A Tourist Submarine With a Billionaire Onboard in Search of the Titanic Is Missing
A private tourist submarine operated by OceanGate with a prominent British explorer and a Dubai-based billionaire onboard just went missing while in search of the Titanic some 12,500 feet under the Atlantic Ocean. According to a media brief released by OceanGate, rescue efforts are underway with the assistance of agencies from several governments with deep submersible equipment and deep sea companies to establish contact with the missing submarine.
— OceanGate Expeditions (@OceanGateExped) June 19, 2023
The OceanGate website about the Titanic appeared to be unavailable as of this writing.
OceanGate's missing sub
Passengers in the vessel include Hamish Harding, a billionaire businessman, pilot and space tourist; UK-based Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman Dawood, 19. Harding is a Dubai-based billionaire-adventure seeker and founder of Action Group and chairman of Action Aviation, an international aircraft brokerage company. As an aviator, Harding was also the mission director and crew pilot for the flight mission One More Orbit, that set a world speed record for the fastest circumnavigation of earth over two geographic poles.
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A photo of Hamish Harding from his Facebook page
Harding posted on his personal Facebook: “I am proud to finally announce that I joined OceanGate Expeditions for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist on the sub going down to the Titanic. Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023. A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow. We started steaming from St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada yesterday and are planning to start dive operations around 4 a.m. tomorrow morning. Until then we have a lot of preparations and briefings to do. The team on the sub has a couple of legendary explorers, some of which have done over 30 dives to the RMS Titanic since the 1980s including PH Nargeolet.”
OceanGate released a video of how the exploration should look like on simulated CGI.
The Titan is a 21-foot, Cyclops-class manned submersible 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. OceanGate is said to charge as much as $250,000 (approximately P14 million) per passenger for an eight-day voyage. It is manned by a crew of one plus four passengers and has a four-day emergency supply of oxygen.
The US Coast Guard reported that the sub went missing less than two hours after the dive.
The ship that brought the sub to the Atlantic Ocean
“We anticipate there is somewhere between 70 and the full 96 hours available at this point,” Rear Admiral John Mauger of the US Coast Guard said in a news conference. “The U.S. has deployed two planes, a submarine, and several sonar buoys to aid in the search.
The Titan is lighter in weight and more cost-efficient to mobilize than any other deep diving submersible. A combination of groundbreaking engineering and off-the-shelf technology gives it a unique advantage over other deep diving subs; the proprietary Real Time Hull Health Monitoring (RTM) systems provides an unparalleled safety feature that assesses the integrity of the hull throughout every dive. The use of off-the-shelf components helped to streamline the construction and makes it simple to operate and replace parts in the field.
