Rescuers in a remote area of the Atlantic Ocean fought against time on Tuesday to locate five people assigned to document the wreck of the Titanic.
Authorities reported Sunday night that the carbon fiber ship was overdue and launched an international rescue operation in waters about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. On board were a pilot, the famous British adventurer Hamish Harding, two members of a legendary Pakistani entrepreneurial family and a Titanic expert.
The submersible, named Titan, had 96 hours of oxygen when it set sail around 6 a.m. Sunday, according to David Concannon, a consultant with OceanGate Expeditions who oversaw the mission.
This means that oxygen supplies could run out by Thursday morning.
CBS News journalist David Pogue, who traveled to Titanic aboard Titanic last year, said the craft uses two systems of communication: text messages sent to a surface ship and security pings sent out every 15 minutes to indicate that the U-Boot da is still working.
Both systems stopped about an hour and 45 minutes after Titan submerged.
“There are only two things that could mean. Either they lost all power or the ship suffered a hull rupture and immediately imploded. Both are frighteningly hopeless,” Pogue told CBC on Tuesday.
The submersible had seven backup systems to return to the surface, including sandbags and lead pipes that fall down, and an inflatable balloon. A system is designed to work even when everyone on board is unconscious, Pogue said.
Experts said rescuers face major challenges.
Alistair Greig, professor of marine engineering at University College London, said submersibles typically have a drop weight, which is “a mass that they can release in an emergency to buoy them to the surface”.
“If there had been a power outage and/or communications failure, that would have happened and the submersible would then be floating on the surface waiting to be found,” Greig said.
Another scenario is a leak in the pressure hull, in which case the prognosis is not good, he said.
“If it’s sunk to the sea floor and can’t get back up on its own, the options are very limited,” Greig said. “While the submersible may still be intact, once it’s beyond the continental shelf there are very few vessels capable of going that deep, let alone divers.”
Even if they could go that deep, he doubts rescuers could get stuck on the sub.
As of Tuesday morning, an area totaling 10,000 square miles had been searched, the US Coast Guard tweeted.
Canadian research icebreaker Polar Prince, which is supporting Titan, was to continue conducting surface searches with the help of a Canadian Boeing P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft, the Coast Guard said on Twitter. Two US Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft also performed overflights.
The Canadian military dropped sonar buoys to listen for Titan’s sounds.
Concannon, who said he should have been present at the dive but was unable to be, said officials are also working to get a remote-controlled vehicle to the site as soon as possible, which can dive to a depth of 6 kilometers.
Archaeologists and marine biologists take part in OceanGate’s expeditions to the Titanic wreck. The company also brings paid employees, known as “mission specialists.” They take turns operating the sonar equipment and doing other tasks in the submersible.
The Coast Guard said on Monday that the Titan had one pilot and four “mission specialists” on board. However, OceanGate’s website suggests that the fifth person may be a so-called “content expert” guiding paying customers.
Authorities have yet to officially identify those on board, although some names have been confirmed, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who the company says served as a member of the crew.
Rush told The Associated Press in June 2021 that the Titan’s technology is “very cutting edge” and was developed with the help of NASA and aerospace manufacturers.
“This is the only submersible — crewed submersible — that’s made of carbon fiber and titanium,” Rush said, calling it the “largest carbon fiber structure we know of,” with 5 inches of thick carbon fiber and 3.25 inches of titanium.
Harding, who lives in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, was one of the mission specialists, according to Action Aviation, a company of which Harding is chairman.
Harding is a billionaire adventurer who holds three Guinness World Records, including the longest full-sea depth record in a manned ship. In March 2021, he and marine researcher Victor Vescovo descended to the deepest depths of the Mariana Trench. In June 2022, he flew into space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.
According to a family statement, the Pakistani national Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman were also on board. The Dawoods belong to one of the most prominent families in Pakistan. Her eponymous company invests nationwide in agriculture, industry and the healthcare sector.
Shahzada Dawood is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the California-based SETI Institute, which searches for extraterrestrial intelligence.
French explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet was also on board, according to David Gallo, a senior adviser on strategic initiatives and special projects at RMS Titanic. Gallo identified Nargeolet, a friend who has led several expeditions to Titanic, during an interview with CNN on Tuesday.
Greg Stone, a longtime California-based oceanographer and friend of Rush’s, called the lost submarine “a fundamentally new submarine design” that shows promise for future research. Unlike its predecessors, the Titan was not spherical in shape.
“Stockton was a risk taker. He was smart…he had a vision. He wanted to push things forward,” Stone said.
The expedition was OceanGate’s third annual voyage to document the disintegration of the Titanic, which struck an iceberg and sank in 1912, killing all but about 700 of the approximately 2,200 passengers and crew. Since the wreck was discovered in 1985, it has slowly fallen victim to metal-eating bacteria.
OceanGate’s website listed the “mission support fee” for the 2023 Expedition as $250,000 per person.
Recalling his own voyage aboard Titan, Pogue said the ship was turned around in search of Titanic.
“There is no GPS underwater, so the surface vessel is supposed to guide the sub to the shipwreck by sending text messages,” Pogue said in a segment aired on CBS Sunday Morning. “But on this dive, communication kind of broke down. The sub never found the wreck.”
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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Danica Kirka, Jill Lawless and Sylvia Hui in London, Rob Gillies in Toronto, Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad.
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