Titan Submersible Implosion That Killed 5 Was Never Properly Tested Before Fatal Implosion

Nearly three years after the Titan submersible imploded on its way to the Titanic, Canada’s Transportation Safety Board has laid out what went wrong in a shocking report.

The submersible imploded on its 88th dive on June 18, 2023, killing all five people aboard during a voyage to the historic wreck.

Released on Wednesday, June 17, the report on the 2023 implosion points to two central causes — the vessel’s damaged carbon-fiber hull and a near-total absence of regulatory oversight.

Investigators determined that the Titan‘s carbon fiber cylinder, as actually built, was never tested against the theoretical strength values on which its design relied.

The vessel’s construction and testing also fell short of standard engineering practice. Because of that, the board said, OceanGate had no reliable way of knowing how long the pressure hull would hold up through repeated dives to Titanic depths.

The board also found that wider gaps in how submersibles are overseen worldwide played a part.

Transport Canada knew the Titan was operating out of St. John’s, Newfoundland, with a Canadian support vessel, but never actually regulated it.

The report also stated that OceanGate had dealt with at least nine federal agencies or departments, investigators said, yet key details never reached Transport Canada, leaving it without a clear view of the danger.

“When it came to the Titan, critical information existed across multiple federal government organizations, but no one was responsible for connecting the dots,” TSB Chair Yoan Marier said in the report, as per CBC.

“Without a complete picture of the operation, the Titan continued to operate in Canada without regulatory oversight.”

The TSB issued six recommendations covering regulatory oversight, technical standards for submersibles and safety management failures.

Its conclusions line up with those of the U.S. Coast Guard and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, both of which released their final reports on the shocking implosion in 2025.

OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among the five killed.

Had he lived, the Coast Guard’s investigative team said it would have recommended manslaughter charges to the U.S. Department of Justice, as per ABC News. Also killed were French explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman.