Titan sub victims’ remains returned to relatives as 'slush' in 'shoeboxes'
It's hard to believe it's been nearly three years since the Titan submersible incident grabbed international headlines and tragically claimed the lives of all aboard the tiny craft.
OceanGate had been taking paying tourists down to the wreck of the Titanic since 2021, but just like the ill-fated vessel that lay on the ocean floor, it seemed the Titan sub was doomed.
Alongside OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, the victims included deep-sea explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, English businessman Hamish Harding, and a father and son duo called Shahzada and Suleman Dawood.
Despite an international effort and a race against time to rescue the quintet before they ran out of oxygen, it was later confirmed that the Titan had suffered from a catastrophic failure of the pressure hull and imploded.
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A debris field was discovered 500 meters from the front bow of the Titanic, with the United States Coast Guard confirming that the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory had positively identified the victims via DNA profiling.
While there's some small solace that the sub's passengers would likely have been dead before they even knew what was happening, attempts to rescue their remains turned into a grim endeavour.
Notably, it's said that parts of whatever remained after the sub imploded were likely consumed by organisms that feed on matter at the bottom of the ocean.
Speaking to The Guardian, Shahzada Dawood's wife has recalled how the bodies of her husband and son were returned to her as little more than 'slush' in shoeboxes.
Giving a harrowing account of her ordeal, Christine Dawood recalled the moment OceanGate mission director Kyle Bingham confirmed the sub was officially missing and described it as an ‘avalanche’: “You see it coming. This is it, I’m going to be hit. But you’re on a cliff, so where can you go? I had to make a conscious choice. I knew I couldn’t let the emotions come. So, I grew wings, I flew away in my mind. That’s how I saved myself from the avalanche."
Although Dawood initially told herself that her husband and son were stuck, she admitted she was worried and that the energy on the ship was a sense of denial until the wreckage was confirmed. For Dawood, this offered some sense of closure as she admitted: "When they said catastrophic, I knew Shahzada and Suleman didn’t even know about it. One moment they were there and the next they weren’t. Knowing they didn’t suffer has been so important. They’re gone, but the way they went does somehow make it easier."
Still, her heartache continued as the bodies weren't returned for nine months. Opening up about what was returned to her, a candid Dawood explained: "Well, when I say bodies, I mean the slush that was left. They came in two small boxes, like shoeboxes."
This 'slush' was the remains that the USCG had tested and tried to separate. Dawood concluded: "There wasn’t much they could find. They have a big pile they can’t separate, all mixed DNA, and they asked if I wanted some of that, too. But I said no, just what you know is Suleman and Shahzada.”
As the USCG conducted its investigation into Rush and OceanGate, Dawood was advised not to attend the public hearings. If Rush had survived, he would've faced criminal proceedings, but ultimately, the official report decreed the Titan disaster as preventable, caused by subpar engineering and testing, as well as Rush's 'reckless approach'.
To this day, Christine Dawood continues to protect herself and is apparently careful about what findings she lets herself be privy to.