A submarine carrying tourists to visit the wreck of the Titanic disappeared last Sunday in the Atlantic Ocean. Although in the first moments, the company did not want to reveal the number and names of the passengers, the identity of the five people on board the missing submarine was revealed. Communication with the ship was lost 45 minutes after the dive began.
Titanic: Who Were the Missing People on the Submarine?
Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, as well as British explorer Hamish Harding, were traveling on the tourist submarine along with French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet and the CEO of the firm OceanGate – who operated the submarine – Stockton Rush.
The U.S. and Canadian Coast Guard embarked on a search against the clock to locate the submarine, which had only 96 hours of autonomy. On Thursday the US Coast Guard revealed they had found debris of the submarine and that, sadly, all five passengers had passed when the Titan submarine imploded.
Dawood lived with his family in the United Kingdom and sponsored the SETI Institute, whose mission is to explore and understand the origin of the universe, while Harding was president of the aircraft firm Action Aviation and is known to have traveled into space.
Over the weekend, Harding commented on social media that the ship that took him to the ocean site where the Titanic sank had departed from St John’s, in Newfoundland, Canada. Once at the site, Harding said the submersible’s crew would attempt the dive following an improvement in the weather after the area had one of the worst winters in 40 years.
On his Facebook account, Harding wrote two days ago that in the team traveling on the submarine were legendary explorers: “PH Nargeolet. More expedition updates IF the weather holds!” he said.
Titan: What Happened to the Tourist Submarine?
Despite its high cost, the visit to see the wreckage of the famous ship is one of the great attractions worldwide for an exclusive group of tourists who can afford the voyage. Generally, the packages to go to the Titanic amount to thousands of dollars since the trip takes several days and, in the particular case of the ascent and descent at sea, the transfer takes approximately eight hours.
According to the last report of the company OceanGate Expeditions, in charge of the submarines, tourists are charged up to 300 thousand dollars for a place within the eight-day packages.
Where Are the Remains of the Titanic?
The remains of the Titanic are located at 3800 meters on the seabed and about 600 kilometers off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada. In recent decades, the area has been visited several times by scientists, explorers, tourists, and, of course, film directors such as James Cameron.
Thousands of artifacts have been recovered that show what a world-class ship was like at the time; however, over time, the Titanic’s condition has deteriorated due to the constant growth of bacteria. That is why, as of 2001, UNESCO included the wreckage in its famous Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage.
What Happened to the Titanic?
The passenger line in charge of the Titanic was the largest in the world at the beginning of the 20th century. On April 15, 1912, the ship sank after hitting an iceberg during its voyage from Southampton (England) to New York (United States).
Of the 2,200 passengers who started the voyage, more than 1,500 lost their lives. The remains of the ship were discovered in 1985 and, from that moment on, specialists began underwater voyages to understand what happened. Sometime later, the experience was opened to tourists.
For many years it was believed that the Titanic had sunk in one piece. However, the 1985 expedition led by Jean-Louis Michel and Robert Ballard changed the entire historical perspective. Thanks to that research, experts determined that the Titanic had “broken up” near the surface before sinking.
Story written in Spanish by Miguel Fernández in Cultura Colectiva News
