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A former Titan sub passenger said that the vessel malfunctioned during a voyage to the Titanic’s wreckage 2 years ago.
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There was an issue with the mechanism that releases weights off the vessel so it can rise back up.
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The passengers had to rock the submersible from side to side to dislodge the weights.
Last week wasn’t the first time that the Titan submersible malfunctioned on a trip to the Titanic.
Bill Price, an adventurer from California, told The Los Angeles Times that when he went on the sub two years ago, it lost communication with its mothership an hour into the journey.
Shortly after, the crew realized there was a problem with the mechanism that releases weights off the vessel so it can rise back up to the surface.
“There was some apprehension of how are we going to get back up,” Price told The Times.
OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush and French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who were on the sub, devised a plan: they asked Price and the other passengers to rock from side to side to try to dislodge the weights.
Price said that “when we heard our first clunk, that was such a relief.”
Rush and Nargeolet were both on the Titan sub last week. About an hour into the journey, the vessel lost communication with its support ship.
After an exhaustive search effort, US Coast Guard officials said Thursday that they had discovered debris hinting the Titan had imploded.
In addition to Rush and Nargeolet, there were three other passengers on board: British billionaire Hamish Harding, British businessman Shahzada Dawood, and Dawood’s son Suleman. All five people are presumed dead.
OceanGate didn’t immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
Price told local news station KSBY that he immediately checked to see who was on board when he heard the Titan had gone missing last week.
“I have a bit of survivor’s guilt knowing that I was lucky, and I was able to come back,” he told KSBY.
The Titan submersible had made three previous trips down to the wreckage. But shortly after the vessel vanished last week, key questions began emerging about the design and operation of the Titan.
OceanGate, which operated the sub, was previously warned about some of these concerns, according to a lawsuit. Rush also said in an interview in 2021 that he knew the company had “broken some rules” while building the sub.
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