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A family member of one of the late passengers on the missing Titanic vessel has slammed The University of Cambridge for throwing an ‘under-the-sea’ themed ball amid the search.
Billionaire explorer Hamish Harding was declared dead by the US Coast Guard as of June 22 after search and rescue teams discovered debris that indicated the missing Titanic submarine had suffered a 'catastrophic failure' and had 'imploded'.
As the search entered its final hours, students at Pembroke College - a constituent college of the University of Cambridge - held a semester ball.
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Sounds like fun, right? Yeah, it would have been if the theme wasn' ‘Nautilus: Into the Depths’ ball.
It's especially rough considering Harding is an alumni of Cambridge and Pembroke College, attending university there in the 1980s.
According to the New York Post, students at the school threw back Prosecco and cocktails at the £175-a-head black tie event, with underwater decorations hung up.
The decor included divers’ helmets and pictures of submarines mounted the walls while students swayed to a rendition of Celine Dion’s ‘My Heart Will Go On’, from the film Titanic.
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The move by Harding's old college did not go down well, with his cousin Kathleen Cosnett slamming the university for being insensitive.
"I was shocked about that"” she told the Daily Mail. “Unbelievable - at his college of all colleges.”
When asked if she thought the event should have been cancelled, she replied with a resounding ‘yes’.
“Yes, certainly. Someone should have taken a second thought.”
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The 69-year-old also told The Daily Telegraph the theme of the ball was ‘terrible’ and ‘polite courtesy has missed out on quite a few generations’.
However, according to the university, it was ‘too late’ to change the ball's theme by the time the search had become an international rescue mission.
Pembroke College's May Ball committee have since apologised that 'was chosen many months ago'.
They told Varsity that if they could have changed the theme, they would have.
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The committee "Our thoughts go out to the Harding family at this very difficult time."
Cosnett has also criticised OceanGate for taking ‘far too long’ to issue an alarm after the sub went missing on June 18.
“[It] took so long for them to get going to rescue [them], it’s far too long. I would have thought three hours would be the bare minimum,” she told The Daily Telegraph.
She added that the eight-hour delay to the international search party ‘was frightening’.
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Yesterday, after US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger confirmed that the debris found was from the Titan, he explained how difficult it would be to retrieve the bodies of the fallen.
“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” he said.
“We will continue to work and we will continue to search down there but I don't have an answer for prospects at this time.”
LADbible has approached Pembroke University for comment.
Topics: News, World News, Titanic
Charisa Bossinakis