Titanic sub passenger recalls brutal implosion warning

‘Like a Coke can crushed with a sledgehammer’

A former passenger of the Titan submersible that imploded last month, killing all five people on board, has spoken out about a brutal implosion warning.

Retired California businessman Bill Price, who went on a Titan dive in 2021, recalled discussing the effects of an implosion before the deep ocean expedition started.

Mr Price recalled some of the analogies of what it would be like to be crushed by extreme pressure in the ocean. He said it would be like a Coke can smashed with a sledgehammer. Or like “an elephant standing on one foot with 100 more elephants on top of it”.

Mr Price said that he understood that death would be instantaneous in such a case. “In a macabre way, it was reassuring,” he told the New York Times in an interview.

During an earlier expedition to the Titanic, Mr Price – who retired from running a travel business in California – aborted the mission as he realised there was a problem with the sub’s propulsion system on one side.

However, he decided to go on the expedition the very next day despite the malfunction of the propulsion system to see the Titanic’s wreckage.

“The fact that we went through that, we experienced some worst-case scenarios, and we overcame it, my thinking was, ‘We can do this,’” Mr Price was quoted as saying.

After seeing the Titanic, the team celebrated at the surface with sparkling cider, the report said.

The NYT reported that “more Titan missions were aborted than accomplished”.

Meanwhile, another former passenger on the Titan, Mike Reiss, told BBC Breakfast last month that “I know the logistics of it and I know how vast the ocean is and how very tiny this craft is”.

The TV writer added: “This is not to say this is a shoddy ship or anything, it’s just that this is all new technology and they’re learning it as they go along.

“You have to just remember the early days of the space programme or the early days of aviation, where you just make a lot of mistakes on the way to figuring out what you’re doing.”

Stockton Rush – the CEO of the company that operated the Titan – British billionaire Hamish Harding, renowned French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman were aboard the Titan when it imploded.

The US Coast Guard said last week that the US Navy had detected sounds that matched an “implosion or explosion” sometime after the sub vanished and before rescue efforts were launched. However, rescue efforts continued at the time because the information was not definitive, the Coast Guard added.