Expert search teams culled from across the world continued to scour a small stretch of the North Atlantic Ocean on Thursday for the tourist subversive that vanished while diving to the infamous Titanic wreck over the weekend.
The Titan sub is operated by OceanGate Expeditions, a private company that hawks controversial tours of the site where the ocean liner came to rest in two parts after it struck an iceberg and sank off the Canadian coast in the early hours of April 15, 1912.
The wreck, which was located in 1985, claimed more than 1,500 lives including wealthy magnates Benjamin Guggenheim and John Jacob Astor IV. More than a hundred years later, passengers paid OceanGate up to $250,000 to see the remains up close.
Below, a detailed timeline of the Titan’s tragic journey – including the latest updates from the ongoing search.
Friday, June 16
The Titan set off from St. John’s on the coast of Newfoundland on Friday.
From the port, the sub was expected to travel 370 miles out into the Atlantic, where the wreck of the Titanic rests about 12,500 feet below the surface.
One day before the launch, billionaire explorer Hamish Harding sent his friend, retired NASA astronaut Col. Terry Virts, an update that hinted at poor weather conditions.
“Hey, we’re headed out tomorrow, it looks good, the weather’s been bad so they’ve been waiting for this,” Harding, 58, wrote.
“He understood the risks for sure, there’s no doubt about that,” Virts later told ITV’s “Good Morning.”
Saturday, June 17
Harding, whose previous adventures include diving to the deepest point of the Mariana Trench and a seat on the Blue Origin mission last June, posted an update about the sub’s voyage on Saturday.
“I am proud to finally announce that I joined OceanGate Expeditions for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist on the sub going down to the Titanic,” he wrote on Facebook around 5:35 p.m. ET.
“Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023. A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow.”
Harding’s social media has since gone quiet.
Sunday, June 18
The Titan’s crew planned to start the descent to the wreck around 4 a.m. ET on Sunday, Harding’s post said. However, The US Coast Guard later determined that the two-hour dive started around 8 a.m.
The submersible lost communication with its surface vessel, the Polar Prince around 9:45 a.m., according to the Coast Guard.
Unlike a submarine, a submersible relies on its mothership to launch and return to the surface. By losing contact, the Titan became effectively stranded with no way of knowing its own position.
The sub subsequently failed to reappear at the surface by the predetermined 3 p.m. deadline, officials say. Polar Print alerted the Coast Guard about the overdue submersible shortly before 6 that evening – 10 hours after the Titan first submerged.
Monday, June 19
An extensive rescue effort was underway by early Monday, as US and Canadian officials scrambled to locate the sub with only about 70 to 96 hours of oxygen left.
The search zeroed in on the area about 900 nautical miles off the Coast of Cape Cod, the Coast Guard said.
Commercial vessels were also asked to help with the search.
“Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families,” OceanGate Expeditions wrote in a statement at the time.
“We are exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely.”
Tourist submersible exploring Titanic wreckage disappears in Atlantic Ocean
What we know
A submersible on a pricey tourist expedition to the Titanic shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean has vanished with likely only four days’ worth of oxygen. The US Coast Guard said the small submarine began its journey underwater with five passengers Sunday morning, and the Canadian research vessel that it was working with lost contact with the crew about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive.
It was later found that a top-secret team with the US Navy detected the implosion of the Titan submersible on Sunday, but did not stop search efforts due because the evidence was “not definitive” and a decision was made to “make every effort to save the lives on board.”
Who was on board?
The family of world explorer Hamish Harding confirmed on Facebook that he was among the five traveling in the missing submarine. Harding, a British businessman who previously paid for a space ride aboard the Blue Origin rocket last year, shared a photo of himself on Sunday signing a banner for OceanGate’s latest voyage to the shipwreck.
Also onboard were Pakistani energy and tech mogul Shanzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman, 19; famed French diver and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush.
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What’s next?
“We’re doing everything we can do to locate the submersible and rescue those on board,” Rear Adm. John Mauger told reporters. “In terms of the hours, we understood that was 96 hours of emergency capability from the operator.
Coast Guard officials said they are currently focusing all their efforts on locating the sub first before deploying any vessel capable of reaching as far below as 12,500 feet where the Titanic wreck is located.
Mauger, first district commander and leader of the search-and-rescue mission, said the US was coordinating with Canada on the operation.
The debris recovered from the US Coast Guard’s Titan submersible search site early Thursday included “a landing frame and a rear cover from the submersible.”
After search efforts to recover the stranded passengers proved futile, and bits of debris from the submersible were found, it was decided that the sub imploded, which correlated with an anomaly picked up by the US Navy in the same area.
The Coast Guard later reported that all 5 passengers were confirmed dead, and rescue efforts were halted.
Even in the first hours of the search, experts warned that the Titanic wreck’s depth made the possibility of successfully locating and towing the sub to the surface slim to none.
“If it has gone down to the seabed and can’t get back up under its own power, options are very limited,” said Alistair Greig, a professor of marine engineering at University College London.
“While the submersible might still be intact, if it is beyond the continental shelf, there are very few vessels that can get that deep, and certainly not divers.”
If achieved, the Titan rescue would be the deepest – and riskiest – recovery mission in history.
Also on Monday, Harding’s family confirmed on social media that the Dubai-based businessman was among the missing crew members.
“Thoughts and prayers for my stepfather Hamish Harding as his Submarine has gone missing exploring Titanic,” his stepson, Brian Szasz, wrote on Facebook.
Tuesday, June 20
The family of Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, confirmed that the Engro Corporation Vice-Chairman and his son, Sulaiman Dawood, 19, were on board the missing sub early Tuesday.
In addition to the Dawoods and Harding, those on board the Titan included Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate and the vessel’s pilot, and famed Titanic explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
As the search effort continued, speculation mounted that the sub could be stuck somewhere in Titanic’s looming, century-old crevices.
Throughout the day on Tuesday, a Canadian P-3 aircraft equipped with sonobuoys reportedly detected “banging” in 30-minute intervals near where the subversive was lost, internal emails later revealed.
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Frank Owen, a former Australian submarine officer and now search-and-rescue director, told The Post that the noise could be an “encouraging” sign that the crew was still alive.
“On board the Titan is the French former Navy diver, the Titanic expert [Paul-Henry Nargeolet]. But also because he’s a diver, he understands the way search forces look for submarines that are lost,” he explained.
“So the fact that we’re hearing banging at 30-minute internals tells me that the people inside are sending a message that says, ‘We understand that you would be looking for us and this is how you might expect us to react.’”
Other experts, however, said the banging is likely from debris of the Titanic itself, and not the stranded crew.
“And as it stands right now, it would be a miracle if they are recovered alive,” Harding’s friend, filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen, said Tuesday.
Wednesday, June 21
On Wednesday, the US Coast Guard, US Navy, Canadian Coast Guard, and OceanGate Expeditions coordinated a unified command to lead the search.
Around 2 a.m. ET, the US Coast Guard also confirmed the Canadian aircraft had detected underwater banging the previous day.
As the crew members’ remaining oxygen quickly dwindled, more vessels, including the French research ship L’Atalante, arrived to help with the search.
The L’Atalante, which had been pledged to the rescue effort by French officials earlier in the week, is equipped with the Nautile, one of the world’s only manned deep-sea vehicles capable of reaching the Titanic’s depths.
L’Atalante was also expected to deploy the Victor 6000, a remote-controlled robot capable of reaching a depth of 20,000 feet – almost double the Titanic’s own position on the floor of the North Atlantic.
As the vessel’s 96 hours of oxygen continued to dwindle, officials insisted that the search remained a rescue mission – not a recovery operation.
“This is a search-and-rescue mission, 100%,” Coast Guard First District Capt. Jamie Frederick told reporters Wednesday.
“We’ll continue to put every available asset that we have in an effort to find the Titan and the crew members.”
Thursday, June 22
The Titan is believed to have run out of emergency oxygen around 7:08 a.m. Thursday.
Less than two hours later, the US Coast Guard announced that a remote-operated vehicle had reached the ocean floor as the frantic search became increasingly desperate.
“The Canadian vessel Horizon Arctic has deployed an ROV that has reached the sea floor and began its search for the missing sub,” the agency said.
The Coast Guard also confirmed that L’Atalante was set to deploy its ROV shortly.
Also on Thursday morning, deep-sea specialist firm Magellan announced that its own ROV was en route to the search.
Richard Garriot, the president of the Explorers Club, of which both Harding and Nargeolet are members, shared the news on Twitter, writing: “There is good cause for hope.”
As of mid-morning Thursday, the status of the five Titan passengers remains unknown.
With Post wires
