The “thump” sound that kept hopes alive for families and rescuers in the search for the doomed Titan submersible has been revealed for the first time in chilling new audio.
A desperate search was launched for the submarine after it lost contact with its mother ship and disappeared during an expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic on Sunday, June 18, 2023.
After an agonizing wait for news, at the end of the second day of searching, reports emerged that banging noises were detected at 30-minute intervals, deep in the ocean.
Reproduced for the first time in a new documentary, the hollow sound has a regular, constant rhythm that caught the attention of experts and raised hopes that the noise could be SOS signals emitted by the five men on board.
“It could be someone knocking on the door, the symmetry between those knocks is very unusual,” former Navy submarine captain Ryan Ramsey says in the documentary.
“It’s rhythmic, it’s like someone is making that sound, and the fact that it repeats itself is really unusual.”
A desperate search was launched for the submarine after it lost contact with its mother ship and disappeared during an expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic on Sunday, June 18, 2023.
Five people were on board, including British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding and Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman.
French Navy veteran PH Nargeolet (left) was on the submarine along with Stockton Rush (right), executive director of the OceanGate Expedition.
After the sound was first recorded around 11:30 p.m. on June 20, the US Navy confirmed that it had detected the noises the following morning.
Coast Guard Capt. Jamie Frederick admitted at the time: “With respect to the noises, specifically, we don’t know what they are, to be frank with you.”
The world was trapped as rescuers urgently redoubled their efforts to locate the missing submarine before its oxygen was expected to run out.
There were five passengers on board; Tourists Hamish Harding, 58, Shahzada Dawood, 48, and her son Sulaiman Dawood, 19, French Navy pilot Paul-Henry Nargeolet and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.
Tragically, the hopes raised by the mysterious coup were later dashed.
The pelagic search team’s submersible, Odysseus 6K reached the seabed after days of searching and on June 22 found remains of the submarine, about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic.
Titan had imploded as a result of the enormous water pressure pressing down on the ship, killing everyone on board in what was likely a matter of milliseconds.
Now, a new documentary, set to be released one year after the June tragedy, will go behind the scenes of the multimillion-dollar search operation.
Minute by Minute: The Titan Sub Disaster details the events leading up to Titan’s ill-fated expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic.
The documentary, made by ITN productions for Channel 5, also asks what lessons can be learned from the disaster.
Features never-before-heard audio of the coup, as well as expert opinion on what happened during the search mission that took over the world.
At the time, some experts warned against taking the sound as proof of life.
Many claimed the noise was likely coming from “debris” and “garbage” from the iconic shipwreck.
Banging noises were detected at 30-minute intervals using underwater sonar devices called “sonobuoys.”
According to experts, the ‘hits’ could be due to search teams in the area, marine species such as whales or even simply sounds from the depths of the Atlantic.
Jeff Karson, professor emeritus of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Syracuse University, said at the time that the sounds heard were likely “wishful thinking” by the U.S. Coast Guard.
Researchers believe the titan imploded as it descended into the deep waters of the North Atlantic on June 18, before the noise was recorded.
The submarine was launched around 8 a.m. that day in the Atlantic Ocean, 400 nautical miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, at the site of the Titanic wreck.
The five passengers began to descend while Rush piloted the boat, but at 9:45 a.m., one hour and 45 minutes after the dive, he lost contact with his mother ship Polar Prince.
It took OceanGate Expeditions eight hours to report the submarine’s disappearance to the US Coast Guard after it lost contact.
That prompted a massive international response to rescue the five passengers.
As the world held its breath, ships from around the world began making the journey to help search for the missing submarine as the hours and estimated oxygen ticked away.
However, it was later announced that all five people aboard the submarine were believed to have died in a probable implosion, and that a US Navy monitoring system had picked up a possible sound of the implosion in the initial descent.
Authorities soon announced that all five people aboard the submarine were believed dead, but search efforts continued.
Confirming the worst fears, on June 22 it was revealed that remains of the imploded submarine were found near the site of the Titanic.
Ten days after her disappearance, the Coast Guard announced that “suspected human remains” had been found in the wreckage of the submarine.
Washington-based OceanGate closed its doors amid the search, and questions arose after the disaster about the future of deep-sea tourism at the site.
“We had spent four or five days… hoping to get down there and perform a miracle,” deep-sea expert Jesse Doren told Sky after the discovery of the wreck.
The wreckage of the Titan submersible, recovered from the ocean floor near the wreckage of the Titanic, is unloaded from the ship Horizon Arctic at the Canadian Coast Guard dock.
“Obviously our sense of disappointment is minuscule compared to that of those close to the families of those who were lost.”
According to experts, the “knocks” could come from search teams in the area, from marine animals such as whales or even simply from sounds from the depths of the Atlantic.
Dr Jamie Pringle, Professor of Forensic Geosciences at Keele University, also told MailOnline at the time that he believes the sound was “man-made”.
“The ocean is a very noisy place because of the passage of ships, submarines, fishing boats and, in this case, even search vessels.”
Matthew Schanck, founder of the maritime search and rescue organization Marsar International, also suspected a human origin.
“We understand the noise could have a number of sources,” he told MailOnline. ‘The ocean subsurface is a noisy environment.
Jeff Karson, professor emeritus of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Syracuse University, told DailyMail.com that the sounds heard were likely “wishful thinking” by the Coast Guard.
“But given the high density of vessels in the area operating their propulsion systems and heavy machinery/equipment in the area, this may have been picked up by sonobuoys.”
Ships that deployed remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) in the search, including the Polar Prince mothership, would also have caused underwater noise, Schanck said.
Schanck does not believe the noise came from Titanic debris, although it may have come from Titanic “if there is loose metal moving around”, but the surface ships and ROVs deployed in the search were the most likely cause.
Stefan B. Williams, professor of marine robotics at the University of Sydney, said Business Insider Marine wildlife “such as whales” could even have caused the noise.