NEWFOUNDLAND, CANADA: On Monday, June 19, ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ host David Pogue opened up about his experience of traveling in an OceanGate Expeditions vessel to visit the site of the Titanic wreckage last year. He tweeted that the submarine “got lost for a few hours last summer” while he was aboard the $250,000-per-person trip. Pogue’s account comes after a new Titanic submersible carrying five passengers was reportedly missing during its trip to the wreckage site.
Reports suggest that OceanGate’s 22ft carbon fiber and titanium vessel, called the Titan, departed St John’s in Newfoundland on Saturday, June 17, and the submersible launched at around 4 AM on Sunday, June 18. A massive search and rescue operation is currently underway in the Atlantic following the submersible’s disappearance. On Monday, June 19, Rear Admiral John Mauger of the US Coast Guard said that “there is somewhere between 70 and the full 96 hours available at this point.”
He added that two aircraft, a submarine and sonar buoys were involved in the search but mentioned that operations were “difficult” as the area of investigation is “remote” in nature. He added that the rescue teams were "taking this personally" and doing everything possible to bring those on board “home safe.”
‘I never got to see the Titanic’
Speaking about his own experience of touring in the OceanGate Expeditions vessel, Pogue told NewsNation that the missing submarine aboard the Titanic wreckage was “constantly plagued by mechanical problems.” The ‘Unsung Science’ podcast host said that while he took a $250,000-per-person trip last year and traveled on the same submarine that is currently missing, he never reached the desired destination. “I never got to see the Titanic,” Pogue mentioned.
The TV presenter recalled that he and his fellow travelers had to return to the surface after the submarine faced mechanical difficulties after going about 37 feet down. “But, that’s typical,” Pogue explained. “They take these millionaires out there for five days at a time, so they have five chances to see the Titanic. Most weeks they make it only once or this summer, not at all,” he stated. Pogue also shared that the missing Titan submersible is “homemade” by OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush.
“It’s about the size of a minivan. It seats five people. There’s no chairs in there, you’re just squatting on the floor. The journey is about 10 to 12 hours to go down to the Titanic, find it, tour it and then come back up to the surface ship. It is constantly plagued by mechanical problems,” he mentioned. However, Pogue also said that such difficulties are not limited to OceanGate Expeditions. “This is all of these Titanic subs. There’s only about five of them in the world, and they all have these kinds of mechanical malfunctions, electrical malfunctions,” he alleged.
Who is David Pogue?
Pogue is a TV presenter and science and technology writer. He was born on March 9, 1963, in Ohio to Patricia Ruth Raney and Richard Welch Pogue, an attorney and former managing partner at Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue. He is the grandson of aviation attorney L Welch Pogue and great-nephew of MIT electrical engineering professor Harold Eugene Edgerton. Pogue graduated summa cum laude from Yale University in 1985 with a bachelor's degree in music.
He reportedly worked in the office of Music Theatre International in New York for 10 years and intermittently served as a conductor and arranger in Broadway musicals. Pogue also wrote for Macworld Magazine from 1988 until 2000 before joining The New York Times as a personal-tech columnist. In 2002, he joined CBS News Sunday Morning as a correspondent and began writing and hosting stories on science, technology, environment, and show business. He also won an Emmy Award for his work with CBS.
Pogue appeared on CNBC’s ‘Power Lunch’ between 2007 and 2011 and also hosted ‘It’s All Geek to Me', a six-episode how-to series on consumer technology on Discovery HD and Science channels in 2007. He also hosted the 18 Nova specials on PBS, including ‘NOVA ScienceNow’ and the ‘Making Stuff’ series in 2011 and 2013 as well as ‘Hunting the Elements’ in 2012. He also wrote a monthly column called ‘Techno Files’ for Scientific American from 2010 to 2019.
He even wrote and co-wrote seven books in the ‘For Dummies’ series and launched the ‘Missing Manual’ series, his own set of computer how-to books, in 1999. The series includes more than 100 titles written about a series of Mac and Windows operating systems and applications. In 2013, Pogue left The New York Times after 13 years to join Yahoo! and went on to create a new consumer-technology website, Yahoo! Tech.
In 2018, Pogue returned to The New York Times as the author of the 'Crowdwise' column for the Smarter Living section. He has also served as the emcee for the annual National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Technical and Engineering Emmys ceremony in Las Vegas since 2012. Besides, Pogue has been on three TED conferences and often speaks at educational and government conferences about social media, disruptive technology, and digital photography, among other things.
‘The sub never found the wreck’
In the wake of his OceanGate Expeditions trip last year, Pogue shared that his voyage was delayed for several days due to harsh weather. He said “the dive was a go” after six days but the communications system failed right before making the final descent to the wreckage site. “There’s no GPS underwater, so the surface ship is supposed to guide the ship to the shipwreck by sending text messages,” Pogue mentioned in a November 2022 news story. “But on this dive, communication somehow broke down. The sub never found the wreck,” he added.
“We were lost,” one of the passengers said at the time. “We were lost for two and a half hours,” they added. However, no passengers, including Pogue, suffered from any injuries and were safely brought back above the sea level. At the time, the company said it would offer the passengers a “free do-over” trip the next summer. It is not known if any of last year’s passengers were taking their free trip in the submarine that disappeared on Sunday, June 18.
‘There’s backups of backups of backups’
Discussing the possible fate of the missing Titan, Pogue said that it has around seven different ways to return to the surface. “There’s backups of backups of backups. If it’s not at the surface, then only one of two things could have happened. Either it’s snagged on something like a big fishing net or even part of the Titanic, or there was a leak, in which case it would implode instantly and it’s over,” he told NewsNation.
“If you want to look optimistically at it, they lost power but they have three more days of air and they’re bobbing on the surface somewhere, and we just can’t find them because they don’t have power,” Pogue continued. He also said that there are only three operating submarines in the world that can go to the depth of the Titanic before adding that finding the submarine is not the only challenge. He mentioned that bringing the missing submarine ashore and figuring out a way to let people inside escape are also major obstacles.
“The hatch, by the way, is sealed with 17 bolts from the outside. So there’s no way to escape when you’re inside, to get out without a crew on the outside letting you out,” Pogue explained. OceanGate reportedly said that they are “exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely.”
