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Take Me To Titanic

A journey to visit the world’s most famous shipwreck sounds like a something from science fiction. But for the first time ever, a group of curious adventurers are taking a cutting-edge sub to visit the remains of the Titanic. This fascinating BBC documentary travels with the explorers as they view the spectacle that is the Titanic.

Watch Take Me To Titanic and more acclaimed documentaries on BBC Select today. Restrictions apply*.

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'We have a problem': Terrifying footage shows doomed Titan sub spinning out on previous mission to Titanic wreckage

Disturbing footage from an unearthed BBC documentary shows the Titan sub spinning out during an earlier voyage to the Titanic wreckage.

The footage was captured in an episode of the BBC's "The Travel Show," which followed a woman named Renata Rojas as she fulfilled a lifelong dream to see the famous wreck.

During the voyage, cameras record the moment co-pilot Scott Griffith momentarily loses control of the Titan when its thrusters malfunctioned, and they’re left spinning in circles.

"Oh no. We have a problem," Mr Griffith says.

In the footage, he can be heard explaining to the spooked passengers that one of the thrusters was thrusting forward, while the other was thrusting backwards.

"So, the only thing I can do right now is a 360," he explained.

On the mothership above, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush is seen troubleshooting Mr Griffith's controller.

"It's not going to be easy," he told his fellow support crew.

Mr Rush was one of the five men who died in the maritime tragedy after the vessel suffered a catastrophic implosion on June 18 near the wreckage of the famous Ocean liner.

The solution Mr Rush came up with was surprisingly simple.  

"Tell him to hold it the other way," he said.

The CEO concluded that tilting the controller 90 degrees clockwise will make the submersible go forward again.

The unearthed footage comes just days after an investigation by the New Yorker revealed OceanGate employees were disturbed by the sub’s reliability and Mr Stockton’s “ego” as far back as 2018.  

During a safety inspection, former OceanGate director of marine operations David Lochridge noticed glue was coming away from the seams of ballast bags, and mounting bolts threatened to rupture them.

He also noted the vessel “deviated from standard design parameters” and that the sub’s exostructure and electrical pods were at risk of corrosion when exposed to seawater.

A second OceanGate employee, project associate Rob McCallum, was alarmed to find out the Titan had no “hardwired” controls in case of emergency.

Instead, the submersible relied completely on a Bluetooth connection for communication and a consumer-grade Sony PlayStation controller for movement.

According to Ms Rojas, the submersible was less than 300 metres from the Titanic, which is located about 3.9 kilometres below sea level, when they lost control in the 2022 incident.

"You know I was thinking 'We're not going to make it,’’ Ms Rojas said in the documentary.

About one year later, Mr Rush, Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shazhada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Sulaiman lost their lives after the vessel imploded at some point during that same journey down to the Titanic.

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Titan Sub Pilot Loses Control On Seabed In Documentary Clip From 2022 Dive

Assignment Editor, HuffPost

A BBC documentary released last year captured a chilling malfunction on the doomed Titan submersible that left passengers stuck circling at the bottom of the ocean.

On one of OceanGate’s dives to the Titanic wreckage nearly 13,000 feet below the surface in the North Atlantic, its sub’s thrusters malfunctioned, causing the vessel to spin only in circles.

It was captured in the BBC’s documentary “Take Me to the Titanic .” In the footage, as the submersible reaches the ocean floor near the Titanic’s resting place, pilot Scott Griffith can be heard saying: “There’s something wrong with my thrusters. I’m thrusting and nothing’s happening.”

“Am I spinning?” Griffith said at one point. “Oh, my God.”

He explained to passengers that one of the thrusters was thrusting forward, and the other backward ― meaning they couldn’t navigate toward the shipwreck just 1,000 feet or so away.

“You know, I was thinking, ‘We’re not going to make it,’” passenger Renata Rojas told the BBC. “We can’t go anywhere but go in circles.”

Crew members were forced to wait at the bottom of the ocean while OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush worked to come up with a solution from the host ship.

Eventually, the pilot was directed to reprogram the video game controller that steers the vessel and regained control of the sub. The passengers were then able to view the wreckage they’d paid $250,000 to visit.

Rush and four other people were killed last month when the same submersible imploded during another tourist expedition to the Titanic site.

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In the wake of the incident, numerous dive experts and former OceanGate employees and associates have spoken out , accusing Rush and the company of ignoring repeated warnings.

David Lochridge, OceanGate’s former director of marine operations, wrote in a 2018 email that he feared Rush “kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego,” The New Yorker reported this week. Lochridge claims he was fired from the company after sounding the alarm on safety issues in a report.

Multiple previous passengers have also spoken about an array of glitches and malfunctions they experienced on their own Titanic expeditions.

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