Lindsey Graham (18:25)
Within minutes of receiving the emergency call from the captain of the Polar Prince, the US Coast Guard begins to deploy personnel and equipment. The first to reach the scene in the North Atlantic are the crew of a C130 Hercules search and rescue plane. They assist the hunt for the Oceangate's missing submersible from the air. What the Coast Guard really needs, though, is personnel at sea level as well. But the Titanic wreck site is 900 miles off Cape Cod, and ships will take around two days to reach it from New England. There is a closer option, though. The Polar Prince is just over 300 miles from the coast of Newfoundland. So the Coast Guard liaises with its counterparts in Canada, who immediately send an icebreaker to support the search, the Coast Guard is working on the same assumption as Oceangate, that the Titan has lost communication and return to the surface somewhere. But even if that's true, Stockton, Rush, and the other four men on board are still in danger. There's no way to open the sub's hatch from the inside, so even on the surface, the occupants will suffocate if they're not found in time. Oceangate informs the Coast Guard that the sub carries enough oxygen to last roughly 96 hours. By the time night falls on June 18, 2023, Titan has been sealed for around 12 hours. That gives the Coast Guard another 84 hours, or three and a half days to locate the sub and open its hatch. The clock is ticking. There's little that rescuers can do at night. So at first light the following morning, a Coast Guard aircraft takes off to resume the search. But the Coast Guard pilots aren't the only ones rising early. Rumors begin rippling through newsrooms around the world that there's a major story breaking in the North Atlantic. As the details are confirmed, reporters rush to be the first on the scene. And with the Titan's disappearance now public knowledge, Rear Admiral John Mauger, commander of the Boston Coast Guard, holds a press briefing. He announces that the US Navy has deployed three aircraft to scour the ocean. The Canadian Air Force has agreed to support the search effort, too, putting another Hercules in the air. But there's still no sign of the Titan on the surface. And that leads the Coast Guard to consider another possibility. That the submersible is stuck on on the seabed. If that's the case, then the rescue mission has just grown vastly more complicated, and they're going to need expert help. More than 1,000 miles away in East Aurora, New York, one such expert gathers a team of engineers in a small conference room. Ed Cassano is the CEO of Pelagic Research Services, a company that operates remotely controlled submersibles. The atmosphere in the meeting room is tense. The engineers have been glued to their phones all day following the news of Titan's disappearance. Deep sea exploration is a small, tightly knit industry, and many of Pelagic's employees know their counterparts at Oceangate. But unlike Oceangate, Pelagic only operates unmanned, remotely controlled submersibles. So the thought of losing a crew at such an extreme depth is almost unimaginable. Cassano claps his hands and calls the room to order. Then he confirms what's being reported on the news is true. He just received the call outlining the gravity of the situation. And asking Pelagic for help. Pelagic's flagship vessel is the Odysseus 6K, a cube shaped submersible that can dive down to 20,000ft, far deeper than Titan's last known depth. So if Titan is stranded somewhere, Odysseus is exactly the craft to find it. Normally, it's researchers and surveyors who hire Odysseus to carry out deep sea monitoring. Using its array of cameras and sensors, the sub has been deployed all over the world. But luckily for Oceangate, it is currently at Pelagic's facility in the lab next door. Under normal conditions, preparing and packing Odysseus for deployment takes two weeks. Pelagic's engineers have standing instructions to work slowly and methodically. With equipment this specialized, any mistake could cost millions. But if they're going to rescue the Titan before its oxygen runs out, then Cassano needs his team to hurry. He and his engineers quickly draw up a plan. They prioritize the most important tasks and skip anything they can. But geography still poses a major obstacle. Pelagic's headquarters are in upstate New York, more than 300 miles inland. There's no time to transport Odysseus to a port by road. But Cassano has another idea. He makes a call to a contact with the US Air Force. And soon there are three C17 Globemasters waiting on the tarmac at the nearest major airport. But Pelagic isn't the only company summoned to help the Titan. There's another remotely operated submersible capable of reaching the depth the missing sub is thought to be at. And this one is already in the Atlantic Ocean. Just like odysseus, the Victor 6000 is usually hired by scientific researchers and surveyors. And when Oceangate staff reach out to Victor's owners, they learn that it's currently aboard the French research vessel Le Talente. After he's made aware of the situation, the captain of that ship immediately sets course for the Titanic wreck site. But getting there will still take 48 hours. OceanGate is running out of time. And while the deep sea submersibles are mobilized, the surface search continues. More ships arrive to sweep the area, as well as aircraft, including a long range patrol plane operated by the Royalty Canadian Air Force. And during One flight on June 20, an airman on board monitoring a sonobuoy hears a banging noise. The sound is clear and regular, and it's coming from about the depth where the Titan was last detected. After two days without any sign of the submersible, this noise suddenly raises hopes that the passengers are still alive. The banging sound might be the crew desperately trying to signal for help. News of the mysterious noise breaks as the world's media is still descending on the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Its capital, St. John's has become the staging point for most of the vessels in the search and rescue effort. And among the reporters covering the story is local CBC journalist Ryan Cook. Driving home from work late on June 20, 2023, he witnesses the search effort enter a new phase. From his car, he sees three enormous, enormous US Air Force cargo planes fly right over the top of him. They're heading in to land at the nearby airport. Cooke thinks for a moment, then abandons his plans for a quiet evening. Instead, he makes a U turn and follows the three planes. When he reaches the perimeter fence bordering the airport, Cook swings his car onto the gravel shoulder and kills the engine. Through the windshield, he can see that a cluster of reporters has beaten him to it. There's already a group of of camera operators and photographers by the fence, even one man livestreaming the events on his phone. Cook gets out of his car just in time to see the last of the three giant airplanes on its final approach. A thunderous shadow passes overhead, low enough that Cook instinctively ducks. The huge slate gray plane drifts lower and lower until tires squeal and it touches down. Voice then calls out from the group of reporters. Hey, Ryan. Thought you were going home. Cook turns to see a fellow CBC journalist, a camera bag slung over his shoulder. Cook smiles and shrugs. Well, I was for about 10 minutes. Then those things flew over my car and I figured something was happening. Three American Globemasters, one after the other. Yeah, that'll catch anyone's attention. They lean against the fence as ground crews swarm around the planes, offloading pallets and steel containers onto waiting trailers. Cook pulls out his phone to check for mismessages. You hear anything about what's on board? No, nothing concrete. Someone said they might be unloading decompression chambers. Someone else said remotely operated vehicles. Well, ROVs would make sense if they think the Titan's on the bottom. The last Globemaster rolls to a halt, its cargo ramp opening with hydraulic groan. Inside, Cook can see more tarped crates or equipment. Man, have you ever seen anything like this? They're turning St. John's into a military staging ground or something. Yeah, I guess that banging noise they heard lit a fire under everyone. Cook wraps his jacket tighter and yawns. His colleague laughs. You look like crap, by the way. Well, thanks. I've been running on adrenaline and Coffee since Monday, when you should go home, get some sleep, miss all the fun here. They watch as a gate opens and police motorcycles roar out, followed by a convoy of trucks. Cook checks the time now they are moving fast. Where do you think they're heading? Gotta be the harbor, right? Well, what are we waiting for? Cook is a tired laugh. Well, what's a few more hours, right? Ryan Cook and his colleague jog back to their cars. Although they don't know exactly what the three cargo aircraft were carrying, it's clear that no expense is being spared in the hunt for the Titan. But no matter how much money is thrown at the problem, there's one thing that no one can change. If OceanGate's calculations are correct, there's barely a day left before the submersible's oxygen runs out. Unless they find the Titan soon, then the work of hundreds of people from across the globe will all have been for nothing. By June 21, 2023, the Surface Search for Titan has expanded to an area twice the size of Connecticut. Another Canadian Coast Guard vessel has joined the operation, sweeping the waves with advanced sensors. Meanwhile, overhead, a US Coast Guard C130 Hercules zigzags across the sky in a tight search pattern. Neither spots any sign of the missing submersible, nor do any of the other ships or planes scouring the area. But the titan is only 22ft long, a tiny speck against the vast ocean. Even if searchers passed close by, the craft could easily blend in among the choppy, white tipped waves of the Atlantic. All they can do is keep looking and keep hoping. Beneath the surface, the search zone is smaller but no less daunting. Titan may have drifted in the deep ocean currents, but the working assumption is that the sub is stuck somewhere close to the Titanic wreck, the same area where the Canadian Air Force picked up banging noises on a sonobuoy. If the sounds came from the Titan, the submersible might still be intact. The rescuers just need a way to get eyes on the seabed. And in the early hours of June 22, the expert help they need finally arrives. Having been flown into Newfoundland by the U.S. air Force two days earlier, the deep sea specialists from Pelagic Research Services in New York arrive at the search zone. Wind cuts across the deck of the supply ship Horizon Arctic as Pelagic's engineers swarm over the Odysseus 6K. Floodlights bathe the remotely operated submersible in a white glow. The cube shaped craft has its metal limbs folded in, its cameras covered and its cables all neatly Coiled. But soon it needs to be in the water. Watching from the rail as the boat lurches around him is Pelagic CEO Ed Cassano. The sea and sky around him are pitch black, the void broken only by scattered lights in the dark. Coast Guard cutters, research ships, even private vessels that have been drafted into the rescue mission. Cassano is watching his team work feverishly to prepare the Odyssey when the Horizon Arctic's captain joins him at the rail. Good timing, because Cassano has a question. He nods across the deck toward the Odyssey. So you're crane and winch. You sure they can handle the weight with this sea state we've lifted head heavier and worse, believe me. We'll just need to time it with waves or your ROV is going to slam into the hull. You probably don't want that. No, you neither, right? The captain watches the engineers work from. You know, we were the Titan support ship for the last two years. Most of my crew no stocked him personally. So this isn't just another operation. You understand now? I understand. My whole team does. We're doing all we can to bring them home. That's good. But be honest. Really think it's possible that they're still alive? If they are, we've got one shot to save them. I don't know. They've got, what, five hours of oxygen left? Yeah, maybe less. And it's two hours to the bottom and two hours back. Well, that's not a lot of time to find them. No, it's going to be very tight. And that's assuming Titan is not resting on its side or trapped somewhere that's difficult to reach. So the faster we get down there, the better. Well, we're not going to drag our feet. We'll get you in the water as soon as you're ready. But after that, it's up to you guys. Yeah, but if Titan's on the seabed, the Odysseus will find her. That's what she was built for. Just after 4am on June 22, 2023, the Odysseus 6K finally enters the water. Under normal circumstances, the submersible would descend at a gentle 80ft a minute. But this is no ordinary dive. So its operators push the sub to its limits and the odysseus descends almost 50% faster than usual. Even then, it's 6:15am before it reaches the seabed. And the speedy mobilization and rapid descent have come at a cost. Seconds after reaching the search zone, some of Odysseus thrusters fail. And without them, the submersible won't be able to maneuver safely through the hazardous debris field that surrounds the wreck of the Titanic. After nearly three days of non stop work, it seems that the pelagic team has failed at the last moment. Under normal protocols, the Odysseus operators would abort the mission. They would bring the submersible slowly back to the surface, diagnose the problem, and only redeploy when they were sure it was fixed. But they don't have time for that. So in a desperate gamble, the pelagic team raises the submersible to 65ft above the seabed, high enough to avoid it crashing into anything while they try a remote fix from the surface. With the sub suspended in the dark, they spend an hour trying to get the thrusters going. But nothing works. Eventually, they are left with just one power cycling the entire vessel. Turning Odysseus off and on again at this depth is dangerous though. If the submersible fails to reboot, it will hang lifeless at the end of its long cable. The pelagic team will then have no option but to haul it back up, possibly destroying its highly sensitive and expensive electronics in the process. But there is no other choice, so they give it a try. Remarkably, this last ditch effort works. When systems restart on the Odysseus, the thrusters come back online and the operators have full control again. But just as the submersible reaches the seabed a second time, the 96 hour countdown reaches zero. Titan will be out of oxygen at any moment, and if the men on board aren't already unconscious, then they are living on borrowed time inside a converted shipping container on the deck of the Horizon Arctic Jesse Doran hunches over Odysseus control panel. Doran is Pelagic's ROV manager and an experienced submersible pilot. His eyes flit across several screens showing the bottom of the ocean and as captured by Odysseus cameras. Other monitors display depth readings and temperature data. Doran needs all this information at his disposal because at 12,000ft below the surface, the seabed is pitch black. The only visibility comes from Odysseus floodlights, which barely push through the gloom behind him. Pelagic CEO Ed Cassano watches over Doran's shoulder. He doesn't say a word, but Doran knows he'll be scanning the screens too, searching for any anomaly, any glimmer of hope. And at 9:40am, a flash of white suddenly appears on one of the monitors. Something is reflecting the Odysseus lights and it looks too clean and bright. To be part of the Titanic. His mouth dry, Doran maneuvers the Odysseus closer. He and Cassano both lean in, and as they get closer, they see that the object is not encrusted or decayed by a century underwater water. Like everything else in the debris field, it's unmistakably modern. Doran angles the submersible to get a better view and suddenly realizes exactly what he's looking at. It's the Titan's tail cone, but it's completely separated from the rest of the submersible. After a three and a half day search, the Titan has been found and it's in pieces. Doran's fingers stay on the controls, but his stomach twists. There's only one explanation for what he's that the Titan has suffered a catastrophic structural failure. The enormous pressure of the water at this depth must have crushed it in a sudden collapse known as an implosion. The only small comfort is that this would have happened in just milliseconds. Stockton, Rush and his four passengers would likely have been dead before they even realized something had gone wrong. After a long, heavy pause, Dora turns to Cassano. He picks up a radio and reports what they've found to the US Coast Guard. Now the international effort will have to switch from rescue to recovery, but it won't just be about retrieving what's left of the passengers for their families to bury. There's sure to be an investigation, and the US Coast Guard will want all the evidence they can get because it won't just be enough to establish what happened. The families of the victims, the authorities and and the rest of the submersible industry will demand to know why the Titan imploded and whether this fatal accident could have been prevented. From Audible Originals and Airship. This is episode one of the Titan Submersible Disaster for American Scandal. In our next episode, in designing and building the Titan, Oceangate set a collision course with catastrophe. Driven by ambition and convinced the that the promise of innovation justifies almost any risk, Stockton Rush champions a series of increasingly experimental submersibles Follow American Scandal on the Audible app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to all episodes of American Scandal ad free by joining Audible. And to find out more about me and my other projects, including my live stage show coming to a theater near you, go to notthatlinseygraham.com that's not that lindseygraham.com if you'd like to learn more about the Titan submersible disaster, we recommend the documentaries the Ocean Gate Disaster from Netflix and the Titan sub disaster from the BBC. This episode contains reenactments and dramatized details. And while in most cases we can't know exactly what was said, all our dramatizations are based on historical research. American Scandalous Harm Hosted, edited and executive produced by me, Lindsey Grant for Airship. This episode is written and researched by Scott Reeves Senior Producer Andy Beckerman Managing Producer Emily Byrd fact checking by Alyssa Jung Perry Audio editing by Mohammed Shazib Original music by Thrum Sound design by Gabriel Gould Executive Producer for Airship is William Simpson Executive producer for Audible is Jenny Lauer Beckman, Head of Creative Development at Audible Kate Navin, Head of Audible Original North America Marshall Louie and Chief Content Officer Rachel Giazza. Copyright 2026 by Audible Originals, LLC Sound Recording Copyright 2026 by Audible Original.
