Lawsuit Claims Titanic Tourists Knew They Were Going to Die Before Implosion

A terrifying fate.

Water Hazard

As they descended towards the Titanic wreck, did the five souls inside the submersible that imploded last year ever get an inkling that they were going to die?

We won't ever know for sure, but the family of one of the victims has slapped the sub's maker OceanGate with a $50 million lawsuit, CNN reports, claiming that noise from the hull would have alerted the crew that they were going to meet a watery end.

"The crew may well have heard the carbon fiber’s crackling noise grow more intense as the weight of the water pressed on Titan’s hull," reads the lawsuit filed by the family of French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, as reported by CNN. "The crew lost communications and perhaps power as well. By experts’ reckoning, they would have continued to descend, in full knowledge of the vessel’s irreversible failures, experiencing terror and mental anguish prior to the Titan ultimately imploding."

Nargeolet, along with three other tourists and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, boarded the Titan sub in June 2023 with the mission to see the Titanic wreckage. At some point in their descent, the sub imploded, leaving behind fragments of the vessel and human remains which were found months later.

Before this fatal voyage, Rush had fended off critics who had questioned the janky, cost-cutting design of his sub, which was piloted with an off-the-shell video game controller and a hull that wasn't tested for repeated trips at the depth of the Titanic wreckage, miles underwater.

Sea Change

Even with these deaths, other tourists remain intent on visiting the Titanic, where more than 1,500 people died when the ocean liner struck an iceberg in 1912.

The last reported trip to the Titanic was in July of this year, according to NBC 10 WJAR in Rhode Island. That journey was helmed by private company RMS Titanic Inc, which sent a crew to the site with no reported malfunctions.

Like Rush, this company is intent on commercializing the Titanic wreckage by rescuing artifacts and holding exhibitions on the Titanic around the world, according to the company's website.

Even if the exhibitions are respectful, maybe it's time we leave this bit of history behind. The wreckage is basically an underwater cemetery for the original Titanic victims.

And now it's the final resting place for the people who died aboard the Titan sub, chained together forever by fate and hubris.

More on the Titanic: Oh No! Yet Another Billionaire Plans to Visit the Titanic Wreck