Titan submarine's support ship crew felt 'shudder' when they lost contact with doomed sub

The Titan support ship crew felt a "shudder" around the time they lost contact with the submersible during its fatal dive to the Titanic shipwreck, a hearing heard.

US Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation Chair Jason Neubauer told the last day of the two-week hearing that he felt the Polar Prince "shudder" around the time when communications with the sub were lost during the doomed June 2023 trip.

The statement was given to the board in October 2023 when the master or crew members were asked if they heard anything indicating the OceanGate sub imploded, according to Mr Neubauer. "The answer from the master was, 'With the benefit of hindsight, I now believe I felt the Polar Prince shudder at around the time communications were reportedly lost, but at the time, we thought nothing of it. It was slight,'" he revealed.

Captain Jamie Frederick, from the US Coast Guard Sector Boston, testified that if information had been reported immediately to the Coast Guard, that could have had a "drastic impact on the search efforts."

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He said Friday: "My initial reaction is, if that was information they have, to me personally, it would be unconscionable that they would not share that with the unified command."

According to the crew's perspective, the shudder was "not immediately connected to the event" so wasn't reported to the Coast Guard, Mr Neubauer said.

A remotely operated vehicle was deployed to the depth of 6,000 meters finding the Titan debris on June 22 on the ocean floor following a huge international search and rescue operation. "They discovered the tail cone first. And then as we continued to find additional debris, it became apparent that it had been a total loss", Mr Frederick said during his testimony.

Stockton Rush, the co-founder and CEO of the sub's maker, OceanGate. French explorer Paul Henri Nargeolet, British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman, were all killed in the fatal implosion.

It come as as scientific director Steven Ross said that on a dive just a few days before the Titan imploded, the vessel had a problem with its ballast, which keeps vessels stable. The issue caused passengers to “tumble about” and crash into the bulkhead, he said. “One passenger was hanging upside down. The other two managed to wedge themselves into the bow,” Ross testified.

He said nobody was injured but it took an hour to get the vessel out of the water. He said he didn’t know if a safety assessment or hull inspection was carried out after the incident.