Grieving relatives of the five victims of the Titanic sub which imploded in a deep sea disaster will never be able to lay their complete bodies to rest.
The catastrophic accident killed British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, 19.
Sub company OceanGate‘s CEO Stockton Rush and French Navy veteran Paul-Henri Nargeolet also perished in the accident.
The sheer force of the water pressure unleashed at the depths where the Titan was destroyed will have had a devastating effect on anything inside.
Any active search for parts of the Titan and her passengers has now been completed.
Shahzada Dawood, 48, one of Pakistan’s richest men, who along with his teenage son Suleman Dawood, 19, (together, left) died on the Titan along with British explorer Hamish Harding (right)
Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, which launched, Titan, perished on board the submersible along with his four passengers, including PH Nargeolet (right)
The salvaged remains of Titan were lifted to shore by a huge crane on Wednesday morning
The titanium front-end of Titan, where its viewing port was located, was clearly identifiable among the sections which were recovered. It’s thought that the titanium parts are likely to have suffered less damage in the implosion, compared with the weaker carbon fiber elements
A large section of the Titan submersible that was recovered Wednesday appeared to be a panel from its tail. Some experts expected that salvaged pieces would be far smaller
Pelagic Research Services (PRS), whose deep sea robot Odysseus 6K found the debris, confirmed today it had ‘completed off-shore operations’.
The announcement means there will be no more recovered, unless another operation is launched.
And the coastguard’s statement on medical professionals were analysing ‘presumed human remains’ found in the wreckage paints an uncomfortable reality for relatives.
Naval architect Tony Bowman told MailOnline: ‘The impact of the flow of water, the pressure would have been enormous.
‘Body parts may be found because these jets of water would be just instantaneous.
‘Just applying some logical sense to it, the poor people in there wouldn’t have known anything about it when it happened.
‘They have been large parts on the submersible brought up from what I have seen.
‘It seems to me some remains could be found among the parts of the sub.
‘This should have been known that this was going to be a disaster by anyone competent that worked on it.
‘Engineers must have worked on building this – the investigation into what happened is going to have a very long tail.’
MailOnline today sought clarification from the US coastguard on whether new searches would be carried out after PRS had left, but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Earlier today a spokesperson had told media: ‘United States medical professionals will conduct a formal analysis of presumed human remains that have been carefully recovered within the wreckage at the site of the incident.’
Experts had warned Ocean Gate CEO Stockton Rush for years that his self-designed submersible was not fit for diving to the depths seen at the Titanic’s grave due to its carbon fibre hull.
The material is very stiff, has a high chemical resistance, a high-temperature tolerance and low thermal expansion, however it is also prone to delamination, which is the process whereby a material fractures into layers while put under pressure.
Industry experts believe that the Titan’s titanium components withstood the disaster which occurred nearly 4,000m underwater, meanwhile the carbon fibre elements were likely to have been crushed into hundreds of pieces.
Titanic director James Cameron, a renowned deep sea explorer and submersibles expert, said: ‘If I had to put money down on what the finding [of the investigation] will be, the Achilles heel of the sub was the composite cylinder that was the main hull that the people were inside,’ he said.
‘There were two titanium end caps on each end. They are relatively intact on the sea floor. But that carbon fiber composite cylinder is now just in very small pieces. It’s all rammed into one of the hemispheres. It’s pretty clear that’s what failed.’
The parts lifted from the ocean appear to align with Cameron’s observations, including that the larger piece was the vessel’s titanium shell. Investigators will now work to confirm what each piece is.
Of approximately ten submersibles that exist on the planet and are capable of diving to the depth of the doomed ocean liner, only one was uncertified – OceanGate’s Titan.
This comes despite many claims from OceanGate, which assured its Titan submersible was safe for years.
‘I am grateful for the coordinated international and interagency support to recover and preserve this vital evidence at extreme offshore distances and depths,’ Marine Board of Investigation Capt. Jason Neubauer said in a statement.
‘The evidence will provide investigators from several international jurisdictions with critical insights into the cause of this tragedy,’ he added.
Mr Neubauer noted there is a ‘substantial amount of work’ still to be done to understand what happened to the Titan sub and to ‘help ensure a similar tragedy does not occur again.’
