The final messages sent from the OceanGate submersible have been revealed, just before the tragic catastrophe occurred on board in June of 2023, claiming the lives of 5 passengers.
The five on board were British billionaire Hamish Harding, British businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, former French Navy diver Paul-Henry Nargeolet, and chief executive of OceanGate (the company running the voyage) Stockton Rush. Our continued thoughts are with their families and loved ones.
The submersible was headed to the Titanic wreck site to explore. The submarine imploded while thousands of meters underwater.
Now, during a two-week hearing which began on Monday (September 16), U.S. Coast Guard officials revealed the sub’s final message to the surface. Waiting for the submersible at the surface of the water was a ship called the Polar Prince.
Keep reading to find out more…
Some time into the dive, the Polar Prince was messaging with the submersible, asking if the sub could see the ship on its underwater display. There was no response, and the Polar Prince repeatedly sent messages asking.
Finally, the submersible did respond after about 15 minutes, confirming they had communication.
“I need better comms from you,” the Polar Prince wrote back, to which the Titan crew responded, “yes” before adding, “lost system oand [sic] chat settings.”
Then, the Polar Prince wrote, “status? do you see polar prince on your display?” The submersible crew then responded, “yes” and “all good here” at 10:15 am local time.
They then exchanged a few more messages about locations, before their final message. At 10:47 am local time, at a depth of 3,350 meters from the surface, the Titan wrote, “dropped two wts.”
“Wts” refers to “weights,” which an anonymous expert explained to People.
“The way a sub operates is that you load it up with weight at the top … so that on the surface it’s heavy and that drags it down through the water column down to the bottom,” one person with knowledge told the site. “As you are nearing the bottom, you want to slow down. And so you release weight so that you are not as heavy, more neutrally buoyant, and that enables you to swim around the bottom using the minimum of energy.”
“People read that — oh, we dropping weight, they must be in trouble. It’s actually, no, they’re just approaching the Titanic,” they shared. James Cameron, director of Titanic, had a different take on the “dropping weights.”
