Search team launched to find missing Oceangate Titanic tourist sub
The final ping from a Titanic tourist submarine before it disappeared with five people on board has revealed its last known movements.
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The last ping from a tourist submarine before it disappeared with five passengers on board – including a British billionaire and his wife – has revealed the vessel was directly above the Titanic wreckage in the Atlantic Ocean, sources claim.
Rescue teams are racing against time to locate the vessel, named Titan, after it began its descent early Sunday local time and lost contact with the surface less than two hours later, according to authorities.
The vessel has a range of 96 hours oxygen for a crew of five and as of Tuesday it’s believed that level had dropped to 70 or more hours of remaining oxygen.
Crews apparently rely on texts to communicate with their team above water, according to Britain’s The Times.
Every 15 minutes, the vessel also sends ‘pings’ to the transport ship Polar Prince. The final of these messages is understood to have been sent at 3pm UK time (12am Monday AEST), according to The Times.
The final ping showed Titan directly above the Titanic at this time, according to the publication, citing sources. After that, all contact was lost with the vessel.
It’s believed Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, the company which provided the submarine, is among the missing.
French diving expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 73, and British billionaire Hamish Harding and his wife have also been named.
The final known photo of the 6.5 metre vessel taken on Sunday morning local time before it disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean shows foggy and wet weather conditions.
While the company did not confirm how many crew or tourists were on board, family and friends of the missing have asked for people to “stop and pray” for those on the vessel, which carries only 96 hours of air in total.
“Thoughts and prayers for my mum and (stepdad) Hamish Harding,” Brian Szasz posted on Facebook.
“His submarine has gone missing exploring Titanic.”
Mr Harding, a British explorer and chairman of Action Aviation, said in an Instagram post a day before the vessel went missing that he was joining the OceanGate expedition as a “mission specialist”.
He said the vessel left St Johns in Newfoundland on Friday and the team was planning to start the dive at 4am local time on Sunday.
That means they only have until Thursday afternoon (AEST) until oxygen runs out.
“A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow,” he said in the Saturday night post.
“We started steaming from St Johns, Newfoundland, Canada yesterday and are planning to start dive operations around 4am 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.”
‘TANGLED IN TITANIC WRECKAGE’
The US Coast Guard said in a statement that the submersible lost contact about 1 hour and 45 minutes into the dive.
It has launched a sweeping search approximately 1450km east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, while the Canadian Coast Guard said it too is taking part in the effort with fixed wing aircraft and a ship sent to the search zone.
“It is a challenge to conduct a search in that remote area, but we are deploying all available assets to make sure that we can locate the craft and rescue the people on board,” US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger told reporters in Boston, where he was overseeing the operation.
“We work very very hard” in the search effort, “and our crews take this personally,” he added.
A C-130 Hercules aircraft, flying out of the Coast Guard Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina, as well as a Canadian P8 aircraft equipped with underwater sonar capability, are currently searching for the vessel.
The US Coast Guard 1st District Commander, Rear Adm John Mauger, told Fox News the amount of oxygen “gives us some time to continue searching and continue using all our means to try and locate the crew members.”
He added the search would be difficult due to the surrounding wreckage of the Titanic.
“There’s a lot of debris on the bottom, and locating an object on the bottom will be difficult,” he said.
“We have lives that are potentially at risk.”
Mauger said Tuesday morning he believed it still had 70 or more hours of remaining oxygen.
3 tugs seem headed to site of Titanic wreck, where a small submersible that takes paying tourists to view wreck has gone missing
— MarineTraffic (@MarineTraffic) June 19, 2023
AIS shows 3 tugs left 🇨🇦port St Johns, listing destination as Titanic wreck site & SAR.
3 vessels are Polar Prince, Kopit Hobson 1752, Horizon Arctic pic.twitter.com/TSO45EplMZ
Similarly, former Rear Admiral Chris Parry told Sky News: “It’s very worrying. It could have become entangled in the wreckage of Titanic, we don’t know yet.
“The wreck site is a long way from anywhere.”
OceanGate Expeditions posted recent photos from expeditions during the first half of June, saying it had been an “incredibly busy two weeks” for the dive teams of their Mission 3 and Mission 4 crews.
In a statement, the company said: “We are exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely. Our entire focus is on the crew members in the submarine and their families.”
It added: ‘We are deeply thankful for the extensive assistance we have received from several government agencies and deep sea companies in our efforts to reestablish contact with the submersible. We are working toward the safe return of the crew members”.
It's been an incredibly busy two weeks! Thank you to all of our dive teams who've joined us - here's a look at our Mission 3 and Mission 4 crew.
— OceanGate Expeditions (@OceanGateExped) June 15, 2023
Learn more about the Titanic Expedition: https://t.co/F7OtKI0En7pic.twitter.com/hRNbwje0CG
Contact with the vessel was maintained through Starlink internet, according to a June 1 Twitter post by the company, which runs eight-day missions led by undersea explorers and scientists to the 111-year-old debris field. The last tweet about the Titanic expedition was on June 15.
The company’s website advertises seven-night voyages to see the Titanic wreckage priced at$US250,000 ($A365,000).
Despite being in the middle of the North Atlantic, we have the internet connection we need to make our #Titanic dive operations a success - thank you @Starlink! pic.twitter.com/sujBmPr3JD
— OceanGate Expeditions (@OceanGateExped) June 1, 2023
POSSIBLE CAUSES
Without having studied the craft itself, Alistair Greig, professor of marine engineering at University College London, suggested two possible theories based on images of the vessel published by the press.
He said if it had an electrical or communications problem, it could have surfaced and remained floating, “waiting to be found.”
“Another scenario is the pressure hull was compromised – a leak,” he said in a statement. “Then the prognosis is not good.”
While the submersible may still be intact during its dive, “there are very few vessels” able to go to the depth to which the Titan might have travelled
Rory Golden, on board a support vessel near the Titanic wreck, took to Facebook to let his friends know he is “OK” and urged “think positive”.
“The reaction and offers of help globally is truly astonishing, and only goes to show the real goodness in people at a time like this. Our online and internet options are being restricted in order to keep bandwidth available for the co-ordinated effort that is taking place, so please bear that in mind too,” he said in a post on Tuesday.
Titanic expert Larry Daley told Sunrise while the exact time the submarine went missing was unknown, four days of air provided a hopeful window for the search and rescue effort.
“It gives a good opportunity to do a good search grid in the area and as we speak, more assets are showing up on site,” he said.
Boston Coast Guard Lieutenant Jordan Hart said rescue efforts were focused off the coast of Newfoundland. Canadian Coast Guard is reportedly assisting in the rescue operation.
We're excited to begin the 2023 Titanic Expedition! Read our first expedition blog to learn how you can follow our return to the wreck: https://t.co/fqFoqu0mns#Titanic
— OceanGate Expeditions (@OceanGateExped) May 11, 2023
The wreckage of the RMS Titanic lies about 12,500 feet, or 3,810 meters, on the ocean floor about 645 km southeast of Newfoundland. It remained lost to time for more than 70 years before it was discovered in 1985.
More than 2200 passengers were on board when the Titanic, the largest of its kind, struck an iceberg five days into its voyage from England to New York.
OceanGate’s five-person submarine, The Titan, is billed as the only small sub of its kind that can reach the Titanic wreckage.
CBS News reporter David Pogue, who rode in the vessel last year, said he “couldn’t help noticing how many pieces of this sub seemed improvised, with off-the-shelf components,” like a video game controller to pilot the sub.
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Originally published as Search team launched to find missing Oceangate Titanic tourist sub
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