When the Titan submersible disappeared in June 2023, rescuers held out hope of finding survivors after they heard strange, rhythmic knocking noises believed to be coming from the OceanGate vessel.
Though there were no survivors, the eerie knocking sounds are now being featured in an upcoming documentary about the submersible’s implosion, called Minute by Minute: The Titan Sub Disaster.
Before now, the audio had never been released to the public. The sound clip was given to the ITN Productions’ documentary crew in the U.K. by the Canadian Air Force, which led the search and rescue mission.
In a newly released clip for the documentary, four steady bangs can be heard in the sonar recordings.
“It sounds like it could be somebody knocking, the symmetry between those knockings is very unusual,” Ryan Ramsey, a former Navy submarine captain from the U.K., says in the documentary clip.
The mysterious sounds were picked up by Canadian P-8 aircraft that dropped sonobuoys in the area of the missing sub. The knocking was heard periodically “every 30 minutes,” according to a statement from the U.S. Coast Guard at the time.
This Global News graphic shows the distance between St. John’s, N.L., and the last point of contact with Titan, an OceanGate Expeditions that went missing June 18, 2023.
Global News graphic
“It’s rhythmic, it’s like somebody is making that sound and the fact that it’s repeated is really unusual,” Ramsey said.
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After a frantic search, it was revealed the Titan submersible imploded on its descent. A U.S. Navy official told CBS News the banging noises were most likely either ocean noise or noise from other search ships.
Minute by Minute: The Titan Sub Disaster will air on the U.K.’s Channel 5 on March 6 and 7.
The two-part documentary will also feature rarely seen footage from adventurer Arthur Loibl’s previous Titan expeditions. Loibl is one of the first people to ever to travel to the Titanic wreck in Oceangate’s Titan submersible in 2021.
What happened to the Titan submersible?
The Titan submersible, owned by the tourism and exploration company OceanGate Expedition, disappeared on June 18, 2023, during an expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic.
There were five people aboard the doomed sub: OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, British adventurer Hamish Harding and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
The submersible lost signal with its land-based crew about an hour and 45 minutes into the journey. Since the vessel was only equipped with 96 hours of oxygen, the rescue mission was a scramble and the news story made international headlines.
On June 22, after four days of searching, the U.S. Coast Guard located debris from the submersible and presumed all five passengers dead. The debris was found about 500 yards from the Titanic shipwreck.
The vessel’s implosion is believed to have been near instantaneous due to the immense pressure deep underwater.
Debris from the Titan submersible, recovered from the ocean floor near the wreck of the Titanic, is unloaded from the ship Horizon Arctic at the Canadian Coast Guard pier in St. John’s on June 28.
Paul Daly/The Canadian Press
The submersible was unregulated. It was built using parts from an RV supplier company and controlled using a 2011 Logitech gamepad controller.
The carbon-fibre and titanium vessel had diving capabilities of more than 13,000 feet (over 3,962 metres) and could carry five people. OceanGate ran successful trips to the Titanic shipwreck site in 2021 and 2022, according to the company’s website.
OceanGate Expeditions suspended all of the company’s exploration and commercial operations in July 2023.
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