111 Years of Tragedy: How 'Titanic' Obsession Led to 'Titan' Nightmare — and What's Next for Wreck

This week's PEOPLE cover story explores the 111 years of tragedy, mystery and obsession at the site of the RMS Titanic wreck, culminating in the June 2023 deaths of five men aboard the Titan.

Not unlike the maiden voyage of the Titanic in 1912, the Titan excursion promised to be a once-in-a-lifetime thrill. Ocean-Gate Expeditions cofounder and CEO Richard Stockton Rush III, 61, had invited passengers to experience the rarest of adventures: traveling down into the depths of the North Atlantic Ocean in the Titan, the 22-ft. submersible he built, to view the corroding grandeur of the ill-fated luxury liner in its watery grave.

“Gliding over the Titanic, descending to the grand staircase and seeing a crystal chandelier still hanging is a thing of immense beauty and tragedy,” explorer Fred Hagen, a 2022 Titan passenger, tells PEOPLE. “It takes your breath away.”

On the morning of Sunday, June 18, Rush was joined by Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, British Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman, 19, and billionaire British explorer Hamish Harding, 58 — who had each reportedly secured a $250,000 ticket — in the cramped capsule sealed from the outside with 18 bolts. Weighed down by sandbags and pipes, the Titan slid off an underwater platform and began its two-and-a-half-hour descent to the storied wreck.

While seeing it close was “life-altering,” says Hagen, “nobody in their right mind goes three miles deep in the ocean in an experimental vehicle without realizing that there’s the risk of death.”

That sobering fact became clear when the ride of a lifetime turned into one of the most closely watched ocean disasters of all time. At 5:40 p.m. ET that Sunday, Titan support ship Polar Prince notified the U.S. Coast Guard that the sub was missing, setting off a desperate search and rescue mission by an armada of ships from at least four countries.

For days, the world anxiously watched, ticking down the 96 hours of oxygen seemingly available before there would be no hope. On Thursday came the news everyone had feared: Titan debris had been found 1,600 ft. from the Titanic bow. The scattered remnants were “consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” Rear Adm. John Mauger announced at a press conference later that day.

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Presumed dead, the five adventurers now share the same hallowed resting place as the ghostly wreck that so fascinated them. Nargeolet’s daughter Sidonie Nargeolet said that her father had died at “a place where he was very happy.”

As the families grieve, officials are searching for answers. On Sunday the Coast Guard announced it would lead the investigation with help from the National Transportation Safety Board.

Reports that the U.S. Navy heard an implosion at the same time the Titan lost contact left many wondering when officials, and OceanGate, knew the craft had been crushed by immense underwater pressure and whether the U.S. Coast Guard search — estimated to cost millions covered by taxpayers — and the false hope it gave families was for naught.

The no-holds-barred search drew more criticism when compared with another tragedy at sea days earlier, when more than 600 migrants died off the coast of Greece.

“Governments” including the U.S. and Canada, which are close to the Titan site, “pulled out all the stops to try to save five mainly wealthy people,” said Human Rights Watch’s Kenneth Roth. With the migrants, “the Greek Coast Guard made only token efforts to help.”

The biggest question of all is whether Rush was too cavalier about the experimental vessel, which was never certified by a regulatory body and had raised safety concerns. Some would never travel 12,500 ft. into the ocean, let alone in a contraption the size of a minivan with a game controller to navigate thrusters. But others, like Rush, have risk-taking in their DNA.

A former flight-test engineer, Rush worked in aerospace and aviation before founding OceanGate in 2009, where he began building experimental subs using buoyant, less expensive carbon fiber instead of steel, which hadn’t been done before.

In 2018, as he readied the Titan for its first journey to the Titanic, red flags were being raised about its safety. That same year, OceanGate employee-turned-whistleblower David Lochridge joined more than 30 industry leaders to urge Rush to have the Titan tested and certified, saying in a letter that OceanGate’s “experimental approach” could lead to “catastrophic” consequences. Lochridge alleged in a court filing that Rush refused, saying OceanGate was “unwilling to pay” for that.

Too many rules, Rush said, stifle innovation: “At some point, safety is just pure waste,” he told journalist David Pogue in 2022. “If you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed.”

Some experts say the Titan never should have gone underwater. “It was a catastrophe waiting to happen,” says retired U.S. Navy captain Alfred Scott McLaren. “I didn’t consider it safe.”

And despite waivers signed by passengers, lawsuits against OceanGate are an “absolute certainty,” and criminal charges could follow, says attorney Neama Rahmani.

Details about exactly what happened during the ill-fated trip are still emerging. Rob McCallum, who had led multiple expeditions to the Titanic, says the passengers likely “had no idea of an implosion taking place” and died instantly. “It was a merciful end,” he says.

But Titanic director James Cameron said he heard unconfirmed reports from the tight-knit sub community that they must have been aware of the danger in the last minutes of their lives because an onboard monitoring system detected stress in the carbon fiber. “I believe now they had some warning" and were trying to shed weights to ascend, he told CNN.

What Will Happen to the 'Titanic' Wreck?

Cameron couldn't ignore the parallels between the Titanic and Titan tragedies.

“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night,” Cameron told ABC News. “And many people died as a result.”

Since the Titanic hit an iceberg on April 14, 1912, and sank nearly three hours later, claiming at least 1,500 lives, the saga has fascinated generations.

“It was the greatest ship ever built up until that time,” says Hagen.

Hagen suggests the global fascination is partly due to “some of the most famous, wealthy people” in the world being aboard the Titanic. And then there's the fact that it was known as a so-called unsinkable liner, as its hull was divided into watertight compartments. But the iceberg damage to the Titanic hull left six of those 16 compartments flooded, leading to its demise.

The wreck wouldn't be found until 73 years later, when oceanographer and Naval Reserve commanding officer Robert Ballard used his remote-controlled submersible to locate it about 350 miles from the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

The wreck’s discovery in 1985 and Cameron’s Oscar-winning 1997 movie Titanic have increased interest in the wreck, which may disintegrate in the next 30 years. According to the Smithsonian Institution, bacteria known as Halomonas titanicae — which is actually named after the ship — is slowly eating away at what's left of the once-glimmering vessel.

First discovered in 2010 by Henrietta Mann — a researcher at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia — the bacteria forms structures resembling rusty icicles. These structures nibble away at the iron on the ship, potentially causing the entire vessel to essentially disintegrate in the coming years. According to some estimates, the ship could be completely gone by 2030, Live Science reported in 2019.

With reporting by NICOLE ACOSTA, KIRSTY HATCHER, WENDY GROSSMAN KANTOR, SUSAN KATZ KEATING, JP MANGALINDAN, LIZ MCNEIL, SIMON PERRY, MARISA SULLIVAN, GILLIAN TELLING and SUSAN YOUNG