The US Coast Guard said a Canadian aircraft detected underwater noises in the North Atlantic Ocean while searching for the missing ship. Underwater search operations are now heading toward the “area of the noise,” the US Coast Guard said early Wednesday.
OceanGate's Titan submarine. Photo: Reuters
This is where the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in 1912, killing about 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers and crew.
The Titanic dives are operated by OceanGate Expeditions, which has been operating the service since 2021. Here's what we know about the situation so far:
Type of vessel used
According to OceanGate's website, Titan is a 6.5m long manned submersible that can carry five people, including a pilot and four passengers, at a depth of 4,000m.
The Titanic expeditions cost $250,000 per person, and depart from the city of St John's, in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
From this port, passengers will board a shuttle ship, in this case the Polar Prince, to travel 400 miles into the Atlantic Ocean. Here, the Titan will be dropped off so visitors can see the Titanic wreckage from up close.
It will take the Titan two hours to descend to the Titanic's depth of about 3,800m.
Illustrations of the craft show it to be very small and even controlled by a toy-like controller. Graphic image: CNA
In a court filing in May 2021, OceanGate said the Titan had an “unparalleled safety feature,” with the ability to provide a hull quality assessment after each voyage.
The company said that at the time of filing, the Titan had undergone more than 50 test dives to depths of 3,800 meters off the coast of the Bahamas as well as in a pressure chamber.
During the 2022 expedition, OceanGate reported that the submersible experienced a battery failure on its first dive.
According to the BBC, the ship's doors are secured with bolts on the outside, meaning passengers cannot exit the ship without help from the crew outside.
How did it go missing?
Titan began launching on Sunday morning but lost contact with Polar Prince about 105 minutes later.
The US Coast Guard said the ship could stay submerged for 96 hours and as of Monday afternoon, there was still enough oxygen inside the ship to last for 70 hours.
It is unclear whether the submersible is still underwater or has surfaced.
Who is on board?
British billionaire and adventurer Hamish Harding was among the passengers, according to a social media post.
Mr Harding's stepson wrote on Facebook that he had "disappeared on a submarine", but the post was deleted shortly afterwards.
The expedition set sail on Friday and the first dive was scheduled for Sunday morning, according to Mr Harding’s earlier social media posts. Action Aviation, Mr Harding’s company, also posted about his expedition.
In March 2021, he and ocean explorer Victor Vescovo dived to the deepest point of the Mariana Trench. In June 2022, he launched into space on Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket.
Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, were also on board, the family said in a statement.
Mr. Dawood is the Vice Chairman of one of Pakistan's largest conglomerates, the Engro Group, which invests in fertilizers, vehicle manufacturing, energy and digital technology.
The only other person on board was 77-year-old French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, director of underwater research at a company that owns the rights to the Titanic wreck.
A former commander in the French navy, he also served as a deep-sea diver and minesweeper. After retiring, he led the first Titanic salvage expedition in 1987 and is a leading authority on the site.
The fifth person is reportedly Stockton Rush, founder and CEO of OceanGate, who will serve as the ship's helmsman and guide.
rugged terrain
Experts say that if the ship is at the bottom of the ocean, a rescue would be almost impossible. The submersible lost contact halfway through its dive. "It's pitch black down there and freezing cold. The seabed is muddy and bumpy," said Tim Maltin, an expert on the Titanic wreck.
If the submersible is on the ocean floor, experts say a rescue by another submarine is unlikely. Only a handful of submersibles exist that could reach the depths of the Titanic. Even if they could, a submersible would be unlikely to pull the Titan to the surface.
“We know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the ocean floor,” said Jamie Pringle, a forensic geologist at Keele University in the UK.
Experts say that if the ship is moving on the ocean surface, the search will be extremely difficult. The ship is only the size of a small truck, and if it is partially submerged, the ability to detect it from a distance will be even more difficult. Transporting the ship and the machinery needed to search out to sea will also take time.
Quoc Thien
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