By Patrick Whittle, BOSTON USA
A submersible carrying five people to the Titanic imploded near the site of the shipwreck and killed everyone on board, authorities said Thursday, bringing a tragic end to a saga that included an urgent around-the-clock search and a worldwide vigil for the missing vessel.
The
sliver of hope that remained for finding
the five men alive was wiped away early Thursday, when the
submersible’s 96-hour supply of oxygen was expected to run out following its
Sunday launch and the Coast Guard announced that debris had been found roughly
1,600 feet (488 meters) from the Titanic in North Atlantic waters.
“This was a catastrophic
implosion of the vessel,” said Rear Adm. John Mauger, of the First Coast Guard
District.
After the craft was reported
missing, the U.S. Navy went back and analyzed its acoustic data and found an
anomaly that was “consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general
vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were
lost,” a senior Navy official told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The official spoke on
condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive acoustic detection system.
The Navy passed on that
information to the Coast Guard, which continued its search because the Navy did
not consider the data to be definitive.From left, Shahzada Dawood, Suleman Dawood, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Stockton Rush, and Hamish Harding
OceanGate Expeditions, the
company that owned and operated the submersible, said in a statement that all
five people in the vessel, including CEO and pilot Stockton Rush, “have sadly
been lost.”
The others on board were two
members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman
Dawood; British adventurer Hamish Harding; and Titanic expert Paul-Henri
Nargeolet.
“These men were true explorers
who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and
protecting the world’s oceans,” OceanGate said in a statement. “We grieve the
loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”
OceanGate has been chronicling
the Titanic’s decay and the underwater ecosystem around it via yearly voyages
since 2021. The company has not responded to additional questions about the
Titan’s voyage this week.
The company’s office was
“closed indefinitely while the staff copes with the tragic loss of their team
member,” according to a statement Thursday by the Port of Everett, which is
about 30 miles (50 kilometers) north of downtown Seattle and is home to OceanGate.
The Coast Guard will continue
searching for more signs about what happened to the Titan.This photo provided by OceanGate Expeditions shows a submersible vessel named Titan used to visit the wreckage site of the Titanic.
While the Navy likely detected
the implosion Sunday through its acoustics system, underwater
sounds heard Tuesday and Wednesday — which initially gave hope for a
possible rescue — were probably unrelated to the submersible. The Navy’s
possible clue was not known publicly until Thursday, when The Wall Street Journal first reported it.
With a search area covering
thousands of miles — twice the size of Connecticut and in waters 2 1/2 miles (4
kilometers) deep — rescuers all week rushed
ships, planes and other equipment to the site of the disappearance.
Broadcasters around the
world started
newscasts at the critical hour Thursday with news of the submersible.
The Saudi-owned satellite channel Al Arabiya showed a clock on air counting
down to their estimate of when the air could potentially run out.
The White House thanked the
U.S. Coast Guard, along with Canadian, British and French partners who helped
in the search and rescue efforts.
“Our hearts go out to the
families and loved ones of those who lost their lives on the Titan. They have
been through a harrowing ordeal over the past few days, and we are keeping them
in our thoughts and prayers,” it said in a statement.
The Titan launched at 6 a.m.
Sunday and was reported overdue that afternoon about 435 miles (700 kilometers)
south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. By Thursday, when the oxygen supply was
expected to run out, there was little hope of finding the crew alive.
In 2021 and 2022, at least 46
people successfully traveled on OceanGate’s submersible to the Titanic site,
according to letters the company filed with a U.S. District Court in Norfolk,
Virginia, that oversees matters involving the shipwreck. But questions about the
submersible’s safety were raised
by former passengers.
One of the company’s first
customers likened
a dive he made to the site two years ago to a suicide mission.
“Imagine a metal tube a few
meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand. You can’t
kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other,” said Arthur
Loibl, a retired businessman and adventurer from Germany. “You can’t be
claustrophobic.”
During the 2 1/2-hour descent
and ascent, the lights were turned off to conserve energy, he said, with the
only illumination coming from a fluorescent glow stick.
The dive was repeatedly
delayed to fix a problem with the battery and the balancing weights. In total,
the voyage took 10 1/2 hours.
Nicolai Roterman, a deep-sea
ecologist and lecturer in marine biology at the University of Portsmouth,
England, said the disappearance of the Titan highlights the dangers and
unknowns of deep-sea tourism.
“Even the most reliable
technology can fail, and therefore accidents will happen,” Roterman said. “With
the growth in deep-sea tourism, we must expect more incidents like this.”
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