The five passengers on the Titan submersible that was diving 13,000 feet to view the Titanic on the ocean floor died in a “catastrophic implosion,” authorities said Thursday, bookending an extraordinary five-day international search operation near the site of the world’s most famous shipwreck.
The tail cone and other debris were found by a remotely operated vehicle about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, deep in the North Atlantic and about 900 east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, the First Coast Guard District commander, told reporters.
Here’s what we know:
- Debris: The remotely operated vehicle found “five different major pieces of debris” from the Titan submersible, according to Paul Hankins, the US Navy’s director of salvage operations and ocean engineering. The debris was “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber” and, in turn, a “catastrophic implosion,” he said. As of now, there does not appear to be a connection between the banging noises picked up by sonar earlier this week and where the debris was found.
- Timing: The US Navy detected an acoustic signature consistent with an implosion on Sunday and relayed that information to the commanders leading the search effort, a senior official told CNN. But the sound was determined to be “not definitive,” the official said. Mauger, for his part, said rescuers had sonar buoys in the water for at least the last 72 hours and had “not detected any catastrophic events.” Listening devices set up during the search also did not record any sign of an implosion, Mauger added.
- What comes next: The remotely operated vehicles will remain on the scene and continue to gather information, Mauger said. It will take time to determine a specific timeline of events in the “incredibly complex” case of the Titan’s failure, Mauger said. The Coast Guard official said the agency will eventually have more information about what went wrong and its assessment of the emergency response.
- Response: Mauger applauded the “huge international” and “interagency” search effort. He said teams had the appropriate gear and worked as quickly as possible. The Coast Guard official also thanked experts and agencies for assisting with the search for the Titan submersible.
- Who was on board: Tour organizer OceanGate Expeditions said Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Paul-Henri Nargeolet and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush died in the submersible. They “shared a distinct spirit of adventure,” the company in a statement.
- Reaction: Nargeolet, a French diver, was an incredible person and highly respected in his field, said his friend Tom Dettweiler, a fellow ocean explorer. The president of The Explorers Club said the group is heartbroken over the tragic loss. Two passengers, businessman Harding and Nargeolet, were members, it said. Engro Corporation Limited, of which Shahzada Dawood was Vice Chairman, said the company grieves the loss of him and his son. The governments of Pakistan and the United Kingdom also offered condolences.
Days Before…
British adventurer Hamish Harding and a British businessman and his son are on the missing submersible diving to the Titanic’s wreck, their families say.
Mr. Harding, 58, chairman of aircraft firm Action Aviation, is a renowned explorer who has flown to space and holds three Guinness World Records.
The family of businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, have asked people to pray for them.
Submersible operator OceanGate said its entire focus was on the crew’s return.
French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet is also thought to be on board, according to a Facebook post by Mr. Harding before the dive started
Stockton Rush, chief executive of OceanGate, is also widely reported to be on the vessel.
Contact with the small sub was lost about an hour and 45 minutes into its dive in the mid-Atlantic on Sunday.
Now search teams are in a race against time but so far there has been no sign of the vessel.
For Mr. Harding, a billionaire private jet dealer, the trip to Titanic’s wreckage was the latest in a string of adventures.
He has visited the South Pole multiple times, flown into space in 2022 onboard Blue Origin’s fifth human-crewed flight, and set three world records – including the longest time spent at full ocean depth during a dive to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench.
Over the weekend, Mr. Harding said on social media that a ship had set off from the city of St John’s, in Newfoundland, Canada, for the destination of the Titanic wreck.
From there, he and the crew were planning to start diving operations in the submersible down to the wreck at around 04:00 local time (08:00 GMT) on Sunday morning.
Due to the “worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years,” he said, “this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023”.
He continued: “A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow.”
Action Aviation said on Sunday that the sub had had a successful launch and Mr. Harding was “currently diving“.
Later, his stepson Brian Szasz said in a now-deleted post on Facebook: He “has gone missing on (the) submarine.”
Patrick Woodhead, the founder of British tour operator White Desert Antarctica, said Mr. Harding was an “incredible” aviation explorer and a great advocate for discovering new pathways to make the world a better place.
Thoughts and prayers were with Mr. Harding’s wife, Linda, and his sons, he added.
In a statement released on Tuesday, the Dawood family in Pakistan said: “Our son Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, had embarked on a journey to visit the remnants of the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean.
“As of now, contact has been lost with their submersible craft and there is limited information available.”
The Dawood family, who live in Surbiton, southwest London, are in Canada for a month.
Shahzada Dawood, from one of Pakistan’s richest families, is a trustee of the Seti Institute, a research organization in California, according to its website.
It says he lives in the UK with his wife, Christine, and his children Suleman and Alina, and is in the Founder’s Circle of the British Asian Trust.
He is also vice chairman of Dawood Hercules Corporation, part of the Dawood Group, a conglomerate of various businesses owned by the family.
In their statement, his parents said: “We are very grateful for the concern being shown by our colleagues and friends and would like to request everyone to pray for their safety.”
It went on to say the family was well looked after and were praying for the safe return of their family members.
Military planes, a submarine, and sonar buoys have so far been used in the search for the vessel.
Titanic’s wreck lies some 435 miles (700km) south of St John’s, Newfoundland, though the rescue mission is being run from Boston, Massachusetts.
The US Coast Guard said a research ship called the Polar Prince had conducted a surface search for the sub on Monday evening.
It is used to transport submersibles to the wreckage site and was the support ship on Sunday’s tourist expedition.
In relation to an inquiry about Mr Harding, a spokesperson from the UK’s Foreign Office said it was “in contact with the family of a British man following reports of a missing submarine off the coast of North America.”
The eight-day trip involving a journey to the wreck of the Titanic – run by OceanGate Expeditions – costs $250,000 (£195,600) per person and starts in St John’s.
Participants travel some 370 miles (595km) on a larger ship to the area above the wreck site, then do an eight-hour dive to the Titanic on a truck-sized submersible known as Titan.
The Titan is designed to carry five people and has “life support” for 96 hours for the crew, according to the firm’s website.
The Titanic sits 3,800m (12,500ft) beneath the surface at the bottom of the Atlantic. It is about 600km (370 miles) off the coast of Newfoundland.
The passenger liner, which was the largest ship of its time, hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in 1912. Of the 2,200 passengers and crew on board, more than 1,500 died.
