable researchers and explorers access to the oceans’ vast resources.”
The company started this “Titanic Exploration” trip called “The Titan Trip” which gives people above the age of 18 a chance to go nearly 4000 meters down the Atlantic Ocean to see the wrecks of the Titanic.
The Incident
On Sunday, June 18th, the Titan’s vessel went down on yet another exploration of the Titanic. The vessel takes approximately 2 hours to even get to the site and is controlled and navigated through stations above the surface.
Eyebrows raised when 45 minutes into the trip, the radars lost communication with the vessel, and the ship was supposedly swimming around in the darkness and depth of the Atlantic Ocean with no way of getting out.
Search for the ship begins and everyone is in panic as the vessel has about four days of emergency oxygen.
News stations around the world are covering this story of 5 curious explorers, Stockton Rush (Age 61, CEO of OceanGate), Shahzada Dawood (Age 48), his son Suleman (Age 18), and Hamish Harding (Age 58), and Paul-Henry Nargeolet (Age 77) as they went missing.
Warnings and Predictions
OceanGate’s engineering team was about to finalize the specifications for the Titan ship in 2018 when the Director of Marine Operations, David Lochridge worked out a report which emphasized the fact that the ship needed a lot of prior testing and preparation. The ship was not ready yet and contained “the potential dangers to passengers of the Titan as the submersible reached extreme depths”.
Within the same year, OceanGate received similar calls and suggestions regarding the ship. The letters and calls to the company described the company’s “experiment” as potentially “catastrophic”.
Several marine experts had a common vote on the decision of not letting the ship into the waters yet. At least not before more testing and rigidity, safety, and other tests.
James Cameron said “OceanGate had been warned”
As the director of the 1997 movie “Titanic”, James Cameron has a special connection with the sunken ship. Having more than 33 complete dives to the wreck of Titanic, he felt the loss of the Titan submersible and the 5 people on board.
“I felt in my bones what had happened. For the sub’s electronics to fail and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously – sub’s gone.”
The Hollywood director claims the radars can’t lose communication and navigation without an extreme catastrophic event. Basically hinting towards an explosion or some other event.
“We now have another wreck that is based on unfortunately the same principles of not heeding warnings,” he said. “OceanGate were warned.”
Simpsons
Simpsons are responsible for some eerily accurate predictions of various events around the world. What amuses people is that the predictions were aired years and years before the event takes place.
Soon after the news of the missing sub came in, a video of a 1998 Simpsons episode showed 2 submarines under the ocean. The clip proceeds to show the main character panicking seeing the oxygen level go “low”, “lower”, “slightly risen” and then “over”.
