Details: Missing Titanic Sub, With 5 Aboard, May Have 70 Hours Of Oxygen Left:
It’s been two days since a tourist submarine, known as ‘The Polar Prince’, went missing Sunday in the North Atlantic during a dive to the wreckage of the Titanic.
The US Coast Guard received a call Sunday from the submersible’s command ship, the Polar Prince, saying it lost contact with the vessel about 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, according to Lt. Samantha Corcoran, a Coast Guard spokesperson in Boston. A C-130 plane with radar capability was dispatched to search the area Sunday, and was joined Monday by a Canadian P-8 Poseidon, an aircraft designed for anti-submarine warfare.
OceanGate Expeditions, the operator of the expedition to the Titanic, said in a statement it was “exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely.”
In a race against the clock on the high seas, an expanding international armada of ships and airplanes also searched on Tuesday. U.S. Coast Guard officials said the search covered 10,000 square miles (26,000 square kilometers) but turned up no sign of the lost sub known as the Titan.
Who’s on board?
Those on board the submarine include British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.
Harding is based in the United Arab Emirates, and is the chairman of aircraft brokerage Action Aviation. The company said on social media that Harding was on board the submersible; Harding himself had posted online on Saturday, saying he was “proud to announce” his participation in the dive to the Titanic.
RMS TITANIC EXPEDITION 2023
4am start this morning on the RMS Titanic Expedition Mission 5 with @oceangateexped. The sub had a successful launch and Hamish is currently diving.
Stay tuned for further updates!@the_explorers_club @ActionAviation0 #titanic #titansub #discovery pic.twitter.com/qVGoYeHVwd
— Action Aviation (@actionaviation) June 18, 2023
Harding is an avid adventurer, having traveled to space on board the Blue Origin flight last year, and to the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean, believed to be the deepest point in the world.
Nargeolet’s presence on the vessel was confirmed by his family. With decades of experience investigating the Titanic, he holds the position of director of underwater research at RMS Titanic Inc., a company granted exclusive rights to recover artifacts from the ship.
The Pakistani father and son were also confirmed to be on board in a statement by their family. The Dawoods, a well-known Pakistani business family, oversee a range of major corporations in the country, encompassing industries such as energy, petrochemicals, fertilizers, IT, and food and agriculture.
With only 70 hours of oxygen left in the reservoir, US and Canadian forces are now in a race against time to trace the submarine. The officials had asked commercial vessels to help.
The wreckage of the Titanic that sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg lies at about 12,500 feet (3,810 metres). The Titan submersible usually takes two hours to descend to the wreck.
About this expedition:
The submersible was part of an eight-day journey conducted by OceanGate Expeditions, priced at $250,000 a person. The trip is based out of Newfoundland, with participants first traveling 400 nautical miles to the wreck site, which is about 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
The submersible began its two-hour descent to the wreck on Sunday morning, June 18. It lost contact with the Polar Prince, the support ship that transported the vessel to the site, 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent, officials said.
Search operations began later that day.The US Coast Guard, US Navy, US Air Force, Canadian Coast Guard, and Canadian military are all coordinating the search and potential rescue operations. France has also sent a research ship, equipped with an underwater robot, to join the search.
