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Hearings open a new act in OceanGate sub tragedy

Coast Guard engineers examine Titan sub debris
Coast Guard engineers examine the aft titanium endcap from OceanGate's Titan submersible in October 2023. (NTSB Photo)

The U.S. Coast Guard is beginning two weeks of public hearings into last year’s loss of OceanGate’s Titan submersible and its crew during a dive to the Titanic shipwreck — but even before the start of the hearings, the official in charge of the hearings made clear that there’s lots more investigation to be done.

“The hearing is the first step in publicly showing the proceedings,” Jason Neubauer, chair of the Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation, told reporters today. “We may hold additional proceedings. There could be additional witnesses interviewed. So, I would say it’s hard to give a projection on the end date for the investigation.”

Public hearings are due to run Sept. 16 through 27 in North Charleston, S.C., with the proceedings livestreamed via YouTube. They’ll delve into the causes of Titan’s implosion, which killed the five people on board — including Stockton Rush, the CEO and co-founder of Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate.

The other crew members were veteran Titanic explorer P.H. Nargeolet and three mission specialists who paid OceanGate to participate in the dive: Hamish Harding, a British aviation executive and adventurer, plus Pakistani-born business executive Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleiman.

Soon after Titan’s disappearance on June 18, 2023, OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations, and its website literally went dark. These hearings will mark one of the rare occasions when people who were associated with the company will be speaking publicly about OceanGate’s activities.

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Coast Guard delivers more debris from Titan sub wreck

Coast Guard engineers examine Titan sub debris
Coast Guard engineers examine the aft titanium endcap from OceanGate's Titan submersible in October 2023. (NTSB Photo)

The U.S. Coast Guard says it has recovered and transferred the remaining evidence and debris from OceanGate’s Titan submersible to a U.S. port for cataloging and analysis — more than three months after the deep-sea implosion that killed the sub’s five crew members in the North Atlantic.

In an update issued today, the Coast Guard said the transfer was made on Oct. 4. “Additional presumed human remains were carefully recovered from within Titan’s debris and transported for analysis by U.S. medical professionals,” it said.

OceanGate was a startup headquartered in Everett, Wash. — and the company’s founder and CEO, Stockton Rush, was among the casualties. In August, OceanGate said a new CEO with tech industry experience, Gordon Gardiner, would lead the company through the investigation and the closure of operations.

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Next-gen icebreakers will call Seattle home

Polar Security Cutter
An artist’s conception shows the next-generation Polar Security Cutter. (VT Halter Marine Illustration)

When the Coast Guard starts rolling out a new generation of heavy icebreakers on the Gulf Coast, the ships will be heading for a familiar port in the Pacific Northwest.

“I am pleased to announce that Seattle, Washington, will be the home of the Coast Guard’s new Polar Security Cutters,” Adm. Karl Schultz, commandant of the Coast Guard, said June 17 in a statement. “The Pacific Northwest has been the home of our icebreaking fleet since 1976, and I am confident that the Seattle area will continue to provide the support we need to carry out our critical operations in the polar regions.”

Heavy icebreakers come into play for guaranteeing access to Antarctica for supply deliveries, and supporting U.S. maritime security interests at high latitudes in the north as well as the south. But the current state of America’s fleet of heavy icebreakers is a source of concern.

That fleet has dwindled to one aging ship, the 43-year-old Polar Star, which has suffered through a string of breakdowns in recent years. During last year’s deployment to Antarctica, the ship experienced two flooding incidents and the loss of a gas turbine. This March, a team of Coast Guard and Navy divers had to patch a breach in the hull.

Meanwhile, the Polar Star’s sister ship, the Polar Sea, is out of commission and kept around only for spare parts. And the Coast Guard’s medium icebreaker, the Healy, isn’t capable of taking on Antarctic missions.

Fortunately, help is on the way.

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Aging icebreaker Polar Star returns to Seattle

Polar Star arrives
Videographers document the return of the icebreaker Polar Star to Seattle. (USCG Photo)

The U.S. Coast Guard’s only active heavy-duty icebreaker, the 42-year-old Polar Star, returned to its homeport in Seattle today to cap off a challenging months-long mission to Antarctica.

The 13,000-ton cutter is built to break through ice as thick as 21 feet by backing and ramming, and can steam continuously through 6 feet of ice at a speed of 3 knots.

Every year, the Polar Star voyages to the waters off Antarctica to keep shipping lanes open to McMurdo Station, on the southern tip of Ross Island.

The ship left Seattle last November to take part in Operation Deep Freeze 2018, and faced numerous challenges — including two flooding incidents and the loss of one of the ship’s three main gas turbines. No injuries resulted, but the Coast Guard acknowledged that the problems took a toll on the crew and slowed the cutter’s progress to McMurdo.

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