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A submarine on a pricey tourist expedition to the Titanic shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean has vanished with likely only four days’ worth of oxygen– and authorities are now searching for the missing passengers, which includes a famed explorer, authorities and family said.
The US Coast Guard said the small submarine began its journey underwater with five passengers Sunday morning, and the Canadian research vessel that it was working with lost contact with the crew about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive.
Officials said a search was underway Monday for the small sub, which takes tourists to view the famous shipwreck that sits about 12,500 feet at the bottom of the ocean off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
OceanGate Expeditions, a private company that provides tours for the site, confirmed that the missing submarine belonged to them, adding that crew members were on board the vessel.
“Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families,” the company said in a statement. “We are exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely.”
The family of world explorer Hamish Harding confirmed on Facebook that he was among the five traveling in the missing submarine.
Harding, a British businessman who previously paid for a space ride aboard The Blue Origin rocket last year, shared a photo of himself on Sunday signing a banner for OceanGate’s latest voyage to the shipwreck.
The traveler boasted about finally being able to get to see the Titanic, noting that because of the poor weather persisting in Newfoundland, Monday morning’s mission would be the only one of 2023.
“We started steaming from St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada yesterday and are planning to start dive operations around 4am tomorrow morning. Until then we have a lot of preparations and briefings to do,” Harding wrote before the dive.
Tourist submersible exploring Titanic wreckage disappears in Atlantic Ocean
What we know
A submersible on a pricey tourist expedition to the Titanic shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean has vanished with likely only four days’ worth of oxygen. The US Coast Guard said the small submarine began its journey underwater with five passengers Sunday morning, and the Canadian research vessel that it was working with lost contact with the crew about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive.
It was later found that a top-secret team with the US Navy detected the implosion of the Titan submersible on Sunday, but did not stop search efforts due because the evidence was “not definitive” and a decision was made to “make every effort to save the lives on board.”
Who was on board?
The family of world explorer Hamish Harding confirmed on Facebook that he was among the five traveling in the missing submarine. Harding, a British businessman who previously paid for a space ride aboard the Blue Origin rocket last year, shared a photo of himself on Sunday signing a banner for OceanGate’s latest voyage to the shipwreck.
Also onboard were Pakistani energy and tech mogul Shanzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman, 19; famed French diver and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush.
What’s next?
“We’re doing everything we can do to locate the submersible and rescue those on board,” Rear Adm. John Mauger told reporters. “In terms of the hours, we understood that was 96 hours of emergency capability from the operator.
Coast Guard officials said they are currently focusing all their efforts on locating the sub first before deploying any vessel capable of reaching as far below as 12,500 feet where the Titanic wreck is located.
Mauger, first district commander and leader of the search-and-rescue mission, said the US was coordinating with Canada on the operation.
The debris recovered from the US Coast Guard’s Titan submersible search site early Thursday included “a landing frame and a rear cover from the submersible.”
After search efforts to recover the stranded passengers proved futile, and bits of debris from the submersible were found, it was decided that the sub imploded, which correlated with an anomaly picked up by the US Navy in the same area.
The Coast Guard later reported that all 5 passengers were confirmed dead, and rescue efforts were halted.
His stepson, Brian Szasz, shared Harding’s post, writing: “Thoughts and prayers for my stepfather Hamish Harding as his Submarine has gone missing exploring Titanic. Search and rescue mission is underway.”
OceanGate’s sub typically travels with only four days’ worth of oxygen, the BBC reported.
Tickets to view the shipwreck aboard OceanGate’s sub can go as high as $250,000.
The company touts the eight-day trip as a “chance to step outside of everyday life and discover something truly extraordinary.”
The dives themselves can last up to 10 hours each, with the company boasting about recent trips to the Titanic on social media.
OceanGate noted that because of its location in the middle of the Atlantic, they rely on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites for its communications at sea.
The company posted on Twitter that one expedition to the Titanic was ongoing, with two more planned for June 2024.
OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush told CBS late last year that his company sees no shortage of “Titaniacs,” people obsessed with the ship who “would mortgage their homes or wouldn’t even blink at the cost of this trip.”
Rush boasted that his five-person sub was one of the few capable of visiting the wreckage.
The Boston Coast Guard did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for additional information on the search.
The wreck of the disaster has remained a popular tourist destination, with passengers taking to the depth to see the haunting site where more than 1,500 passengers died after the “unsinkable” ship struck an iceberg and sank while sailing from Southampton, England, to New York in April 1912.
The wreck was discovered in the Atlantic in 1985 about 370 miles off the Canadian coast, with the ship lying in two parts after it split in half during its sinking.
The catastrophe was immortalized in James Cameron’s 1997 film “Titanic,” starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. The film shattered box office records at the time, earning $2.25 billion.
Last month, Atlantic Productions and deep-sea mapping company Magellan Ltd. released a series of more than 700,000 scans of the wreckage, displaying stunning 3D reconstructions of the doomed cruise liner.
The images were taken by a team using remote-controlled submersibles to survey the ship, a project that took more than 200 hours to complete.
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