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DEEP TROUBLES
I’ve dived to the Titanic wreck 22 times and I’d have never got on doomed Titan sub – it was a ticking time bomb
Diving expert reveals his most haunting find on the shipwreck, which lies at the bottom of the ocean floor
IT was a daring rescue mission that had the whole world on tenterhooks.
And when sounds of banging from deep underwater during the search for the missing Titan submersible emerged, hopes were raised of a last-minute miracle.
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The craft went missing in the Atlantic, during a deep-sea voyage to the Titanic wreck last June.
During a frantic five-day search, it was revealed sonar buoys had detected tapping sounds coming from the search area, suggesting the crew could still be alive.
But it was later discovered that the lost Titan had imploded, killing all five passengers on board.
OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman tragically died on the dive.
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And now, the mysterious banging sounds have been released for the first time by The Royal Canadian Air Force team, which led the large-scale search.
The never-before-heard audio has been obtained by the makers behind a new Channel 5 documentary, The Titan Sub Disaster: Minute by Minute, which delves into the disaster.
The two-part series, which starts tonight, shows the rescuers as they first hear the banging sounds, which rang out in 30-minute intervals.
In an exclusive chat with the Sun, Dik Barton, the first British person to dive to the Titanic wreck, says: “We’ve been through it quite a number of times now with various organisations and entities.
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“It’s fascinating to hear but what the whole operation was about was to effectively rescue five individuals from a hazardous environment, an obviously terrifying ordeal.
“The rescue fraternity never stops until it's conclusive.
I gave up spot on Titanic sub for son who was killed alongside husband when vessel imploded – we may never get closure
“You’d be a very brave man to pull the pin on an expedition recovery and rescue mission based upon a gut feeling or ‘we’ll just discount that.’
“It was too strong a signal that any glimmer of hope is always exploited and stuck to.”
The salvage expert adds: “It was deemed a positive sound at the time but in retrospect it wasn’t the case.”
'Mechanical noise'
Dik, 64, who features in the film, is the former Vice President Operations for RMS Titanic Inc and has done 22 dives down to the wreck.
He has analysed the recording and says: “I wouldn’t attribute it to a distress call because it’s not consistent.
“Distress calls are conventionally put out as an SOS, which is obviously internationally recognised and understood, particularly by mariners.
“There’s also no urgency in the noise. You can hear it, it’s very mechanical, it’s very repetitive.
“To me it sounds very much like some kind of cog or chain going through a system where it clunks and slips and grinds again. And you hear the echo.
“It’s a metallic noise. The structure of the Titan was predominantly carbon fibre. The chances of something being metallic inside the Titan is virtually nil I would say.
“If you look at all the factors and then understand the scenario, it's highly unlikely it was a distress call from the Titan.”
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Submerged 'hotel'
Dik, from Leeds, trained as a commercial saturation diver and served with the Parachute Regiment before taking on his role with RMS Titanic, Inc, which had won the exclusive rights to salvage artefacts from the historic wreck before putting them on display.
His first dive down there was in 1993. He recalls: “The way I describe the Titanic is if you take whatever is in your opinion the best hotel in the world, place it 450 miles off the coast of Newfoundland and you literally crack it in half like an egg, the contents of that just spills on the seabed.”
He spent the next seven years leading the expeditions, with the longest taking 21 hours. One of his most treasured finds was a pair of children’s marbles.
Dik says: “That to me was probably the most poignant artefact. It told a great story.
“You had every walk of life on board, every age.”
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'Fraught with danger'
The salvage expert says: “We took every single precaution, mitigating and extensive planning to reduce those risks. But by definition you’re going to go two and a half miles under water in a submersible.
“A whole raft of things can go wrong, from the structure and integrity of the submersible, through to a fire inside…
“We’re re-breathing the air seven or eight times on a rebreather system so the air’s going through scrubbers and we’re producing a huge amount of condensation inside this titanium sphere, which is full of electrics and battery powered equipment.
“So if you think about it where you have a potentially flammable environment with an unstable environment that’s wet, a raft of things from that perspective can go wrong.
We can get a failure on a power system, and communications and navigation. There’s a finite amount of power with batteries in the belly of sub infrastructure.
“It’s fraught with danger.”
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And he adds: “I did 22 times and I do reflect ‘hmmm…it probably wasn’t the wisest thing I could have done really’.
“The reason I did it was to share with the world the unique opportunity I'd been allowed to have because not everyone can go down there for whatever reason.”
Agonising wait
The Titan, operated by American tourism and expeditions company OceanGate, went missing shortly after its descent from Newfoundland, Canada, on June 18, 2023.
Recalling his initial reaction, Dik says: “Nothing is confirmed until it’s confirmed and you keep that hope going and you keep that aspiration that it’s going to have a good and positive outcome.
“It was a long and traumatic week for families and friends and everybody associated with it. Extraordinary efforts went into the search.”
Specialist maritime patrol aircraft, operated by The Royal Canadian Air Force dropped the sonar devices from the air, while deep-sea diving robots were deployed to probe the sea floor.
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Titan had up to 96 hours of breathable air supply for its five passengers when it set out so it was a race against time.
Dik says: “The timeline is hard to distinguish. We reckon it was probably 90 minutes from leaving the surface to Titan's demise, so that’s a long time.
“There will definitely have been some anticipation and fear leading up to that
“There would have been advanced indication it was not going to end well.”
Dik says creaking noises and misshaping of the vessel would have alerted the skipper.
He says: “There would have been some structural defamation that had taken place but there would be no structural loss of integrity because that’s what happens at the end, that’s the implosion process but there would have been creaking and mishaping."
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The desperate bid to find the sub ended on June 22, when the US coast guard announced
Dik says: “The only consolation is that when it did happen then it could be nanosecond, so quickly it’s not feasible to try and relate to anything, it’s quick.”
Multiple concerns were raised over the safety of the vessel before her fateful final voyage.
The expert says: “She had dived previously to significant depths and hadn’t undergone any true or real maintenance or a survey, which is normally common practice in the maintenance schedule.”
Oceangate asked passengers to sign a waiver before boarding, stating it was "an experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body which could result in physical injury, emotional trauma or death."
Asked if he would have gone on the voyage, Dik says: “Absolutely not, I wouldn't even contemplate it. I wasn’t asked to but I certainly wouldn’t.”
And he adds: “Unfortunately, up until now, and I think it will change, it's not regulated, there's no compliance issues or control or standards per se for a tourist operation.”
Nearly a year on, the cause of the disaster is not clear.
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But Dik says: “Whatever went on, there will be a huge ongoing international investigation into this because there has to be, five lives were lost and it’s a tragedy.”
Titan Sub Disaster: Minute by Minute, produced by ITN Productions airs on Channel 5 tonight and tomorrow at 9pm
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