By Oke Odunmorayo
21 June 2023 |
12:30 pm
A search is underway for a submersible that went missing since Sunday while on a dive to the wreck of the Titanic. On board the vessel is Hamish Harding – a British aviation tycoon and Shahada Dawood – one of Pakistan’s wealthiest men, along with his 19-year-old son Sulaiman Dawood. P.H. Nargeolet, an experienced French…
Titanic
A search is underway for a submersible that went missing since Sunday while on a dive to the wreck of the Titanic.
On board the vessel is Hamish Harding – a British aviation tycoon and Shahada Dawood – one of Pakistan’s wealthiest men, along with his 19-year-old son Sulaiman Dawood. P.H. Nargeolet, an experienced French navy diver who has led multiple previous missions to the Titanic, is also aboard. The final member of the crew is Stockton Rush, the founder and CEO of OceanGate.
OceanGate has offered “mission specialist” expeditions to the site since 2021, costing $250,000 per passenger. In a series of tweets posted this month, OceanGate praised their dependence on Starlink – a satellite internet provider developed by Elon Musk’s aerospace company Space.
Their reliance on Starlink was intended to ensure seamless connectivity and internet access for communications on the voyage, which proved faulty as the vessel lost contact with their surface team 1 hour and 45 minutes into the dive.
The Titan is a submersible, not a submarine, and is therefore reliant on a support platform to deploy and return. It is equipped with only a few days’ worth of life support, so time is of the essence in the search for the missing crew. The submarine is expected to run out of oxygen by Thursday morning.
The U.S. Coast Guard is leading the search, which is being conducted in a remote area of the North Atlantic, approximately 700 kilometers (435 miles) off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. The search area is vast and the conditions are challenging, with water temperatures below freezing and strong currents.
The Coast Guard has deployed a number of assets to the search, including helicopters, airplanes, and surface vessels. They are also working with the Canadian Coast Guard and the company that operates the Titan, OceanGate Expeditions.
The search is ongoing and there is no indication yet of what happened to the Titan. However, the Coast Guard has said that they are “optimistic” that the crew will be found alive.
Background on the Titanic
The Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1912, after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. The sinking of the Titanic caused the deaths of over 1,500 people, making it one of the deadliest commercial peacetime maritime disasters in modern history.
The Titanic wreck is a popular tourist destination, and submersibles are often used to take visitors to the site. However, the conditions in the area are treacherous, and there have been a number of accidents involving submersibles in the past.
The Search Continues
The search for the missing Titan is ongoing. A U.S Coast Guard said a canadian aircraft has detected underwater noises during the search for the missing submersible near Titanic wreckage.
The search has now narrowed in on the area where the noise was found. As of right now, the vessel has not been found but the search still continues. If not found, the submarine is expected to run out of oxygen by Thursday morning.
“Can’t really blame the tour company,” wrote one Twitter user. “They offered an immersive titanic experience and delivered. Being dead at the bottom of the ocean.”
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