#Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman

[welcometoqueer]

so y’all remember in season 14 when Dean planned to trap himself inside a Ma’lak box and sink to the bottom of the ocean forever—to be sunk alive with Michael because being buried alive wasn’t safe enough-and had a vivid nightmare about his horrific fate if he went that route???

anyways, haha OceanGate, am I right?

[blueiscoool]

The Submersible Titan

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush gives a tour of his submersible Titan.

He was one of five people that died on his own invulnerable submersible 'Titan'.

The submersible was carrying an expedition of tourists, including Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood, Dawood's son, Suleman, and the founder of OceanGate, Stockton Rush.

Debbie Field of Missing Submersible Titan Found Near Titanic

Debris has been found in the search for the missing Titan, including parts of its outside cover.

Dive expert David Mearns said the president of the Explorers Club - which is connected to the diving and rescue community - says the debris includes "a landing frame and a rear cover from the submersible".

The US Coast Guard earlier confirmed a "debris field" had been found within the search area.

It was located by a remote-controlled underwater search vehicle (ROV) near the wreck of the Titanic.

Some experts have speculated that it could have suffered a catastrophic implosion as a result of a hull failure. The minivan-sized submersible was owned and operated by the private company OceanGate Expeditions.

The firm's co-founder, Guillermo Söhnlein, said that he believes there may have been an "instantaneous implosion" of the craft.

"If that's what happened, that's what would have happened four days ago," he said.

[pass-me-the-dilfs]

If i see one more person saying that there are researchers/ explorers on the Titan, I will implode you with my mind (much like how the Titan most likely imploded)

It takes less than a second of research to find out who is on the Titan.

ID: [Screenshot of a Google search for who is inside the Titanic submarine. CNN says British businessman Hamish Harding. French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood have all been confirmed to be on board, though the authorities have not released their names] End ID

It is literally just five billionaires. (While Paul-Henri Nargeolet is a researcher, he is a billionaire that has gone on dives to the Titanic and taken artifacts from the ship to the surface. Which, imo, is akin to desecrating a grave. Bc, you know, the Titanic IS ONE. Also, the blurb doesn't mention that Oceangate's CEO is also on board, he's the fifth person.) And I'm not sorry they're probably dead. They chose to spend $250,000 to look at the Titanic through a screen instead of spending that money on something helpful. They also WILLINGLY signed a waiver from Oceangate saying that going into the Titan may cause bodily harm, disability, and even death. They were warned, chose to spend a quarter of a million dollars to look at the Titanic, and had to face the consequences of their actions. Fuck them.

(I also need to point out that some people have been assuming that Suleman Dawood, the son of the Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood, is a child. He's not, he's 19.)

[thepastisalreadywritten]

American financier Jay Bloom offered 'last minute' discounted price to sit in doomed Titan submersible with his son - but he turned it down over safety concerns

An American tycoon has revealed a text exchange with submersible chief executive Stockton Rush, who tried to convince he and his young son to pay for a reduced six-figure seat to see the Titanic by telling him: "It was safer than crossing the street."

By David Wu

June 24, 2023

An American tycoon has revealed how submersible chief executive Stockton Rush tried to convince he and his son to buy two tickets on the doomed Titan vessel.

Financier Jay Bloom shared the text exchange with Mr Rush months before the CEO died with four other passengers when the craft suffered a "catastrophic implosion."

He tried to offer his friend a "last minute price" of $AUD225,000, with the original cost of the seat valued about $365,000 in April for an expedition the following month.

The first messages started as far back as February, when the chief executive wondered if there was an interest to see the famous shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean.

Mr Bloom said his son Sean had been "put a little scare in him" after one of his friends researched the dangers of travelling in deep waters.

"I'm happy to have a video call with him. Curious what the uninformed would say the danger is and whether it's real or imagined," Mr Rush responded.

The financier said his son was worried about "perceived threats to the vessel," such as a sperm whale or a giant squid attack compromising Titan's hull.

"Yeah, very stupid. The pressure is over 100 million pounds. No sperm whale or squid is ever going to be able to mess with the sub," Mr Rush replied.

"While there's obviously risk, it's way safer than flying in a helicopter or even scuba diving. There hasn't been even an injury in 35 years in a non-military subs."

Three days later, Mr Rush would again try to reassure Mr Bloom and his son by sending a link to how deep sperm whales can go underwater.

Mr Bloom said he was not concerned about being eaten by a whale and decided to set up a Skype call, so his questions could be answered properly.

There would be limited text communication before Mr Rush sent a message on April 24, offering discounted tickets to see the Titanic wreck.

"Have a space on mission 1 (may 11-19) and 2 (may 20-28). Last minute price is $150k pp," the chief executive advised.

Mr Bloom said he would have to check his schedule to see if he could fit it in, as Mr Rush asked three days later: "Any luck?"

That trip would be later postponed to June 18 due to weather conditions.

Mr Bloom shared the messages to his Facebook page.

The financier even met face-to-face on March 1 with Mr Rush, who took him through the Titanic Exhibit at Luxor in Las Vegas before having lunch at a food court.

"He was absolutely convinced it was safer than crossing the street," Mr Bloom said on the post about his interactions with the creator of Titan.

Mr Rush also gave him a limited edition of a book of photos signed by him and French mariner Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, who was also aboard the submersible.

Mr Bloom advised he could not join them on the once-in-a-lifetime trip until 2024.

Their tickets were later sold to prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, the latter who was "terrified" to go.

The fifth person was adventurer and British billionaire Hamish Harding.

The five men entered Titan and started their 3,800m journey down to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday morning.

However, less than two hours into the trip, mothership Polar Prince lost contact with the roughly six-metre long vessel, which sparked a large-scale international search.

The United States Coast Guard on Thursday (local time) confirmed pieces of debris found near the Titanic wreck belonged to the missing submersible.

"An ROV subsequently found additional debris, in consultation with experts from within the unified command, the debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber (of Titan)," Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger told reporters.

Undersea expert Paul Hanken said five major different pieces of debris had led experts to conclude they were the remains of the OceanGate Expeditions craft.

"The initial thing we found was a nose cone, which was outside of the (Titan) pressure hull. We then found a large debris field and within that large debris field we found the front and back of the pressure hull," he said to reporters.

"Shortly thereafter, we found a second, smaller debris field and within that debris field we found the other end of the pressure hull.

"(It) ultimately contained the totality of that pressure vehicle. That was our first indication that there was a catastrophic event."

It was revealed the US Navy had detected an "anomaly consistent with implosion or explosion" where Titan was reported missing hours after the sub departed.

The Transportation Safety Board (TSB) of Canada announced on Friday (local time) it has launched an investigation, as Polar Prince was a Canadian-flagged ship.

A team of investigators will travel to St Johns in Canada's Newfoundland and Labrador where they will "gather information and conduct interviews."

It will also coordinate its operation with other agencies.

TSB will provide updates throughout the investigation.

[dmitri-smerdyakov]

I know one of your special interests is the Titanic, so have you heard about that submarine?!?

Hi, anon. Yes, I know about the submarine - I haven't been on this blog since last weekend but I posted about it on Monday (I think) when the news first broke on my other blog @alwaysahiccupandastrid (that blog is the one I'm logged into on my phone whereas this one is the one I'm logged into on my iPod and laptop). Obviously since then the news has been a huge deal, it's been all over the news, so it's been pretty strange to log onto social media and see "titanic" trending so much.

I want to be clear that I don't wish death on anyone, I truly don't, and also that two of the people who were on that submarine actually lived a 15 minute walk from me, and I only found out because it was posted on facebook on my village's community group/page - they were the father and son, Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, who were onboard. All of this said, I'm sorry but it's really hard to sympathise with billionaires who were basically trespassing on what is a grave-site for 1500 people. If they had been researchers then I might hold a little bit more sympathy, but these people...with the exception of the 19 year old who apparently only went because of his father because it was Father's Day last weekend, I struggle to understand why those billionaires were going down there.

Here's the thing: as you said, the Titanic is one of my special interests - I am literally obsessive about not only the film made by James Cameron but also the ship itself, the history behind it, the stories of the people who were onboard etc. In fact, the reason I love the film as much as I do is because James Cameron had an obsession with the wreck too and went out of his way to be as truthful to the tragedy as possible - he even went down to the wreck for hours and hours recording footage, and even after the film came out he's continued to dive not only down to the wreck but also even further down into the ocean (I will talk about him and his dives in a moment).

All of the above in mind, would I want to go down to the wreck myself? Probably not.

A part of me would in fact want to do it because of my special interest, to see that once beautiful and magnificent ship in person, while being respectful as possible and taking the time to remember the people who suffered - but the other part of me would not because firstly, as I've said, it's where 1500 people died and trespassing on the graves of 1500 people just seems incredibly fucked to me. It's not a tourist attraction, for fuck sake, it's the site of a horrible tragedy. It's also important to note that because of all of the deep sea dives down there, because people keep disturbing the wreck, it's making the ship start to disappear - yes, part of this is due to it being 111 years since it sank, but submarines constantly disturbing it are not helping preserve it quite frankly. The man who discovered the wreck, Robert Ballard, has even said that he wished he hadn't told people he'd discovered it because of the way people have desecrated it. (side note: I borrowed his book on the Titanic from my local library in February and only gave it back last weekend because I ran out of renewals)

All of that aside, however, serious questions need to be asked about that submersible because the design of it was clearly not appropriate for that dive, and it's clear the people who made it wanted to cut corners and save money when they created it. We've all seen the memes about the fact it was being steered by a remote control you can literally buy on Amazon (the one that looks like a video game controller), and the fact that the submersible was so small it would have been like being shoved into a Pringles can. While I find the memes insensitive, it can't be denied that OceanGate have a LOT to answer for when it comes to that submersible and the design of it.

As for James Cameron, before anyone starts asking why I'm not criticizing him, the thing is that he went down to the wreckage on an actual submarine with an actual crew who do this for a living - these people were on a submersible, not a submarine. He's also made 33 dives, not just to the Titanic but also to the Mariana Trench and other deep parts of the ocean; he also designed a 24-foot submersible called the Deepsea Challenger, which took 10 years to build at a cost of $10 million, and is made of principally from syntactic foam, a high-strength, low-weight material which enables it to withstand the huge pressure exerted on it by the ocean. He has literally done his research of the ocean, his research of submarines and submersibles, and it's very clear he holds respect for not only the Titanic but also for the ocean as well. He did an interview recently about the Titan submersible, criticizing the choice of carbon-fibre composite construction of the pressure vessel, saying that it has "no strength in compression" when subject to immense pressures at depth; he also criticized Stockton Rush, the chief executor and co-founder of OceanGate who was on the submersible, and Rush's real-time monitoring of the submarine's hull as an inadequate solution that would do little to prevent an implosion.

To sum it up, while I'm personally not celebrating anyone's death in this situation and I think the memes aren't strictly appropriate, I don't feel a lot of sympathy for them - for their families who have been left behind, maybe, but it's difficult to find sympathy for a group of billionaires fucking around and going to the wreck for...for what? Shits and giggles? Because they could? As Jeff Goldblum's character said in Jurassic Park, "your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should" - and that's exactly what I feel about these people and a lot of billionaires, quite frankly, that just because they have money to do shit like this, it doesn't mean they should. I especially can't find a lot of sympathy for the co-founder who was on that submersible because, quite frankly, if he and his company hadn't been so tight-fisted and cheap when making their submersible, this might not have happened.

As a side note, I've seen people asking the authorities about recovering the bodies, and I don't think people are understanding that there are no bodies to recover, no remains, not even a single bone - there's quite literally nothing left of those people anymore. The submersible imploded, and the people inside would have literally been turned to mist at that pressure, like they would have literally disintegrated. I hope that the families of the people on that submersible can find some comfort, if nothing else, in knowing that the death of their loved ones was probably quick, that they didn't suffer - it's likely they didn't even know what was happening because of how quick the implosion would have been.

[mudwerks]

(via Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood and son Suleman: Who is on board Titanic sub? - BBC News)

I see speculation about who is on the titanic submersible NOW:

Here is the data -

Hamish Harding - The 58-year-old British adventurer runs Action Aviation, a Dubai-based private jet dealership, and has completed several exploration feats.

Shahzada and Suleman Dawood - British businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, is from one of Pakistan's richest families. He was travelling with his son, Suleman, a 19-year-old student, on the sub.

Paul-Henry Nargeolet - 77, a former French Navy diver, was also on board.

Stockton Rush - the chief executive of OceanGate, the firm which runs the Titanic voyages - is on board, the company has confirmed.

[gone2soon-rip]

2023 TITAN SUBMERSIBLE TAGEDY (JUNE 18TH 2023)

2023 Titan submersible incident - Wikipedia

STOCKTON RUSH (1962-Died June 18th 2023,at 61).Americna business and exploration entrepreneur,and CEO of OceanGate,which provided submersibles for undersea tourism,research and exploration. And responsible for the deaths of 4 fellow passengers on the Titan submersible,through gross negligence,despite dying himself on board..Stockton Rush - Wikipedia

HAMISH HARDING (1964-Died June 18th 2023,at 58).British explorer,adventurer and businessman.He was the founder of Action Group and was chairman of Action Aviation, an international aircraft brokerage company with headquarters in Dubai, UAE.[5][6][7][8] As an adventurer, he was a member of The Explorers Club who visited the South Pole several times, descended into the Mariana Trench, broke a Guinness World Record for circumnavigation of the Earth, and travelled into space.Victim of OceanGate/Stockton Rush gross negligence following the Titan sub tragedy.Hamish Harding - Wikipedia

PAUL-HENRI NARGEOLET (1946-Died June 18th 2023,at 77).French deep sea explorer and RMS Titanic expert,who undertook many explorations to the wreck of the Titanic,and was considered one of the foemost experts on the wreck and it's tragedy.He himself was killed during the Titan Submersibles descent to visit the Titanic,in June 2023,potentially culpable for the tragedy.Paul-Henri Nargeolet - Wikipedia

SHAHZADA DAWOOD (1975-Died June 18th 2023,at 48).British Pakistani businessman and philanthropist,one of the wealthiest men in Pakistan.

And his son,SULEMAN DAWOOD (2003/4 - Died June 18th 2023,at 19). Victims in the 2023 Titan Submerisble tragedy through gross negligence of OceanGate and it's CEO Stockton Rush,who himself died on the sub.

Shahzada Dawood - Wikipedia

[wordexpress]

"Underwater Noises" Detected By Rescuers In search For Missing Titanic Sub

Shortly before the Coast Guard tweet, Rolling Stone magazine quoted an internal email sent to US Department of Homeland Security officials saying a Canadian plane involved in the search "heard banging sounds in the area every 30 minutes."

Rescuers using sonar to search for the missing Titanic submersible with five people onboard detected “underwater noises” in the North Atlantic near where the craft vanished two days earlier, the US Coast Guard said Wednesday.

“Canadian P-3 aircraft detected underwater noises in the search area. As a result, ROV (remotely operated vehicle) operations were relocated in an attempt to explore the origin of the noises,” the US Coast Guard’s First District said on its official Twitter page.

The ROV searches “have yielded negative results but continue,” the military branch said, adding that data from the Canadian aircraft had been shared with US Navy experts to inform future search plans.

The announcement is the most encouraging sign yet that the tourists who were en route Sunday to visit the wreckage of the Titanic in a 21-foot (6.5-meter) minisub might still be alive, as rescue teams race to reach them before their air supply runs out.

US and Canadian coast guard ships and planes are scouring 7,600 square miles (20,000 square kilometers) of ocean — larger than the US state of Connecticut — for the vessel, which was attempting to dive some 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

Shortly before the Coast Guard tweet, Rolling Stone magazine quoted an internal email sent to US Department of Homeland Security officials saying a Canadian plane involved in the search “heard banging sounds in the area every 30 minutes.”

The submersible, named Titan, was carrying three fee-paying passengers: British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, and his son Suleman.

OceanGate Expeditions chief executive Stockton Rush and French submarine operator Paul-Henri Nargeolet were also onboard.

Harding and Nargeolet are both members of The Explorers Club, a group which supports scientific expeditions.

“There is cause for hope, based on data from the field — we understand that likely signs of life have been detected at the site,” The Explorers Club said in a statement.

[42ndand5th]

would have shot these men point blank anyways hope we never find this thing.

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

I dont think anyone else has noticed this tho im sure you have (namely the people acting like clowns in the titanic tag, not you) but the 19yr old did not want to go on that sub, he was terrified and only did it to make his dad happy..idk.. it is very tragic and upsetting and even more so that people seem to ignore this and keep going on their weird jokes about the entire thing, saying how they all wanted to go when no, the 19yr old did not want to at all. I think going down was totally uncalled for, I think stock rush got four people killed and he is terrible for that and deserved what happened to him, i think it is sick he turned a mass grave site into a tourist attraction for bored rich people..but I think people just heard the word rich for these other four and just right away assumed they deserved to die when idk...I did some reading on each of them and they, aside from the obvious ick of being rich, seemed like decent people who made a very very poor choice and trusted the wrong person which led to them dying. the paul guy was (correct me if im wrong) a well respected titanic researcher for over 30yrs, the british man was trying to make flying more sustainable for the planet and such (again correct me if wrong) and the dad and son seemed to do a lot of charity work and were overall kind people..but yeah they seemed like far better people then most celebs people love so the entire thing rubs me wrongly, two things can coexist, the entire thing was wrong and not ok and stock was sick for what he did and his death was justified, but I also have a hard time believing the other four truly deserved to die (Sorry this is random just wanted to hear your thoughts!) :)

ive written the reply to this about five times now because i also struggle with my feelings based around what happened.

on one hand, i do genuinely feel for them, especially suleman dawood who was a 19-year-old kid. i think youd have to lack a heart to not feel for him.

on the other, i fully understand where people are coming from when they dont give a shit about them. two of them were billionaires and the other two were multi-millionaires. i come from a working class background and a single-parent family so it is difficult to feel bad for someone with that much money dying because of a decision they made.

but that doesnt mean i dont feel bad for them, because i do. five human beings died and i just naturally feel for them even though my conscious brain struggles to keep up with that emotion.

and as youve said, some of them seemed to genuinely do good things.

sulemans father shahzada funded mental healthcare for pakistani citizens during covid-19 and was looking into renewable energy.

paul-henri nargeolet had been involved in underwater searches for rms carpathia as well as a flight recorded from a plane that crashed though both were unsuccessful. hed also found a roman wreck as well as an aircraft that had crashed in 1979, giving some closure to the families of those who had perished. he has done a lot of important research on the titanic.

iirc hamish hardings company action aviation has helped the indian government and a namibian cheetah conservation company to reintroduce cheetahs to india, which is objectively a very good thing.

its difficult to parse through how you feel about the disaster because people are messy, and they do both good and bad things.

i dont think i know enough about any of the four adults aboard to say whether the good theyve done outweighed the bad, and whether other people even care about that when it comes to their feelings about this.

the one i know for sure that i dont feel bad for is stockton rush because this was entirely his fault.

im not gonna get into the weeds as to why exactly titan was badly designed, but to save money and for "simplicity", he employed some experimental techniques like the use of carbon fibre and the pressure pod (i hope i have the right word here) being cylindrical. he ignored regulations and laws, he used expire carbon fibre, and he turned a mass gravesite into a tourist spot.

and i hate him even more for how he designed oceangate. the way they work is that each dive would technically be research-based, but to fund it (even though rush is a multi-millionaire), they would allow people to buy tickets to come along. and i hate this more than if it was just tourism because the way hes tied them together has made it harder to criticise the dives because they have done important research.

i definitely he misled people because if you dont know about this sort of vessel, youre likely to defer to someone who helped to develop it.

however, i would err on the side of both harding and nargeolet knowing how unsafe it was. nargeolet had done countless dives just like it and he was in this world where people were saying this isnt safe. we also know that harding knew because his friend victor vescovo, who found the deepest shipwreck in the world (the samuel b roberts), told him that it was unsafe, but harding went anyway.

ive kinda just been rambling in my reply because i do feel torn about it. people died and i struggle not to feel for them, even if my logical brain is arguing with that. i think many people struggle to believe anyone deserves to die because were humans and we are meant to care about each other. its how we survived as a species for so long. but there are people in this world where if they died, the world would objectively be a better place.

at the end of the day, im not the authority on how anyone feels about this and i dont begrudge anyone for their feelings. the world is not black and white, and so much exists in the morally grey area.

youre entitled to feel however you do, anon. dont let others make you feel bad about it.

[ghostonmyfeed]

HUMANS, BEFORE TAX BRACKETS

The blatant disregard towards the deaths of Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, Paul-Henri Nargeolet and Stockton Rush shows the lack of empathy of millions towards people just because of their financial status.

Before they're fucking billionaires, they're fucking humans. I'm so disappointed in how the media reacted to both their disappearance and their deaths.

Comparing the Titan incident to 9/11 is fucking different. Titan was a rescue mission 12,000 feet into the unexplored depths of the ocean.

9/11 while of course it's a huge tragedy, and I am not disregarding the deaths of millions-- The rescue mission was just as crucial since people were under rubble of the fallen towers BUT I'll state it again because I feel it is justifiable to say that the rescue that was done during 9/11 was easier since we already had the necessary equipment to rescue survivors unlike the recent Titan incident.

The carelessness and ignorance of millions of people towards these 5 people's lives is evil. The "dark humor" that surrounds media coverage of the entire thing is disrespectful!

We should know how to act HUMAN and feel for the family of the victims!

It's even more disappointing when I try to talk about this incident with people ages 15-21 only to have the 17-21 year olds act more childish and laugh at their deaths calling them "stupid".

"They wanted to copy this plot of a game so they went to OceanGate, so stupid" - an 18 year old.

FIVE PEOPLE JUST DIED! The misinformation spreading about their deaths because of memes is honestly disgusting.

[blueiscoool]

The Titanic and Titan

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush told news outlets that his submersible was “Invulnerable”.

He is one of five who died on his own invulnerable submersible 'Titan'.

The submersible was carrying an expedition of tourists, including Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood, Dawood's son, Suleman, and the founder of OceanGate, Stockton Rush.

OceanGate Inc. is a privately held U.S. company operating out of Everett, Washington, that provides crewed submersibles for tourism, industry, research and exploration. The company was founded in 2009 by Stockton Rush.

In 2021, OceanGate began taking paying customers to visit the Titanic shipwreck in its Titan submersible. As of 2022, the cost of an OceanGate expedition to the Titanic shipwreck is US$250,000 per person. On 18 June 2023, during a voyage to the Titanic shipwreck site, contact with the company's Titan submersible was lost prompting an international, ongoing search and rescue operation. Among the five passengers on the expedition is OceanGate's founder, Rush.

RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner, operated by the White Star Line, which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, United States. Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died, making it the deadliest sinking of a single ship up to that time. It remains the deadliest peacetime sinking of an ocean liner or cruise ship. The disaster drew public attention, provided foundational material for the disaster film genre, and has inspired many artistic works.

RMS Titanic was the largest ship afloat at the time she entered service and the second of three Olympic-class ocean liners operated by the White Star Line. She was built by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. Thomas Andrews, the chief naval architect of the shipyard, died in the disaster. Titanic was under the command of Captain Edward Smith, who went down with the ship. The ocean liner carried some of the wealthiest people in the world, as well as hundreds of emigrants from the British Isles, Scandinavia, and elsewhere throughout Europe, who were seeking a new life in the United States and Canada.

[citizenrecord]

'Titan submersible imploded, killing all 5 on board', says US Coast Guard

The sliver of hope that remained for finding the five men alive was wiped away early on Thursday, when the submersible’s 96-hour supply of oxygen was expected to run out following its Sunday launch.

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 on 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.

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 Coast Guard will continue searching for more signs about what happened to the Titan.

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 kilometres) 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 travelled 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 it. 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.”

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Titanic sub suffered 'catastrophic implosion,' all five aboard dead

By Joseph Ax and Steve Gorman

23 June 2023

June 22 (Reuters) - The five people aboard a missing submersible died in a "catastrophic implosion," a U.S. Coast Guard official said on Thursday, bringing a grim end to the international search for the vessel that was lost during a deep-sea voyage to the wreck of the Titanic.

"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 Expeditions, the U.S.-based company that operated the Titan submersible, said in a statement.

"Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time."

An unmanned robot deployed from a Canadian ship discovered the wreckage of the Titan on Thursday morning about 1,600 feet (488 meters) from the bow of the century-old wreck, 2-1/2 miles (4 km) below the surface in a remote area of the North Atlantic, U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger said at a press conference.

"The debris field here is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vehicle," Mauger said.

The five aboard included the British billionaire and explorer Hamish Harding, 58; Pakistani-born business magnate Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son, Suleman, both British citizens; French oceanographer and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, who had visited the wreck dozens of times; and Stockton Rush, the American founder and chief executive of OceanGate, who was piloting the submersible.

Rescue teams from several countries had spent days searching thousands of square miles of open seas with planes and ships for any sign of the 22-foot (6.7-meter) Titan.

The submersible lost contact with its support ship on Sunday morning, June 18, about an hour and 45 minutes into what should have been a two-hour descent.

Mauger said it was too early to tell when the vessel's failure occurred.

The search operation had sonar buoys in the water for more than three days and had not detected any sort of loud explosive noise during the period, Mauger said.

The buoys had picked up some sounds on Tuesday and Wednesday that temporarily offered hope the people on board the Titan were alive and trying to communicate by banging on the hull.

But officials said analysis of the sound was inconclusive and that the noises might not have emanated from the Titan at all.

"There doesn't appear to be any relation between the noises and the location of the debris field on the sea floor," Mauger said on Thursday.

Robotic craft on the ocean floor will continue to gather evidence, Mauger said, but it is not clear whether recovering the bodies will be possible given the nature of the accident and the extreme conditions at those depths.

Five major pieces of the Titan have been found, including most of the pressure hull, officials said.

SAFETY CONCERNS

The search had grown increasingly desperate on Thursday, when the estimated 96-hour air supply was expected to run out if the Titan were still intact.

The Titanic, which sank in 1912 on its maiden voyage after hitting an iceberg, killing more than 1,500 people, lies about 900 miles (1,450 km) east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and 400 miles (640 km) south of St. John's, Newfoundland.

The expedition to the wreck, which OceanGate has been operating since 2021, cost $250,000 per person, according to OceanGate's website.

Questions about Titan's safety were raised in 2018 during a symposium of submersible industry experts and in a lawsuit by OceanGate's former head of marine operations, which was settled later that year.

The sweeping search covered more than 10,000 square miles of ocean - about the size of the U.S. state of Massachusetts.

On Thursday, the deployment of two specialized deep-sea unmanned vehicles expanded the search to the ocean's depths, where immense pressure and pitch-black darkness complicated the mission.

The missing submersible and subsequent hunt captured worldwide attention, in part due to the mythology surrounding the Titanic.

The "unsinkable" British passenger liner has inspired both nonfiction and fiction accounts for a century, including the James Cameron blockbuster 1997 movie, which rekindled popular interest in the story.

[trekwiz]

I thought there were enough red flags that they should have known better... but that's even more apparent with specific details in their backgrounds:

He holds three Guinness World Records, including longest time spent at full ocean depth during a dive to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench.

...

He also said the Titanic dive had been meant to take place in June 2022 but was delayed because "the submersible was unfortunately damaged on its previous dive". He said no-one was injured in the incident.

Sounds like someone who should have recognized the danger.

Mr Nargeolet, 77, a former French Navy diver, was also on board.

Nicknamed Mr Titanic, he has reportedly spent more time at the wreck than any other explorer and was part of the first expedition to visit it in 1987, just two years after it was found.

The 77-year-old is director of underwater research at a company that owns the rights to the Titanic wreck.

According to a company profile, Mr Nargeolet has supervised the recovery of thousands of Titanic artefacts, including the "big piece", a 20-tonne section of the boat's hull.

This one has no excuse at all for missing the red flags.

[atlanticcanada]

What's known so far about the search for the missing Titanic submersible

The submersible last headed for the Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland is still missing as of Tuesday morning.

The U.S. Coast Guard is leading the operation with assistance from the Canadian Coast Guard vessel Kopit Hopson 1752 and air search from the Royal Canadian Air Force Aurora aircraft out of 14 Wing Greenwood.

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The passenger submersible operated by OceanGate left St. John's, N.L. on Sunday morning and then lost contact with surface crews one hour and 45 minutes into the expedition.

Time is of the essence in the search due to the 96-hour oxygen supply aboard the vessel.

Here's what we know so far about the missing submersible:

WHO IS ON BOARD?

The submersible is carrying five passengers, including Hamish Harding, a billionaire and explorer, Paul-Henry (PH) Nargeolet, a French explorer, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, members of one of Pakistan's prominent families and, according to Reuters, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.

"We started steaming from St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada yesterday and are planning to start dive operations around 4am tomorrow morning," Harding wrote on Facebook on Saturday. "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."

WHAT THE SEARCH LOOKS LIKE

Former U.S. Coast Guard captain Andrew Norris told CTV's Your Morning on Tuesday "time really is the enemy."

"The challenge is finding it… that's going to be difficult enough, but then affecting some sort of rescue," he said. "That indicates the challenge that rescuers will face to do some sort of recovery, even if they do find it."

Search and rescue teams are battling the clock as the oxygen onboard the submersible lasts about 96 hours. Norris indicated there could be emergency oxygen supplies on board as well.

"They would have the normal oxygen supply that we're talking about that is a 96-hour window, but they'd also have — like on a plane if there was a fire or something — they'd have the ability to put on some sort of oxygen breathing device," Norris said.

The U.S. Coast Guard said at a press conference Monday that sonar technology is playing a key role in the search efforts.

If the vessel is found, Norris says, the rescue would be in "very difficult circumstances."

"The Sea State has to allow the deployment of that equipment, they have to and then it has to work kind of perfectly the first time so it's really a challenge," he said.

Beth Penney, a reporter with CTV News affiliate NTV in Newfoundland, told CTV's Your Morning on Tuesday that weather conditions have not been good for search efforts.

"We learned through social media, that this was going to be the only expedition that OceanGate was going to take to the Titanic wreckage this year, and that's because of poor weather conditions in Newfoundland and Labrador," Penney said.

CANADA'S ROLE IN THE SEARCH

The area where the submersible went missing is under U.S. jurisdiction, Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, Joyce Murray, told CTV News.

"There is a unified command under the U.S. Coast Guard’s leadership that Canada is playing a very committed role in," she said. "The Canadian Coast Guard is doing everything that we can to help. We have the CCGS John Cabot (that) has sonar and it is headed to the site."

Both the U.S. and Canadian coast guards have teams looking for the submersible and the Royal Canadian Air Force has an aircraft flying above.

"Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) Boston has requested assistance from Joint Rescue Coordination Centre (JRCC) Halifax in the search of an overdue submarine," a spokesperson from the RCAF told CTVNews.ca in an email. "The submersible has lost communications with its surface vessel located 380NM south of St. John’s N.L."

Kathryn Hallett, a spokesperson from Fisheries and Oceans Canada told CTVNews.ca in an email, "Joint Rescue Coordination Centre (JRCC) Halifax is providing assistance as required."

Murray says two other Canadian Coast Guard ships are in St. John's ready to port equipment.

When asked if any Canadian facilities came in contact with the submersible Murray initially said she would not "go into details."

"Because this is a hugely emotional issue for those who are doing this work to save the people aboard the submersible and their families, and every effort is being made," she said. "It's an international initiative at this point with assets coming from Great Britain and Germany."

However, Murray confirmed that Canadian facilities are doing "everything in their power" to assist in the search. 

WHY IT COULD HAVE LOST CONTACT

Norris says there are multiple ways for a submersible to lose contact with the surface crew.

"There could have been a catastrophic breach, which would have resulted in an implosion, it could have had some sort of fault that caused it to lose communications and or the ability to lift itself off the seabed," Norris speculated.

Other potential issues include getting caught in debris that can be found along the ocean floor and near the Titanic.

Officials have not confirmed why the submersible lost contact.

WHERE WERE THEY GOING?

OceanGate Inc. is a privately owned U.S.-based company that provides tourism explorations to the deep ocean.

The company's website says the five-person submersible, named Titan, can reach depths of up to 4,000 metres — 7.2 times as tall as the CN Tower.

The Titanic, which sank in 1912, is located about 600 kilometres southeast of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic Ocean. OceanGate expeditions to the wreck cost passengers about C$300,000.

The submersible is made of carbon fibre and titanium and is 6.7 metres long. 

from CTV News - Atlantic https://ift.tt/3VW1CqX