A newly filed wrongful-death lawsuit alleges that crew members aboard the Titanic submarine, which exploded while diving toward the wreck of the Titanic last year, may have known in their final moments that they were going to die.
The suit was filed by the family of French explorer Paul-Henri Narcolet, who died in the blast. Known as “Mr Titanic”, he participated in 37 pre-wreck dives and was on board when the Titanic sank in June 2023 during a trip to the wreck site.
All five crew members died. Others are British explorer Hamish Harding, British-Pakistani businessman Shahjata Dawood and his son Suleman, and Stockton Rush, CEO of Oceangate.
Narjolet’s family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit earlier this week against Oceangate, the company that built the submarine and operated the cruise. Website.
The case It accuses OceanGate and Rush of being negligent and alleging that numerous details about the ship’s defects and deficiencies were deliberately withheld from Norjolette.
The suit claims at least $50 million, claiming that the catastrophic explosion that claimed Norjolette’s life was directly caused by the continued negligence, carelessness and negligence of OceanGate, Rush and other defendants.
It also alleges that they may have known that the submarine was going to explode.
“Although the exact cause of the failure has never been determined, experts agree that the Titan’s crew must have known exactly what was happening,” the lawsuit states.
It alleges that “an ‘acoustic protection system’ allegedly warned the crew that the carbon-fibre hull was cracking under high pressure – releasing the weight and prompting the pilot to abort.”
“Common sense dictates that before dying, the crew knew they were going to die.”
The suit alleges that the crew could have heard the crackling of the carbon fiber grow louder as the weight of the water pressed against the Titan’s hull because a safety mechanism to reduce weight in response to the hull cracking did not work.
“According to experts’ calculations, they would have continued to descend, in full knowledge of the ship’s irreversible failures, and to have experienced terror and anguish before the Titan finally exploded.”
A spokeswoman for OceanGate declined to comment to The Associated Press.
Last week, Rory Golden, who was aboard the submarine’s support vessel when the disaster struck, spoke of the fear and uncertainty of the situation during the devastating rescue effort.
“We had the image in our head of them being down there, in the freezing cold, running out of oxygen, horribly scared,” said Golden, a close friend of Narjolette’s. told BBC News.
After the disaster, the US Coast Guard opened a Maritime Board of Inquiry into the incident to determine its cause. A public hearing is scheduled for September.
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