The banging sound that kept Titan rescuers’ hopes alive: New audio from sub disaster that shocked the world reveals mystery knocking noises heard after vessel vanished during ill-fated expedition to Titanic wreck

The ‘thumping’ sound that kept the hopes of families and rescuers alive in the search for the doomed Titan submarine has been revealed for the first time in chilling new audio.

A desperate search for the submarine was launched after it lost contact with its mothership and disappeared during an expedition to the Titanic wreck on Sunday, June 18, 2023.

After an agonizing wait for news, reports emerged late on the second day of the search that thumping sounds were being detected at 30-minute intervals, deep beneath the ocean.

The hollow sound, played for the first time in a new documentary, has a regular, steady beat that caught the attention of experts – and raised hopes that the sound could be SOS signals made by the five men on board .

“It could be that someone is knocking, the symmetry between those knocks is very unusual,” former submarine captain Ryan Ramsey tells the documentary.

“It’s rhythmic, it’s like someone is making that sound, and for it to be repeated is really unusual.”

There were five people on board, including British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding and Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman

French Navy veteran PH Nargeolet (left) was in the submarine with Stockton Rush (right), CEO of the OceanGate Expedition

After the sound was first recorded around 11:30 PM on June 20, the US Navy confirmed that it had detected the sounds the next morning.

Coast Guard Captain Jamie Frederick admitted at the time: “As far as the noises go, in particular, we don’t know what they are, to be honest.”

The world was gripped as rescuers urgently redoubled their efforts to locate the missing submarine before the oxygen is expected to run out.

There were five passengers on board; Tourists Hamish Harding, 58, Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Sulaiman Dawood, 19, French Navy pilot Paul-Henry Nargeolet and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.

Tragically, the hopes raised by the mysterious knocking sound were later dashed.

The Pelagic search team submarine, Odysseus 6K reached the seabed after days of searching and found submarine debris about 500 meters from Titanic’s bow on June 22.

Titan had imploded due to the enormous water pressure pressing down on the ship, killing everyone on board in probably a matter of milliseconds.

Now a new documentary, to be released to mark one year since the June tragedy, will go behind the scenes of the multi-million dollar search operation.

Minute by Minute: The Titan Sub Disaster chronicles the events leading up to Titan’s ill-fated expedition to the Titanic wreck.

The documentary, from ITN productions for Channel 5, also asks what lessons we can learn from the disaster.

It includes the never-before-heard audio of the banging and expert opinions on what happened during the search mission that gripped the world.

At the time, some experts cautioned against taking the sound as evidence of life.

Many claimed the sound was likely “debris” and “junk” from the iconic wreck.

Banging sounds were detected at 30-minute intervals by underwater sonar devices called ‘sonobuoys’

According to experts, the “banging” could come from search equipment in the area, marine life such as whales or even just sounds from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

Jeff Karson, professor emeritus of earth and environmental sciences at Syracuse University, said at the time that the sounds heard were likely “wishful thinking” by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Researchers believe the Titan imploded as it descended into deep North Atlantic waters on June 18 – before the thumping sound was recorded.

The submarine was launched around 8 a.m. that day into the Atlantic Ocean, 400 nautical miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, at the site of the Titanic shipwreck.

The five passengers began to descend as Rush piloted the ship, but at 9:45 a.m. – an hour and 45 minutes after the dive – it lost contact with the Polar Prince mothership.

It took OceanGate Expeditions eight hours to report the missing submarine to the U.S. Coast Guard after it lost contact.

That led to a massive international response to rescue the five passengers.

As the world held its breath, ships from around the world began making the trek to help search for the missing submarine, as the hours and estimated oxygen levels dwindled.

However, it was later announced that the five people on board the submarine were believed to have died in a probable implosion, and that a US Navy monitoring system had picked up a possible noise from the implosion during the initial descent.

Officials soon announced that the five people aboard the submarine were believed to have been killed, but search efforts continued.

Confirming the worst fears, it was revealed on June 22 that debris from the imploded submarine had been found near the site of the Titanic.

Ten days after the disappearance, the Coast Guard announced that “suspected human remains” had been found in the wreckage of the submarine.

Washington-based OceanGate closed its door during the search, and after the disaster, questions flew about the future of deep-sea tourism at the site.

“We had spent four or five days… expecting to go there and perform a miracle,” deep-sea expert Jesse Doren told Sky after the wreck’s discovery.

Debris from the Titan submarine, recovered from the ocean floor near the wreck of the Titanic, is offloaded from the ship Horizon Arctic at the Canadian Coast Guard pier

“It is clear that our sense of disappointment is minuscule compared to those close to the families of those who have been lost.”

According to experts, the “thumping” could come from search equipment in the area, from marine life such as whales or even from sounds from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.

Dr. Jamie Pringle, lecturer in Forensic Geosciences at Keele University, also told MailOnline at the time that he believes the noise was ‘man-made’.

‘The ocean is a very noisy place with passing ships, submarines, fishing vessels and in this case even search vessels.’

Matthew Schanck, founder of the maritime search and rescue organization Marsar International, also suspected a man-made origin.

“It is our understanding that the noise could have several sources,” he told MailOnline. ‘The ocean subsurface is a noisy environment.

Jeff Karson, professor emeritus of earth and environmental sciences at Syracuse University, told DailyMail.com that the sounds heard were likely “wishful thinking” by the Coast Guard.

‘But given the high density of vessels in the area operating their propulsion systems and heavy machinery/equipment in the area, this could have been picked up by sonobuoys.’

Ships that deployed remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) in the search — including the mothership Polar Prince — would also have created underwater noise, Schanck said.

Schanck doesn’t think the noise could have come from Titan’s debris, although it could have come from the Titanic “if there’s loose metal moving around” – but surface vessels and ROVs used in the search were the most likely cause.

Stefan B. Williams, professor of marine robotics at the University of Sydney, explains Business insider marine animals ‘such as whales’ could even have caused the sound.