The family of a French explorer who perished in a submersible implosion has filed a lawsuit seeking over $50 million, alleging that the crew experienced “terror and mental anguish” before the disaster and accusing the submersible’s operator of gross negligence.
Paul-Henri Nargeolet was among the five individuals who died when the Titan submersible imploded during a voyage to the Titanic wreck site in the North Atlantic in June 2023. No one survived the journey aboard the experimental vessel owned by OceanGate, a Washington state-based company that has since halted operations.
Known as “Mr. Titanic,” Nargeolet had conducted 37 dives to the Titanic site, more than any other diver in the world, and was considered one of the foremost experts on the wreck. According to the lawsuit, Nargeolet’s estate claimed that the “doomed submersible” had a “troubled history” and that OceanGate failed to disclose crucial information about the vessel and its structural integrity.
The lawsuit alleges that the Titan “dropped weights” approximately 90 minutes into its dive, suggesting that the team had either aborted or attempted to abort the dive.
“While the exact cause of failure may never be determined, experts agree that the Titan’s crew would have realized exactly what was happening,” the lawsuit states. “Common sense dictates that the crew were well aware they were going to die, before dying.”
The lawsuit goes on to say: “The crew may well have heard the carbon fiber’s crackling noise grow more intense as the weight of the water pressed on Titan’s hull. The crew lost communications and perhaps power as well. By experts’ reckoning, they would have continued to descend, in full knowledge of the vessel’s irreversible failures, experiencing terror and mental anguish prior to the Titan ultimately imploding.”
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Following the disaster, concerns emerged about whether the Titan’s unconventional design and its creator’s refusal to undergo independent industry-standard checks contributed to its downfall. The implosion also sparked debates about the feasibility and future of private deep-sea exploration.
The U.S. Coast Guard quickly launched a high-level investigation, which is still ongoing. A significant public hearing as part of this investigation is scheduled for September.
The Titan conducted its final dive on the morning of June 18, 2023, a Sunday, and lost contact with its support vessel approximately two hours later. After an extensive global search and rescue operation, the wreckage of the Titan was discovered on the ocean floor about 984 feet (300 meters) from the Titanic’s bow, roughly 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland.
OceanGate CEO and cofounder Stockton Rush was piloting the Titan at the time of its implosion. The lawsuit characterizes Rush as “an eccentric and self-proclaimed ‘innovator’ in the deep-sea diving industry” and includes his estate as one of the defendants.
In addition to Rush and Nargeolet, the implosion resulted in the deaths of British adventurer Hamish Harding and two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood.
The firm holding the salvage rights to the Titanic is currently on its first voyage to the wreck site in years. RMS Titanic Inc., based in Georgia, began its first expedition to the site since 2010 last month, departing from Providence, Rhode Island.
Nargeolet served as the director of underwater research for RMS Titanic. He was part of an expedition to the Titanic site in 1987, shortly after the wreck was discovered, and had overseen the recovery of numerous Titanic artifacts, according to the lawsuit. His estate’s attorneys described him as an experienced underwater explorer who would not have joined the Titan expedition had the company been more forthcoming.
The lawsuit attributes the implosion to the “persistent carelessness, recklessness and negligence” of OceanGate, Rush, and others involved.
“Decedent Nargeolet may have died doing what he loved to do, but his death — and the deaths of the other Titan crew members — was wrongful,” the lawsuit states.
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