Maritime Accidents and Safety

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      Family of Titan Crew Member Sues OceanGate

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      Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French explorer, died along with four other crew members when OceanGate’s Titan craft imploded on its journey to the Titanic.The family of a French explorer who was aboard the Titan submersible, the vessel that imploded last year during its failed mission to explore the Titanic wreckage, killing all five people aboard, has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the craft’s manufacturer, OceanGate Expeditions.Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French explorer whose deep knowledge of the sunken ship earned him the nickname “Mr. Titanic,” was hired to assist OceanGate, a Washington State-based ocean exploration company, during the Titan’s journey to the Titanic.But the company and its founder, Richard Stockton Rush III, who also died aboard the vessel, misled Mr. Nargeolet about how the submersible was built, according to the lawsuit filed in King County, Wash.“Mr. Rush confessed to a ‘mission specialist’ on one Titanic voyage that he had ‘gotten the carbon fiber used to make the Titan at a big discount from Boeing because it was past its shelf life for use in airplanes,’” according to the lawsuit, which the Houston-based law firms Buzbee Law Firm and Schecter, Shaffer & Harris said was filed on Tuesday.The French deep sea explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet with a miniature version of the sunken ship.Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe lawsuit also accuses Mr. Rush of negligence for a variety of reasons, including falsely advertising a “crackling noise” that was said to be an advanced “safety” feature to alert crew members when to abort a mission. In reality, the lawsuit says that sound “is nothing more than the detection of a possibly imminent failure of the carbon fiber hull.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Billionaire Plans Dive to the Titanic in a Newly Designed Submersible

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      Larry Connor, 74, who made his wealth in real estate, said he’s building a new acrylic-hulled submersible that will be certified and rigorously tested to show that deep sea exploration is safe.A real estate billionaire in Ohio is planning an underwater voyage to the site of the Titanic shipwreck, where a submersible imploded on its approach to the sea floor a year ago, killing all five passengers on board.Shortly after the OceanGate disaster, Larry Connor, 74, a real estate investor and amateur adventurer, contacted the co-founder of Triton Submarines, Patrick Lahey, imploring him to build a submarine that could reach the depths of the Titanic safely and repeatedly, according to The Wall Street Journal.The two men aim to explore and conduct scientific research at the site, located off the coast of Newfoundland, 12,500 feet under the sea, in a two-person submersible that Triton is designing in the summer of 2026.“Ours is just not a trip to the Titanic,” Mr. Connor said in an interview on Tuesday. “It’s a research mission.”“The other purpose is to demonstrate to people around the globe that you can build a revolutionary, first-of-its-kind sub and dive it safely and successfully to great depths,” he added.The custom sub, which Mr. Connor plans to call “The Explorer — Return to the Titanic,” is still in the design phase and will be based on an existing submarine design that Mr. Lahey had worked on for years. It is listed on the Triton website as the Abyssal Explorer, an acrylic-hulled vessel than can reach depths of 13,000 feet, “the perfect submersible for repeated trips to the deep ocean.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dozens of Major Bridges Lack Shields to Block Wayward Ships

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      Ben Franklin Bridge Crescent City Connection Dolphin Expressway Bridge Kingston-Rhinecliff Bridge Lewis and Clark Bridge Memphis-Arkansas Bridge Mid-Hudson Bridge Newburgh-Beacon Bridge Robert C. Byrd Bridge Sherman Minton Bridge Tobin Bridge Veterans Memorial Bridge Aerial photos by Nearmap and Vexcel Imaging More

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      Tangled in Steel With No Way Out: How the Crew Stuck in Baltimore Is Faring

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      Twenty-two seafarers from India find themselves not only trapped in the ship that struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge, but also in an unexpected spotlight.Even from miles away, the destruction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore is a jarring visual: Chunks of steel jut above the water like metallic icebergs. Twisted gray beams protrude in crooked positions. From a park near Fort McHenry, visitors can see the giant cargo ship that struck the bridge and remains lodged in the wreckage.Less visible, however, are the 22 crew members from India who have remained on the ship, named the Dali, since the disaster on Tuesday.Little is publicly known about them other than that they are seafarers who embarked on a journey aboard the 985-foot-long cargo ship that was on its way to Sri Lanka, carrying 4,700 shipping containers, when it lost power and struck the Key Bridge, causing the structure to collapse.Since the accident, which killed six construction workers, the crew members have found themselves in an unexpected spotlight. While keeping the ship operable, they are answering a deluge of questions from officials investigating the nighttime catastrophe, as the evidence of what occurred lays around them in mangled ruins stretching across the bow and deck.While officials investigate what could have caused the tragedy, another question has emerged this week: What could the crew members, who have limited access to the outside world, be going through right now?“They must feel this weight of responsibility that they couldn’t stop it from happening,” said Joshua Messick, the executive director of the Baltimore International Seafarers’ Center, a religious nonprofit that seeks to protect the rights of mariners.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Close-Up View of the Baltimore Bridge Collapse

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      From roughly 100 yards away, the site of one of the worst bridge collapses in the country’s history is haunting. Maroon containers larger than a car sat twisted and crushed. Massive beams of steel warped into crooked arches. Pillars of jagged concrete poked out from the water — a tomb of wreckage that dimly reflected on the gray-toned river. From roughly 100 yards away, deep into the Patapsco River in Baltimore, the site of one of the worst bridge collapses in the country’s history is a haunting scene. The U.S. Coast Guard allowed The New York Times to ride aboard a response boat on Saturday afternoon to witness up close the destruction of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which was struck by the cargo ship Dali on Tuesday, killing six men, all construction workers who were working on filling potholes on the bridge.As the 45-foot-long Coast Guard vessel neared the scene of the disaster, a service member who had made several trips to the site braced passengers for the view to come. “It’s still shocking every time.”The Coast Guard boat initially neared the cargo ship on the rear side, the stern, which was spared from much of the impact of the collapse. Two people could be seen walking along the starboard, though it was unclear if they were investigators or crew members, all of whom are from India and have remained on the ship to keep it operable. An anchor that the crew members had used in desperation to keep the ship from hitting the bridge was visible, submerged in calm water. A thin and yellow boom floated around the ship to contain spills. It looked similar to crime-scene tape. The gray and red shipping containers were stacked up to nine rows high, partly shielding for a moment the wreckage that lay behind it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Crews at Site of Bridge Collapse Work on Removing First Piece of Debris

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      The governor of Maryland said that the search for missing victims would resume when the conditions for divers improve.Crews in Baltimore on Saturday were working on pulling the first piece of wreckage out of the water after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, a tangible sign of progress in the daunting effort to reopen the busy waterway.Rear Adm. Shannon Gilreath of the U.S. Coast Guard said at a news conference that his crew was aiming to lift the first segment of the bridge “just north of that deep draft shipping channel.” He added, “Much like when you run a marathon, you’ve got to take the first few steps.”The bridge was a critical transportation link to one of the largest ports in the United States, and the collapse is costing the region and the country millions of dollars the longer it is out of operation. More than 8,000 workers on the docks have been directly affected, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland said.Mr. Moore said cutting up and removing the north sections of the bridge “will eventually allow us to open up a temporary restricted channel that will help us to get more vessels in the water around the site of the collapse.”Officials overseeing the cleanup added on Saturday that salvage teams will use gas-powered cutters to systematically separate sections of the steel bridge, which will then be taken to a disposal site.The work was occurring less than a week after a giant container ship known as the Dali suffered a complete blackout and struck the bridge, killing six construction workers and bringing the bridge down into the Patapsco River.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Baltimore Investigation Turns to Ship’s Deadly Mechanical Failure

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      The Dali reported a power blackout and steering problems before hitting the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. The disastrous mechanical failure so far has not been explained.Just minutes before the cargo ship Dali was set to glide under Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, the ship’s alarms began to blare. The lights went out. The engine halted. Even the rudder, which the crew uses to maneuver the vessel, was frozen.As a frantic effort to restore the ship was underway, the pilot soon recognized that the aimless vessel was drifting toward disaster, and called for help.The cascading collapse of the vessel’s most crucial operating systems left the Dali adrift until it ultimately collided with the Key bridge, knocking the span into the river and killing six people. But as crews this week were still sorting out how to disentangle the ship and recover the bodies of those who died, investigators were also turning to the most central question: What could have caused such a catastrophic failure at the worst possible moment?Engineers, captains and shipping officials around the world are waiting for that answer in an era when the industry’s largest ships can carry four times as much cargo as those just a few decades ago, navigating through congested urban ports under bridges that may carry tens of thousands of people a day,Already, a few key questions are emerging, according to engineers and shipping experts monitoring the investigation, and most of them point to the electrical generators that power nearly every system on the 984-foot vessel, not only the lights, navigation and steering, but the pumps that provide fuel, oil and water to the massive diesel engine.The “complete blackout” reported by the pilot is hard to explain in today’s shipping world, in which large commercial vessels now operate with a range of automation, computerized monitoring, and built-in redundancies and backup systems designed to avert just such a calamity. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More