Global Courant
James Cameron. (Getty Images)
The search for the missing Titan submarine is over and no survivors will be found
At a news conference Thursday night, U.S. Coast Guard officials said the debris found was consistent with a “catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber.”
The five people on board were British explorer Hamish Harding; British businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman; French submarine pilot Paul-Henri Nargeolet; and CEO of OceanGate Expeditions Stockton Rush
Officials could not say what the prospects were for recovering the bodies
Vice Admiral John Mauger said “We will continue to work and continue to search the area down there”
Azmeh Dawood, Shahzada Dawood’s sister and Suleman’s aunt, told NBC News that her cousin “wasn’t really into it” and was “terrified.” (Read more in the blog post below, or read more here)
Film director James Cameron says he wishes he had spoken out about a sub’s risky design (read more in the blog post below, or read more here)
To read our live coverage you may need to click the blue link above and then refresh the page.
Titanic submarine: all five passengers dead
The five people aboard a missing submarine died in a “catastrophic implosion,” a U.S. Coast Guard official said Thursday, bringing a grim end to the international search for the ship lost during a deep-sea voyage to the wreckage of the submarine. Titanic. .
“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” OceanGate Expeditions, the US-based company that operated the Titan submarine, said in a statement. . “Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their family at this tragic time.”
An unmanned robot deployed from a Canadian ship discovered the Titan’s wreckage Thursday morning about 488 meters from the bow of the ancient wreck, 4km below the surface in a remote region of the North Atlantic, said Rear Admiral night John Mauger of the US Coast Guard during a press conference.
Story continues
(Clockwise from left) Hamish Harding, Stockton Rush, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood. (PA, Getty, Alamy)
“The debris field here is consistent with a catastrophic vehicle implosion,” Mauger said.
The five on board include British billionaire and explorer Hamish Harding, 58; Pakistan-born business magnate Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son Suleman, both British citizens; French oceanographer and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, who had visited the wreck dozens of times; and Stockton Rush, the American founder and CEO of OceanGate, who piloted the submarine.
Rescue teams from several countries had spent days searching thousands of square miles of open sea with planes and ships for any sign of the 22-foot (6.7-meter) Titan. The submarine lost contact with its support ship on Sunday morning about an hour and 45 minutes after what should have been a two-hour descent.
Mauger said it was too early to tell when the ship failed. The search operation had sonar buoys in the water for more than three days and had not detected a single loud explosive sound during that time, Mauger said.
The buoys had picked up some sounds on Tuesday and Wednesday that offered temporary hope that the people aboard the Titan were still alive and trying to communicate by banging on the hull.
But officials said the analysis of the sound was inconclusive and that the sounds may not have come from the Titan at all.
“There seems to be no connection between the sounds and the location of the debris field on the sea floor,” Mauger said Thursday.
Robotic craft on the ocean floor will continue to gather evidence, Mauger said, but it’s not clear whether recovering the bodies will be possible given the nature of the accident and the extreme conditions at those depths.
Five large pieces of the Titan have been found, including most of the pressure hull, officials said.
Safety concerns
The search had become increasingly desperate on Thursday, when the estimated 96 hours of air supply were expected to run out if the Titan was still intact.
The Titanic, which sank on its maiden voyage in 1912 after hitting an iceberg, killing more than 1,500 people, is about 900 miles (1,450 km) east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and 400 miles (640 km ) south of St. John’s. Newfoundland.
The expedition to the wreck, which OceanGate has been conducting since 2021, cost $ 250,000 per person, according to OceanGate’s website.
Questions about Titan’s safety were raised in 2018 at a symposium of submarine industry experts and in a lawsuit by OceanGate’s former chief of maritime operations, which was settled later that year.
The extensive search spanned more than 10,000 square miles of ocean — about the size of the US state of Massachusetts. On Thursday, the deployment of two specialized unmanned deep-sea vehicles extended the search to the depths of the ocean, where immense pressure and pitch-black darkness made the mission difficult.
The missing submarine and the ensuing hunt attracted worldwide attention, in part because of the mythology surrounding the Titanic. The “unsinkable” British passenger liner has inspired both non-fiction and fiction for a century, including the 1997 James Cameron blockbuster, which rekindled public interest in the story.
(
