The submersible that catastrophically imploded while on a voyage to see the Titanic wreckage has highlighted a high-risk, experimental and exclusive tourism opportunity to see what is largely considered to be the most famous shipwreck of all time.

The doomed ocean liner has intrigued the public from the moment it tragically crashed into an iceberg in the Atlantic Ocean and sank on April 15, 1912 -- as well as throughout the century-plus since.

Visits to the underwater site have been conducted in recent decades to retrieve artifacts, study the Titanic's gradual decay and simply lay eyes on the storied shipwreck, which has inspired a wealth of novels, plays, TV shows and films.

"The Titanic has basically been in popular culture since the night it sank," Robert Thompson, founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, told ABC News.

Read more about the Titanic's long intrigue here.

The company behind the submersible that imploded exaggerated the details of the industry partnerships behind the development and engineering of the underwater vessel.

In some public statements, OceanGate suggested the Titan -- its only vessel able to reach Titanic depths -- was designed and engineered with the assistance of entities such as Boeing, the University of Washington and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In statements to ABC News, each entity described its role, or lack thereof, as more limited than sometimes stated by OceanGate.

When asked about these exaggerations about the role of partnerships in the development of the Titan submersible, an OceanGate representative declined to comment on the matter.

Read more here.

-ABC News' Peter Charalambous

U.S. Coast Guard officials conceded they are facing a daunting investigation to determine what caused the Titan submersible to implode underwater near the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five explorers aboard.

Officials said the 21-foot-long Titan was found in pieces by a remotely operated vehicle on a smooth section of ocean floor more than 2 miles beneath the surface.

"This was an incredibly complex case and we're still working to develop details for the timeline involved with this casualty and the response," Mauger said.

Read more about the investigation here.

-ABC News' Bill Hutchinson

The Titan submersible suffered a "catastrophic implosion," the U.S. Coast Guard determined.

At the depth of the Titanic, which sits 3,800 meters below sea level, the pressure reaches a level 380 times the atmospheric pressure on the Earth's surface, Stefan Williams, a professor of marine robotics at the University of Sydney, said in a blog post on Tuesday.

A fault or failure in the hull of the Titan could have led to an implosion, as the vessel gave way to the high pressure of the deep sea, Williams said.

The implosion of a submersible delivers immense force, oceanographer Bob Ballard told ABC News on Thursday.

Read more here.

-ABC News' Max Zahn

OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Söhnlein is coming to the defense of late CEO Stockton Rush, one of those killed in the implosion of Titan, after criticism from director James Cameron, and others, who said the sub's carbon-fiber hull was dangerous.

"In this kind of community, there are completely different opinions and views about how to do things, how to design submersibles, how to engineer them, build them, how to operate in the dives," Söhnlein told the U.K.'s Times Radio on Friday. "But one thing that’s true of me and the other experts, is none of us were involved in the design, engineering, building, testing or even diving of the subs. So it’s impossible for anyone to really speculate from the outside."

Söhnlein co-founded OceanGate in 2009 with Rush and led several dives in the early days of the company. He left OceanGate in 2013, when Rush took over as CEO, but maintained a friendship and spoke to Rush just weeks before the doomed expedition, he said on Facebook.

Cameron, who not only directed the Oscar-winning film "Titanic" but is a prolific ocean explorer, criticized the use of a carbon-fiber hull in the construction of Titan, saying it was only a matter of time before it cracked under the pressure from repeated dives. Rush, in the past, defended its use, saying it had a better strength-to-buoyancy ratio than titanium.

"I was involved in the early phases of the overall development program during our predecessor subs to Titan, and I know from firsthand experience that we were extremely committed to safety and risk mitigation was a key part of the company culture," Söhnlein told Times Radio Friday.