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CNET
a day ago
- Entertainment
- CNET
The New Titan Submersible Doc Hits Netflix's Top 10, but There's Another Titan Doc You Should See
Every week, Netflix unveils its Top 10 lists for the week before, ranking TV shows and movies by viewership. This week, Netflix's Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster was the no. 2 film on Netflix's Top 10, but the documentary about the deadly 2023 Titan submersible implosion isn't the only film about the catastrophic undersea tragedy. Another, Max's Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, came out in May. Both reveal the lengths that explorer and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush went to in order to send his innovative but flawed submersible to the depths of the Titanic, but is one of these films better or more informative than the other? Both films are compelling, and each one features key witnesses with firsthand knowledge and experience aboard the sub who offer unique perspectives, all of them claiming that the sub's implosion was inevitable. The same points are made in both docs, but the information doesn't feel overly repetitive. Because of that, they complement each other and offer a clearer picture of what happened when taken together. I hate to say it (for time's sake), but if you're invested in the topic, it's absolutely worth watching both. But if you had to pick just one, I do have a recommendation. Both of these Titan documentaries arrived on streaming around the second anniversary of Titan's final, fatal dive, June 18, 2023. Both of them ultimately point to Rush being aware of the flaws and safety concerns regarding Titan, and despite the many whistleblowers around him, he chose to dismiss their concerns. (Titan had several issues, but the two biggest were its cylindrical shape, which didn't distribute pressure evenly, and the fact that it was constructed with an experimental carbon fiber hull, a material that had not been sufficiently tested to withstand deep-sea pressure at the depths of the Titanic.) The Netflix doc, for the most part, features interviews with former OceanGate employees and points to a flawed company culture that required unwavering loyalty to Rush. As the film shows, anyone who dared to raise concerns over faulty science was eventually forced out. One employee in particular, David Lochridge, a submersible pilot and OceanGate's former director of marine operations, is depicted as the primary whistleblower at OceanGate. Lochridge was a high-level employee at the company who would eventually be fired for voicing his concerns about Titan's design and was later threatened with a lawsuit by OceanGate when he tried to make his safety claims public. The documentary includes audio and video recordings of heated conversations between Lochridge and Rush, and footage of a dive to see the shipwreck the Andrea Doria, which required Lochridge to pilot the sub out of harm's way after Rush ensnared their vessel under the shipwreck's hull. Lochridge is just one of several former OceanGate employees on record in the film who left the company because they refused to be complicit in a potential situation that might place unsuspecting participants in harm's way. But Lochridge's anger at Rush -- and at the Titan's outcome -- is evident. "He wanted fame," Lochridge says of Rush at the end of the Netflix documentary. "First and foremost. To fuel his ego. Fame. That was what he wanted, and he's got it." The Discovery documentary, Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, which is available on Max, features interviews with some of the same players as the Netflix doc but focuses on the US Coast Guard's investigation into the sub's implosion, and interviews with Josh Gates, host of Discovery's Expedition Unknown. Gates himself has been aboard the Titan and had planned to feature the submersible in an episode of his show, but grew so concerned after the "cascade of problems" the sub experienced on his trip that he refused to air the footage he planned to produce. "It wasn't just a red flag for me," Gates said of Rush's attitude toward the safety measures on board Titan, "It was like a flare had gone up." The film also features footage not included in Netflix's documentary of the moment that the topside ship lost communication with Titan, a haunting scene that shows Rush's wife, Wendy, the communications director on board, asking, "What was that bang?" after losing contact with the sub. I followed the story of Titan casually when the sub went missing in June 2023. Essentially, I believed it was all a terrible, tragic accident. But after watching both of these documentaries, it seems like the Titan's implosion could have been prevented. The submersible was missing for four days, and in that time, the world at large held out some hope that it was simply missing, and that those on the dive would be found safe somewhere in the North Atlantic. But both films make it abundantly clear that anyone familiar with Titan knew immediately when they heard the sub was missing that it suffered the same fate as the Titanic itself. Lochridge's accounts of his time at OceanGate in the Netflix doc help paint Stockton Rush as a boss reluctant to admit his company's shortcomings, and his testimony alone is stunning to see. But if I had to suggest just one of these films to watch, Max's version, which features testimony from the Coast Guard's inquiry, an interview with Christine Dawood, the wife and mother of two of the victims on board, and Josh Gates' footage from his own trip on Titan, simply answers more questions about how this disaster happened and the impact it left behind. But chances are, if you watch one of them, you'll get hooked and watch both anyway, like I did.
The Sun
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
Chilling audio of doomed Titan sub boss ‘sacking engineer who questioned mission's safety' before imposion tragedy
CHILLING new audio reveals the moment OceanGate's founder fired the company's operations director who voiced safety concerns about the ill-fated Titan sub. The audio clip was obtained by Netflix and has been used in its documentary Titan: The OceanGate Disaster. 9 9 9 9 9 American businessman Stockton Rush, who would go on to be one of the victims of the Titan disaster, can be heard David Lochridge in the clip. Lochridge had raised concerns around the safety of the submersible ahead of its doomed voyage. Rush tells him: "I don't want anybody in this company who is uncomfortable with what we are doing. "We're doing weird s*** here. I'm definitely out of the mold, I am doing things that are completely non-standard. "I'm sure the industry thinks I'm a f****** idiot. "That's fine, they've been doing that for years. And I'm going to continue on the way I am doing." A woman can be heard saying: "We need David on this crew, in my opinion we need him here." Lochridge says Rush's remarks left him "a tad let down" and "pretty gutted". "This is the first time on paper I've ever put any health and safety concerns," he adds. "You know every expedition we have had, we've had issues." 'What's that bang?' Chilling moment sound of doomed Titan sub imploding heard from support ship Rush concedes the point, and Lochridge asks him: "Do you now want to let me go?" But Rush bluntly replies: "I don't see we have a choice." Rush would later die on board the Titan alongside Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood, Suleman Dawood and Paul-Henri Nargeolet. The vessel imploded during a June 2023 expedition that initially prompted a major rescue operation. But the discovery of a piece debris in the North Atlantic dashed any hopes of a successful rescue mission. 9 9 9 9 Speaking to filmmakers, Lochridge said: "To me it was just sheer arrogance. "I didn't know what to say, but I was blown away that at this point they were willing to play Russian roulette." Lochridge was fired back in 2018 after he had worked at the firm for three years. In one email to an associate, he expressed fears that Rush would be killed, the MailOnline has reported. "I don't want to be seen as a tattle tale but I'm so worried he kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego," he said. "I would consider myself pretty ballsy when it comes to doing things that are dangerous, but that sub is an accident waiting to happen." Lochridge would go on to inform the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) of Titan's safety issues after he was fired. He reportedly got a settlement and release agreement from OceanGate's lawyers after flagging these concerns with OSHA. How the Titan tragedy unfolded By Katie Davis, Chief Foreign Reporter (Digital) FIVE men plunged beneath the surface of the North Atlantic in a homemade sub in a bid to explore the Titanic wreckage. Four passengers paid £195,000 each to go on the sub, with the fifth member of the trip being a crew member. But what was supposed to be a short trip spiralled into days of agony as the doomed Titan vanished without a trace on June 18, 2023. The daring mission had been months in the making - and almost didn't happen at the hands of harsh weather conditions in Newfoundland, Canada. In a now chilling Facebook post, passenger Hamish Harding wrote: "Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023. "A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow." It would be his final Facebook post. The following morning, he and four others - led by Stockton Rush - began the 12,5000ft descent towards the bottom of the Atlantic. But as it made its way down into the depths, the vessel lost all contact with its mother ship on the surface, the Polar Prince. It sparked a frantic four-day search for signs of life, with the hunt gripping the entire world. There was hope that by some miracle, the crew was alive and desperately waiting to be saved. But that sparked fears rescue teams faced a race against time as the passengers only had a 96-hour oxygen supply when they set out, which would be quickly dwindling. Then, when audio of banging sounds was detected under the water, it inspired hope that the victims were trapped and signalling to be rescued. It heartbreakingly turned out that the banging noises were likely either ocean noises or from other search ships, the US Navy determined. Countries around the world deployed their resources to aid the search, and within days the Odysseus remote-operated vehicle (ROV) was sent down to where the ghostly wreck of the Titanic sits. The plan was for the ROV to hook onto the sub and bring it up 10,000ft, where it would meet another ROV before heading to the surface. But any hopes of a phenomenal rescue were dashed when Odysseus came across a piece of debris from the sub around 1,600ft from the Titanic. The rescue mission tragically turned into a salvage task, and the heartbroken families of those on board were told the devastating news. It was confirmed by the US Coast Guard that the sub had suffered a "catastrophic implosion".
The Independent
12-06-2025
- General
- The Independent
Two years after Titan disaster, OceanGate advisor reflects on how Stockton Rush swerved ‘every single rule'
Before the traumatic OceanGate explosion that killed five people, submersibles expert Rob McCallum warned its CEO, Stockton Rush, of the dangerous risks. Now, two years on from the incident that killed Rush and his fellow adventurers, and in the wake of an appearance in the new Netflix documentary Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, McCallum reveals what he views as the operation's failures. "I have become increasingly amazed and maddened as the levels and many layers of incompetence and deception within OceanGate are exposed,' he told The Independent. 'The epic failure of OceanGate has done great harm to the reputation of legitimate and professional organizations, and set back progress many years,' he said. McCallum, founder, expedition leader, and divemaster of Eyos expeditions, a company which does similar work with submersibles, said there were plenty of 'little individual warning signs' ahead of the monumental failure of the Titan sub on June 18, 2023. The Titan, for example, was never certified or classed. The experimental submersible vanished on June 18, 2023, while on a tour of the Titanic wreckage in the North Atlantic Ocean. On board were Rush, 61, British explorer Hamish Harding, 58, veteran French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son, Suleman. The Titan imploded around 90 minutes into a descent, killing all five on board. Last month, a video showing the moment Wendy Rush first hears the sound of the implosion while watching on from the sub's support ship was released. "What was that bang?" she asks. The eerie video has been used as evidence in a wider ongoing investigation by the U.S. Coast Guard's Marine Board of Investigation, which has spent the last two years looking into the sub's cataclysmic failure. The final report, which McCallum suspects will be damning, is in its final stages according to the Coast Guard, who told The Independent the Marine Board of Investigation is 'pressing to release it by the end of the month.' McCallum believes Rush is going to be the one held responsible and he expects the report will reveal 'a concerted effort by a businessman to work around every single rule in the book to start a business and to make money.' He says that a decade before the tragedy, between 2009-16, OceanGate frequently sought his advice. 'They used to come down and talk to us about how you could establish a business, how you could buy a submarine, how you would maintain a submarine, and where you could find crew. They used to come and talk to us about getting themselves set up.' But Rush's timeline for the deployment of the Titan sub kept being pushed back. The sub's chief pilot, Dave Lochridge, was fired in 2018, days after submitting his report about the inefficiency of OceanGate's hull design and the company's testing methods. He was then sued by the company for breach of contract and revealing company secrets. He countersued for wrongful dismissal. 'There were always excuses,' McCallum said. 'But the net result is that the timeline kept shifting. He [Rush] would say 'we're going out there in 2020, wait, 2021. No, we're definitely going in 2022, then 2023'.' The divemaster said that his advisory services ceased 'as soon as they decided they were going to build an unclassed sub.' One of the biggest criticisms of OceanGate was the Titan's use of a carbon fibre hull, which is widely believed to be unsuitable for deep-sea diving. Typically, the main raw material used to construct modern submarines is steel. 'Senior staff and board members read Lochridge's report and knew that their chief of staff was telling them that this thing is a death trap,' McCallum said. 'People had read that report and still carried on, and are complicit in what happened next,' he said. The new documentary on the tragedy, released Wednesday, will 'illustrate where the blame lies, and who should be held accountable,' he said. McCallum stressed that the OceanGate disaster does not represent the submersibles industry as a whole. 'Professionally built submersibles have a perfect safety record that stretches back over 50 years,' he said. 'OceanGate has demonstrated the folly of experimental 'DIY' vehicles, and I expect there will now be incoming legislation to prevent others from building sub-standard vehicles.'
The Guardian
11-06-2025
- General
- The Guardian
‘Absolutely shocking': Netflix documentary examines how the Titan sub disaster happened
If you were sentient in the summer of 2023, you probably remember the feverish speculation, vicarious horror, snap consternation and armchair sleuthing after the disappearance of the submersible called Titan during a commercial voyage to the wreck of the Titanic. The Titan sub disaster was inescapable for weeks as the story evolved from critical rescue mission – the best-case scenario being a mechanical failure deep in the North Atlantic with 96 hours of oxygen for the five passengers, which you better believe became a countdown clock on cable news – to tragic recovery operation. The sub, it turned out, had imploded at 3,300 meters beneath the surface, 90 minutes into a dive that was supposed to reach 3,800 meters deep. All five passengers – British explorer Hamish Harding, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet and submersible owner Stockton Rush – were killed instantly. Even as the search for the sub, whose wreckage was eventually returned to land, continued in earnest, concerning reports about the safety record at OceanGate, the company which operated the vehicle, began to emerge: that a whistleblower had declared implosion of the sub's trademark carbon fiber hull a mathematical certainty years earlier. That Rush, the company's founder and CEO, pursued commercial voyages anyway, eluding any type of third-party certification. For the majority of the public, the story ended along those lines: a preventable tragedy, another sin of human hubris at arguably the most famous shrine to the folly of human hubris in history. That is not wrong; according to the new Netflix documentary Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, the sub's implosion was virtually guaranteed by its design. 'I'm convinced, based on the research and the discussions that I've had, that the submersible Titan could have imploded at any time,' said the film's director, Mark Monroe. In fact, it was 'absolutely shocking' that Titan made as many successful dives – 80 attempts, 13 to Titanic depth, between 2021 and 2022 – as it did. But for those who either worked at OceanGate, were tasked with the investigation or loved someone lost on board, the story is much more complicated, and concerning, than a design flaw. Another film would proceed through an exact timeline of Titan's final mission on 18 June, 2023; include footage of the wreckage or diagrams of its descent coordinated to text messages sent to its surface-level team; play the audio of its implosion, recorded 900 miles away by a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration device; or allow viewers to see Rush's wife Wendy hear the implosion, whose sound reached its support ship, Polar Prince, before their last text message, allowing them to mistakenly assume the sub was fine. The Netflix film, made by the veteran production company Story Syndicate, doesn't do any of that, eschewing a Seconds from Disaster-type narrative and instead focusing on the nearly decade-long procession toward disaster, through numerous decisions prizing flashy ambition over safety. 'It's scarier, in a way, to understand the decision-making over the 10-year period that led to that moment,' said Monroe. 'I feel pretty strongly if the civilians' – the paying customers OceanGate called 'mission specialists' to skirt around commercial maritime safety regulations – 'had seen the decisions made along the way, they would have been a lot more reticent to get into that submersible. And I think that was not clear, or made clear, to the public.' With access to company footage, data, files and several former employees and whistleblowers, the 111-minute documentary paints a fuller picture of a company with idealistic ambition and plenty of scientific backing – at least at first. Founded outside Seattle in 2009 by Rush, an entrepreneur with a rich family and an engineering degree, OceanGate attracted talent from the fields of engineering, diving and marine exploration with its ambition to revolutionize deep sea travel for the masses. The question of how to make deep subs, usually made of very heavy titanium steel, lighter and nimbler – and thus commercially viable – was an appealing puzzle to an array of scientists, deep-sea divers and exploration enthusiasts. It's what drew David Lochridge, a highly experienced submersible pilot, to uproot his family and move to Everett, Washington, to become OceanGate's operations director. In the film, Lochridge explains that he didn't initially understand, on a technical level, OceanGate's answer to the lightweight, deep-sea sub conundrum: carbon fiber, a lightweight but high-strength composite material of tightly pack carbon threads cemented with resin, used in everything from sports cars to deluxe skis. But in time, the material's problems became clear. For one, carbon fiber had never been tested at extreme depths, and thus had no reliable safety record. And two, its integrity naturally degrades with repeated use. 'There is a fatigue aspect to carbon fiber – once you use it, it won't be as good the next time you use it, by increments,' Monroe explained. The documentary includes ample footage from OceanGate's years-long test phase, as various carbon fiber designs failed in experiments simulating high pressure. Nevertheless, Rush persisted, dismissing safety concerns from engineers on staff and continuing to insist to credulous media that commercial ventures to the Titanic were soon within reach. Lochridge and others attest to Rush's hardheaded approach, at times openly hostile to any intra-company dissent. He openly admired Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, expressing a desire to, as one employee recalled, be a 'big swinging dick'. In that vein, Rush claimed to be working with Boeing, Nasa and the University of Washington, though no formal partnerships existed. (In fact, a Boeing engineer involved in Titan's early designs emailed Rush in March 2012: 'We think you are at high risk of a significant failure at or before you reach 4,000 meters. We do not think you have any safety margin.') Rush also elected to withhold any OceanGate craft from third-party safety inspections, the industry standard for submersibles. That decision proved to be a breaking point for several employees; Lochridge was fired after he inspected Titan himself, and said in a written report to Rush that he had no confidence in the submersible. The documentary includes remarkable audio of a 2018 senior staff meeting in which Rush fires Lochridge and quashes his concerns as a discrepancy of vision – 'I don't want anybody in this company who is uncomfortable with what we're doing. We're doing weird shit here and I am definitely out of the mold. There's no question. I am doing things that are completely non-standard.' 'There is a danger in the kind of cult of personality, particularly the tech bro, 'move fast and break things,'' Monroe said. 'When other people's lives are in the balance, I think we should all take a step back and be careful about that. It's one thing to put unmanned spacecraft into space, but you're taking money to provide an expedition.' One has to wonder, given all the dissent, given the fact that the sub would produce loud cracking sounds with each descent (which Rush called, unscientifically, the carbon fiber 'seasoning' with use) – did the CEO actually believe it was safe? 'I'm not in Stockton's mind, so I don't know,' said Monroe. But he took into account Rush's public personality as a maverick, the media tailwinds in his favor. 'When you say you're going to go to Titanic in a new submersible that no one's ever done before, and the sound of your own voice resonates year after year while you're trying to figure out how to do it, I think there's a pressure that builds, that suggests 'I have to do this.'' What is clear, from numerous interviews, was that 'if you went against the boss, there were going to be repercussions.' Lochridge knows this well; after he filed a whistleblower complaint with the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha), OceanGate sued him for improperly disclosing confidential information to regulators. The legal costs, and Osha's protracted investigation, forced him to withdraw his complaint, ending what could have been the one regulatory oversight on the company. OceanGate continued apace; the film lingers only briefly on the dive in 2022 which seemed to damage the sub, even according to the company's own 'real-time monitoring system'. Titan imploded on its next dive to Titanic depths a year later, after several aborted attempts due to inclement weather. Though the 'delamination' of the carbon fiber hull is the presumed cause, the US Coast Guard's official written report, including recommendations for the prevention of a similar tragedy, has yet to be publicly released. 'I don't know what those recommendations could be,' said Monroe, 'but you would think they would have to do with how to run an experimental submersible when offering it to the public.' Such as, perhaps, oversight, or a healthier sense of skepticism when the only safety assurances come from the company itself. Rush 'believed in the ethos of move fast and break things. Rules don't apply when you want to change the way things work,' said Monroe. 'That's dangerous when other people's lives are at stake. There are certain rules that do apply, like the rules of physics, the rules of science – these rules do apply to all of us.' Titan: The OceanGate Disaster is now available on Netflix
The Independent
11-06-2025
- General
- The Independent
Netflix Titan documentary shows moment OceanGate CEO fires experienced pilot who raised safety concerns
A highly anticipated Netflix documentary on the 2023 OceanGate explosion shows the moment that the submersible company's CEO, Stockton Rush, fired senior sub-pilot and whistleblower David Lochridge. Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster delves into the accounts of staff members and the events that led to the Titan submersible's implosion on June 18, 2023, resulting in the deaths of five people inside. Lochridge, OceanGate's former director of marine operations, held reservations about the vessel 's carbon fibre hull and said he only entered the project on the assumption that the Titan sub would become 'classed' – meaning that it would be independently certified as safe. Sub-expert Rob McCallum said he pulled out of the project the day Rush decided to proceed without third-party classification. The contentious relationship between Lochridge and the CEO came to a head when Rush steered the sub into a dangerous position during a trip to the SS Andrea Doria wreckage ahead of the Titan tour. An incident, the former sub-pilot said, was 'a complete turnaround' and resulted in the end of their relationship. In one clip, taken from inside the sub, Rush is seen almost crashing the vessel into a debris field, forcing Lochridge to intervene. Lochridge said he was ostracized from the Titan project following that trip, adding that he became 'totally out of the loop.' On January 18, 2018, Lochridge submitted a scathing report to Rush and other senior staff outlining the dangerous risks posed by Titan's inefficient hull design and the company's testing methods. A day later, Lochridge was asked to attend a meeting with Rush, Bonnie Carl, the HR director, Scott Griffith, the quality assurance director, and Tony Nissen, the engineering director. 'What brought this on? How long have you had some of these concerns?' Lochridge is asked by Rush during the January 2018 meeting. 'What led up to this, and what's your goal with this document?' Lochridge, who appears taken aback, responds, 'I, I, no. The goal for this document for me is the safety of anybody that goes in there, including you.' Rush, who grew angered during the discussion, continues to say: 'It's completely opposite of what everyone else says. Everyone says, 'Oh, carbon fibre can't handle compression.' They're full of s*** and I've proven them to be full of s***. 'You know this has been an eight-year project,' he says. 'I know what the hell I'm talking about,' he continues before asking Lochridge to continue explaining himself. 'In terms of you going in the submersible, I am so against you doing it,' Lochridge says. 'We should be putting that sub on a wire, with everything that's experimental which you're doing.' Rush interjects, stating, 'I know that's your issue. A wire is not without safety issues for one, and secondly, this is how we're doing it, period.' 'I've looked at it. What you do is you set a testing program where you do it incrementally. It's not just going to go to 3100 [metres] and be perfect and at 3200 [metres] it all goes anyway. That ain't going to happen, and I will put my life on the line to say that ain't going to happen,' Rush says, in the haunting clip. 'I don't want anybody in this company who is uncomfortable with what we're doing. We're doing weird s*** here, and I am definitely out of the mold. 'I'm doing things that are completely non-standard and I'm sure the industry thinks I'm a f******* idiot,' he states. Rush said he would continue at all lengths in his pursuit of success, no matter what anyone else thought. Lochridge, who was left shell-shocked by the interaction, said Rush's decision was understood and felt 'gutted' about how things deteriorated to that point. The departure of Lochridge meant that OceanGate operations had to be made more secure as life at the company would continue under the leadership of a 'narcissist and a psychopath,' according to former engineering director Tony Nissen in the documentary. HR director Bonnie Carl also left the company following that meeting.
