Suleman Dawood took Rubik’s cube onto Titanic sub to break record

The devastated mother of the teenager who died in the Titan tragedy has told of his big hopes before disaster struck. See the video.

Teenager Suleman Dawood, who died in the Titan submersible disaster alongside his father and three others, took his Rubik’s cube with him because he wanted to break a world record, his mother has revealed.

The 19-year-old, who was a student at Glasgow’s Strathclyde University, applied to Guinness World Records and his father, Shahzada had brought a camera to capture the moment.

Christine Dawood also revealed she and daughter Alina were on board the submersible’s support vessel, the Polar Prince, when they found out communications with the Titan had been lost.

Suleman Dawood died alongside his father, Shahzada, when the Titan submersible imploded. Picture: AFP

“I didn’t comprehend at that moment what it meant - and then it just went downhill from there,” Mrs Dawood told the BBC.

Mrs Dawood said she had originally planned to go with her husband to view the wreckage of the Titanic, but the trip was cancelled because of the Covid pandemic.

“Then I stepped back and gave them space to set (Suleman) up, because he really wanted to go,” she said.

Christine Dawood, the mother of Titanic tourist sub victim Suleman Dawood, in her BBC interview.

Mrs Dawood said Suleman was such a Rubik’s cube fanatic that he carried it with him everywhere, dazzling onlookers by solving the complex puzzle in 12 seconds.

“He said, ‘I’m going to solve the Rubik’s cube 3,700 metres below sea at the Titanic’,” Mrs Dawood said.

It is not clear which record Suleman was trying to break, but records have previously been set for the fastest time a Rubik’s cube has been solved underwater.

Christine Dawood and daughter Alina were on board the submersible’s support vessel, the Polar Prince, when communications were lost. Picture: Getty Images

Mrs Dawood said the family hugged and made jokes in the moments before her husband and son boarded the Titan submersible.

“I was really happy for them because both of them, they really wanted to do that for a very long time,” she said.

Mrs Dawood described her husband, who had links to King Charles through his work for The Princes Trust charity, as having “childlike excitement” and “infectious curiosity” about the world around him.

The Pakistani businessman, 48, and his son were tragically killed when the OceanGate vessel imploded during a tour of the Titanic wreckage off the east coast of Canada.

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding and French Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet also died in the catastrophe.

An investigation into the causes of the tourist sub disaster was opened by the US Coast Guard on Monday.

Chief investigator Captain Jason Neubauer said its priority was recovering debris from the submersible, and precautions will be taken in case human remains are found.

The focus, he said, was to recover items from the sea floor.

The salvage operations are ongoing … the resources are on site and capable of recovering the debris,” Capt Neubauer said.

US officials have said they are “not sure” if they will ever recover the bodies of the five men who died in the Atlantic, due to the extreme conditions at that depth.