Ryan Ramsey said recovering the sub from the bottom of the sea would be 'monstrously difficult'
The sub lost near the wreck of the Titanic has likely suffered a “catastrophic” failure after communications were lost, according to a former Royal Navy submarine captain.
Ryan Ramsey told GB News: “The fact that they were in communications for an hour and a half before communications were lost would indicate to me that something catastrophic had happened at that point.
“I would take it that either they've had an electrical failure or they've lost they've had a mechanical failure on the submersible itself, which has resulted in basically losing control of it, which is why they've lost communications and are no longer able to do anything.”
In a discussion with Patrick Christys, he continued: “If they've lost control of the submersible itself, then they have no control over where the submersible lands so it continues its descent.
“And then of course, once it’s at the bottom, trying to recover that without power, without electricity - you can't do anything manually because it's a sealed tube effectively.
“You can't open the hatch and hope to escape because you're so deep, the pressure is 400 bar at 3,000m so there are considerable challenges to deal with when affecting the rescue on a submersible.
“I think there's been some technical issues that they haven't been able to deal with either immediately or subsequently and then it's trying to work out how you recover from that situation.”
Asked about the chances of recovering the vessel, he said: “My thoughts are with the families and everybody's looking for hope with this, but there also needs to be a dose of realism.
“Every hour that passes without having found it or without initiating a rescue means you're closer to failure, effectively.”
He added: “Trying to find something that’s 6.7m long somewhere in the vicinity of wreckage around the Titanic is monstrously difficult. And then to recover it, you can't use another submersible to do it.”
