The submersible went missing shortly after diving towards the Titanic wreckage.
Newly surfaced footage from a BBC documentary on Titan submersible shows a distressing incident in which the vessel spun uncontrollably after the pilot lost command. The documentary covers a mission carried out by the sub in 2022. As the five passengers aboard the Titan approached the Titanic wreck, pilot Scott Griffith alerted the team of an impending issue and confirmed the submersible is spiralling motion beyond his grasp. Captured by the BBC Travel Show, the footage reveals the crew’s anguished reaction as they heard Mr Griffith’s distressing news regarding the malfunctioning thrusters of Titan.
Fortunately, the crew managed to reprogram the controller, enabling Titan to redirect its course towards the Titanic and successfully resume the mission.
Watch the video:
“Scott is like ‘Oh no, we have a problem’,” one of the passengers is quoted as saying in the documentary.
“I was thinking we’re not going to make it,” another passenger, a woman, says in the short clip uploaded on BBC Select‘s YouTube channel.
On the ship above the surface of the ocean, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush helped Mr Griffith, according to Sky News.
The solution Mr Rush came up with was surprisingly simple.
“Tell him to hold it the other way,” he said.
The CEO said that tilting the controller 90 degrees clockwise will make the submersible go forward again.
The footage gained prominence just after a New Yorker report claimed OceanGate employees were disturbed by the sub’s reliability and Mr Stockton’s “ego” in 2018.
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The OceanGate vessel went missing on June 18, with British explorer Hamish Harding, diving company CEO Stockton Rush, French submersible pilot Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, and his son Suleman on board. Four days later, the US Coast Guard confirmed that the Titan submersible had suffered a catastrophic implosion, resulting in the death of all five individuals.