A Coast Guard C-130. Photo: Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group/MediaNews Group via Getty Images
A search and rescue operation continues in the North Atlantic after a small, manned submersible with five people aboard, including a British billionaire, went missing during a dive to visit the sunken wreck of the RMS Titanic. The submersible’s support ship lost contact with the vessel on Sunday morning, and it’s not yet clear why.
The 22-foot submersible, Titan, is operated by a Washington-based research and tourism company called OceanGate Expeditions, which designed and built the vessel and has in recent years been offering trips to visit the famous wreck that cost as much as $250,000. The Canadian research vessel MV Polar Prince lost contact with the Titan during a dive about 900 miles east of Cape Cod on Sunday morning, according to the U.S. Coast Guard, which was alerted that afternoon and has since sent two C-130 aircrafts, joined by a Canadian C-130 and P8 submarine hunter, to help search for the submersible. Three tugboats are also reportedly headed to the site. “We are doing everything we can do,” Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger told reporters Monday.
The people aboard the submersible have been identified as OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son.
Harding, 58, posted an enthusiastic message on social media about the upcoming dive over the weekend, explaining that a “weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow.” The aviation executive and Explorers Club member is no stranger to high-risk adventures, having already traveled to space aboard a Blue Origin rocket last year, and to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench aboard a two-man submersible in 2021 — setting two new Guinness World Records in the process.
The BBC reports that Nargeolet, 73, had earned the nickname “Mr. Titanic” for apparently spending more time at the wreck than any other person.
According to OceanGate’s website, the Titan submersible is “designed to take five people to depths of 4,000 meters (13,123 feet) for site survey and inspection, research and data collection, film and media production, and deep sea testing of hardware and software” and can provide life support for that number of people for up to 96 hours. The Titan was an hour and 45 minutes into its dive when MV Polar Prince lost contact with it. The Coast Guard said that as of Monday evening the craft would theoretically have no more than four days of air left.
It’s still not clear what happened to the submersible. University College London’s Alistair Greig, a submarine expert, told the BBC that the outlook is be poor for those aboard if the vessel’s hull has been compromised. He also said that if the Titan is intact but disabled, one of the most critical factors will be just how deep it is:
While the submersible might still be intact, if it is deeper than more than 200m (656ft) there are very few vessels that can get that deep, and certainly not divers. The vehicles designed for navy submarine rescue certainly can’t get down to anywhere near the depth of the Titanic.
Oceangate Expeditions said in a statement on Sunday that its “entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families,” and that it was “deeply thankful for the extensive assistance we have received from several government agencies and deep sea companies in our efforts to re-establish contact with the submersible.”
The wreckage of the Titanic lies at a depth of about 12,500 feet, roughly 370 miles from the coast of Newfoundland. More than 1,500 people died when the massive ocean liner sank after striking an iceberg on April 14, 1912.
This post has been updated.
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Titanic Tourist Submersible Still Missing in North Atlantic - New York Magazine
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