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Topics: World News, Titanic
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Topics: World News, Titanic
The submersible that disappeared after travelling 12,500 feet to the ocean floor to explore the wreck of the Titanic is believed to have suffered a 'catastrophic implosion'.
Five major pieces of debris from the submersible have been recovered and all five men on board are believed to have died.
OceanGate Expeditions, the company who owned the submersible, released a statement announcing the deaths of their CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood and French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
They said: "These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans.
"Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.
"This is an extremely sad time for our dedicated employees who are exhausted and grieving deeply over this loss.
“The entire OceanGate family is deeply grateful for the countless men and women from multiple organisations of the international community who expedited wide-ranging resources and have worked so very hard on this mission."
Oxygen supply has now run out on Titanic sub, US Coast Guard predicts
Coast Guard won't stop searching 'for many days' after 'oxygen runs out' on missing Titanic sub
Expert shares health risks missing submersible passengers could be facing
Boeing and University of Washington say they had nothing to do with missing Titanic sub
Debris found in search area for missing sub near Titanic, US Coast Guard confirms
Missing Titanic sub believed to run out of oxygen just after 12pm
Expert says it would take a 'miracle' to rescue missing sub passengers
OceanGate co-founder believes time window for rescue ‘is longer than what most people think’
Search for missing Titanic submersible reaches critical point
US Coast Guard reveals fleet of seven ships, planes and recovery vessels en route to search zone
breaking news
The US Coast Guard have said a remotely-operated vehicle from the Canadian Horizon Arctic ship found debris on the sea floor near the Titanic wreckage, with experts now 'evaluating the information'.
The US Coast Guard has also announced a presser will take place at 3pm local time (8pm UK time), where their latest findings in this complex operation will be revealed.
It comes after they announced the search won't be halted 'for many days', despite predicting the oxygen has now run out on the vessel.
Suleman Dawood, 19, who is onboard the vessel with his billionaire father, Shahzada Dawood, is a student at Strathclyde University in Glasgow.
Labour MSP Pam Duncan-Glancy said her thoughts were with the teenager and his family while speaking at First Minister’s Questions in Holyrood.
"The young man on the Titan submersible is a student in Glasgow," she said.
“I’m sure that everyone here will join me in sharing their thoughts with him and his family at this unprecedented and difficult time.”
The University have also issued a statement, saying: “We are deeply concerned about Suleman, his father and the others involved in this incident.
“Our thoughts are with their families and loved ones, and we continue to hope for a positive outcome.”
While a US Coast Guard has predicted the oxygen has expired on the missing Titanic sub, an OceanGate co-founder believes that the time window 'is longer than most people think', which provided some hope.
Dr Ken LeDez, a hyperbaric medicine expert at Memorial University in St John’s, Newfoundland, has also provided some much-needed hope for the families of the five missing.
Speaking to the BBC, he said: "It depends on how cold they get and how effective they are at conserving oxygen."
Dr LeDez added that running out of oxygen can take time - something than can become make or break based on temperature.
"It’s not like switching off a light, it’s like climbing a mountain – as the temperature gets colder and metabolism falls [it depends] how fast you ascend that mountain," he added.
The Dr went on to say that some passengers might survive longer than others, suggesting that 'distributing conversations' might have been had.
Read the full story here.
The family of Hamish Harding have criticised OceanGate - the company that takes tourists to visit the wreck of the Titanic - for taking ‘so long’ to begin the rescue mission.
British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding, 58, is among the five on board the missing Titanic submersible.
While rescue missions are ongoing, the family of the British billionaire have criticised OceanGate for taking 'far too long' to issue an alarm.
Kathleen Cosnett, 69, a cousin of Harding, told The Telegraph: "It’s very frightening.
"[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."
Robert Evans, Harding’s godson, added: "I heard the sub had lost contact through family who were in contact with them [OceanGate] roughly when I was going to sleep [at around 11pm].
"At that time we as a family started scrambling to spread the word and get help. And we did call the UK Coastguard and Foreign [Commonwealth and Development] Office. We called them very early on."
Evans, who is also godfather to Harding's elder son, added: "To me, Hamish is an incredible man. He’s always been really good to me, in recent years he had more of a public image. But I’ve known him since I was a kid – he took me on adventures, skiing, scuba diving, and to Machu Picchu. He was just incredibly good to me."
Read the full story here.
breaking news
US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger has confirmed that the sounds heard by sonar buoys were ‘background ocean noise’.
Speaking to Sky News, he said: “We’ve taken that information and shared it with top leading experts from the US Navy and the Canadian Navy, and they’re working on the analysis of that information, they’re continuing to work on the analysis of that information.
“The initial reports is that there’s a lot of the sounds that were generated were from background ocean noise, but they continue to … look for all available information there.
“What’s important to me, and what’s important as the unified command, is that we’ve continued search in the areas where noise was detected with the ROVs that we have from the time of that detection, so we’re not waiting for this analysis to take action.
“The analysis is really helpful to our overall search-and-rescue efforts, but we’re not waiting on it, we’ve moved the remote operated vehicles that we’ve had on site to those areas where noise was detected.”
Read the full story here.
breaking news
The US Coast Guard is committed to finding the missing sub, now the vessel has gone past its 96 hour supply of oxygen - an expert has said.
Ryan Ramsay, a former Royal Navy commander, told PA, “The outlook is bleak, that’s the only word for it, as this tragic event unfolds and almost the closing stages of where this changes from rescue to a salvage mission.
“That doesn’t mean to say that the current ships and forces deployed won’t continue to keep looking.
“They won’t stop for many days, I imagine, but the reality is if you base it off oxygen alone, then they’re out of oxygen.
“Carbon dioxide is also a critical element to it as well as the cold. It would be a miracle if there were survivors from it.”
Those comments were backed up by Rear Admiral John Mauger of the US Coast Guard, who said the favourable weather conditions should help the rescue teams.
He told Sky News: “Conditions for the search and rescue are favourable right now and so we’re making the most of this weather window and the good conditions.
“We have aircraft still flying overhead looking for any indications of the submersible on the surface.
“But our focus right now is on the sub-sea search with the new capabilities that we have brought on line.
“We have remote operated vehicles that are working along the path line where the planned dive had taken place for the Titan submersible and we have the ability to both search and rescue.”
He added the search operation is still 'an active search and rescue', before adding: "We continue to keep the crew members and the families in our thoughts as we proceed with this search and rescue while we’re cognisant of the time and we’ve factored in a lot of data and information into the search.
“This is still an active search and rescue at this point and we’re using the equipment that we have on the bottom right now, the remote operated vehicles to expand our search capability, and then also to provide rescue capability as well.”
While the US Coast Guard has predicted oxygen on the missing Titanic submersible has run out, search efforts to find it are set to carry on for a while yet.
That is according to Ex-Royal Navy submarine captain Ryan Ramsey, who has said the complex search effort will likely carry on for weeks.
"If you remember when MH370 went down, that search continued for weeks, so you could find that now they have all that equipment there, particularly the really deep submersibles that are capable of those deep depths," he said.
"They may search the whole area for weeks to come just to finalise it and around the Titanic wreckage itself.”
Ramsey also suggested the search for Titan was hampered by delays in getting resources to the area where the submersible is believed to have gone missing.
“They probably lost two or three days getting equipment or ships there," he said.
“There will be a variety of reasons for that, I don’t think it’ll be because they were just sat there and didn’t want to do it, they might have been engaged in other activity and had to decouple from that and then detach to support.”
Boeing and the University of Washington have said they had nothing to do with the missing Titanic sub, after previous claims from OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.
Questions have arisen about the quality of the sub’s materials, including a modified gaming controller used to steer the craft – a topic CEO Rush has previously commented on. Despite this, Rush insisted the vessel was safe.
A Boeing spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday (21 June): “Boeing was not a partner on the Titan and did not design or build it.”
The day before, a University of Washington spokesperson also told the outlet the institution was not involved in the craft, following a 2021 court filing in which OceanGate claimed Titan was the result of eight years of ‘detailed engineering and development work under a company issued $5 million contract to the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory’.
Kevin Williams, the executive director of the university’s Applied Physics Laboratory, said: “The Laboratory was not involved in the design, engineering or testing of the TITAN submersible used in the RMS TITANIC expedition.”
Read the full story here.
breaking news
Oxygen on the missing Titanic submersible has run out, according to a prediction by the US Coast Guard.
A US Coast Guard spokesperson said that the vital oxygen supply on board was predicted to run out at 7.08 am US Eastern time (12.08 pm BST).
Despite the bleak update for the stranded tourists on board as well as their loved ones, officials have insisted that the search is ‘100 percent’ still a search and rescue mission.
Read the full story here.
As the oxygen levels on the missing Titan submersible dwindle, an expert revealed what might be happening to those on board.
The OceanGate sub initially set out on Sunday (18 June) with 96 hours of emergency oxygen, aiming to complete an exploratory dive around the Titanic shipwreck.
With oxygen set to run out in less than an hour, a doctor has spoken about the terrifying health condition that could be affecting crew members.
It’s likely that those on board have already begun to feel the effects of oxygen deprivation, which is also known as hypercapnia which causes intense drowsiness.
"As levels of carbon dioxide build up, then it becomes sedative, it becomes like an anaesthetic gas, and you will go to sleep," explained Dr Ken LeDez.
Read the full story here.
A video shared on TikTok shows the missing submersible on the surface shortly before it began its journey on Sunday.
The Titan vessel and its five occupants have been missing since 18 June, with oxygen now fast running out.
The submersible, which was launched from a larger vessel called Polar Prince, can be seen on a platform in the background in the video.
"Watching a submarine go down to the Titanic," the TikToker captioned the clip.
Read the full story here.
breaking news
An OceanGate co-founder has provided more hope, as he believes the time window 'is longer than most people think'.
The US Coast Guard has stated the sub has a matter of hours of oxygen left, with it predicted to run out at 12:08pm UK time.
Yet Guillermo Sohnlein remains hopeful, telling Insider: "Today will be a critical day in this search and rescue mission, as the sub's life support supplies are starting to run low.
"I'm certain that Stockton and the rest of the crew realised days ago that the best thing they can do to ensure their rescue is to extend the limits of those supplies by relaxing as much as possible.
"I firmly believe that the time window available for their rescue is longer than what most people think. I continue to hold out hope for my friend and the rest of the crew."
breaking news
Deep sea expert Dr David Gallo has told Good Morning Britain it will take a miracle to save the missing crew, and it would take hours to rescue the submersible if found.
He gave his take on the situation, saying: “Maybe two days ago my hope was sliding downward rapidly, but then these noises appeared and there seems to be very credible sources there, credible and repeatable.
“We’ll see how that pans out but everything is happening very quickly, so we have a race against time.
“Our hopes are high. We need a miracle at this point, but miracles do happen, so I’m very optimistic.”
He also discussed the noises that have been heard, saying: “In this case, the noises are repetitive, every half hour I believe.
“Three different aircraft heard them in their sensors at the same time and it went on for two days-plus.
“It’s still going on apparently. There’s not a lot in the natural world we can think of that would do that every 30-minute cycle.
“We have to, at this point, assume that that’s the submarine and move quickly to that spot, locate it and get robots down there to verify that is where the submarine is.
“They’ve got to go fully ready as if that was the sub because it takes a while to locate it and get it up to the surface, it takes hours.”
Over the past few days, the world has been watching and hoping that the missing passengers of the Titanic submersible will be found.
However, as the hours trickle by, there is still no sign of OceanGate's small vessel, which disappeared on Sunday (18 June).
On board are: British billionaire Hamish Harding; Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman; French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet; and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.
The vast search and rescue mission appeared to be making some progress yesterday (21 June), with noises heard coming from beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
Despite the signals, though, the search continues, and fears grow as the oxygen on board Titan is set to run out in the next few hours.
The US Coast Guard said yesterday that it predicts this will run out at 7.08am ET (12.08pm BST) today, adding that in a desperate bid to track the sub down, it has doubled the search area - with teams now scanning 14,000 square miles.
Captain Jamie Frederick said people ‘need to have hope’ as the vessel’s air supply begins to dwindle.
"There are a lot of factors you have to consider," he said.
"After considering all those factors, sometimes you’re in a position where you have to make a tough decision. We’re not there yet.
"If we continue to search, potentially we could be at that point ... That’s a discussion we will have with the families long before I am going to discuss here publicly."
Read the full story here.
An expert has shared some of the health risks that passengers on the missing submersible will be facing.
Dr Ken Ledez has told the BBC that running out of oxygen is not the only threat facing the people on board.
Dr Ledez is a specialist in hyperbaric medicine at Memorial University in St John's, Newfoundland.
He said: "As levels of carbon dioxide build up, then it becomes sedative, it becomes like an anaesthetic gas, and you will go to sleep."
There is also the problem of the vessel possibly losing electrical power, which would affect the level of oxygen being pumped into the cabin.
Ryan Ramsey, who is a former submarine captain in the Royal Navy, added that there could be a build up of carbon dioxide.
He highlighted that there is no system in the vessel to remove carbon dioxide from the cabin.
Adding: "That for me is the greatest problem of all of them."
There is also the risk of hypothermia, as the temperature on the sea floor at that depth is around 0C. If the submersible has no power, then it cannot generate heat.
If a lack of oxygen and a rise of carbon dioxide causes them to pass out, then they will not be able to do anything.
Dr Ledez said: "If they're unconscious, they're not going to be able to do much to help themselves."
He added: "If anybody can survive in it, you know, it's these individuals. It just depends on them having power and depends on them having light to be able to find things and make these controls, but absolutely, they could still be alive."
Read the full story here.
The wife of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, Wendy Rush, has a direct link to the 1912 Titanic disaster.
Wendy Rush, whose husband is currently missing on the vanished Titan submersible, is a descendant of a wealthy New York couple who drowned when the famed ship sank - and whose stories inspired two characters in the 1997 film Titanic.
Her great-great-grandparents Isidor and Ida Straus died on the ship in 1912.
Isidor was a co-founder of Macy's department store, and according to The National Archives, the couple boarded the Titanic while travelling back to the US after visiting their native Germany.
On the night of 14 April, after Titanic had hit the iceberg, Isidor and Ida were directed to lifeboat eight.
However, Isidor refused to board the lifeboat while women and children were still waiting to escape.
Subsequently, Ida also refused to get into the lifeboat, opting to stay with her partner.
The couple were last seen together on deck holding hands before a wave swept them into the sea.
Isidor’s body was eventually found at sea, though sadly Ida’s body was never recovered.
The couple inspired two characters in James Cameron's 1997 film about the disaster, who were shown embracing in a bed as water gushed into the ship and around them.
Read the full story here.
Officials have stressed that it's difficult to know exactly when the sub will run out of its 96-hour oxygen supply, as there are a number of factors at play - such as how 'relaxed and calm' those on board have been.
While it had previously been reported that the air would run out at 6am BST this morning (22 June), the latest estimate from the US Coast Guard predicted it would be 12.08pm BST today.
Hyperbaric medicine expert Dr Ken Ledez at Memorial University in St John’s, Newfoundland, explained the factors at play to the BBC.
He revealed depleting oxygen is not an exact science, and a number of factors are at play including a person's metabolism.
"It’s not like switching off a light, it’s like climbing a mountain," he said.
"They're going to do everything they can to reduce their oxygen consumption, they're going to rest, they're going to try to be as relaxed and calm as possible."
He explained that too much movement on the sub could cause a metabolic spike and, in turn, create more unbreathable carbon dioxide.
He also added that 'hypothermia could be their friend'.
"There is a possibility if they cool down enough and lose consciousness they could live through it... The heartbeat can be really slow when cold," he told the BBC.
"[So] some may survive longer than others."
Those on board are British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding, along with Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman and OceanGate’s chief executive and founder Stockton Rush, reportedly together with French submersible pilot Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Read the full story here.
The US Coast Guard has revealed seven more ships, planes and remote-controlled recovery vessels are now on their way to the search site of the missing Titan submarine.
Underwater sounds described as 'tapping' and 'banging' have been detected in the search zone by several vessels fitted with sonar technology, with the noises now with the US Navy for analysis.
International crews have also deployed an entire fleet of new ships, planes, and other vessels to aid in the search mission.
The fleet of seven new assets to aid in the search includes three remotely operated underwater vessels capable of remote operation.
The Coast Guard also revealed that the US Navy had sent a Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System (FADOSS) on its way to the last known location of the missing Titan submersible.
The FADOSS is a motion-compensated lift system designed to provide extraction capacities to recover large, bulky, and heavy undersea objects.
The additional vessels on their way are Canada's CGS Ann Harvey, CGS Terry Fox, and His Majesty's Canadian Ship Glace Bay, which has a mobile decompression chamber and a team of medical personnel on board.
ROV vessels en route to the site include French Research Vessel L’Atalante, another ROV from Magellan, and the Motor Vessel Horizon Arctic.
Read the full story here.
Previous passengers of the Titan submersible currently missing in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean have opened up about grim system failures on past missions.
Some people who risked their lives to view the sunken wreckage of the Titanic have told of radio failures, flickering lights and being at the mercy of deep sea currents during their voyages.
Mexican actor Alan Estrada shared chilling details of his own journey in the Titan online.
The YouTube vlogger revealed that Titan's energy source quickly drained to 40 percent power while he was on board in July 2022.
His mission was slashed down from a four-hour adventure to one so the sub could return to the surface before it lost full power.
"For safety reasons this is completely understandable when the last battery - the submersible has two batteries - when the second battery has only 40 per cent left, it is necessary to return to the surface for safety," he said on YouTube.
"This means that the four hours that they tell you that you are going to be down there are not fulfilled."
He also revealed that the now-missing submersible suffered a two-hour communication blackout with the surface during his voyage.
Estrada was originally scheduled to travel to the Titanic's gravesite with OceanGate in July 2021, however, his trip was pushed back by a year due in the wake of unspecified 'difficulties' with the sub.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Estrada said: "My biggest concern was obviously losing my life. All the people who made this expedition … we are aware of the risks we are taking. It's not a surprise."
Another explorer, German 60-year-old Arthur Loibl, sunk below the depths with OceanGate in 2021.
He travelled in the great deep with Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, both of whom are now missing on board the vanished submarine.
Loibl revealed there were several issues before they even hit the water, claiming the first submarine 'didn’t work'.
They managed to get underwater five hours behind schedule due to electrical problems with the submersible.
But just before they were to set off on their underwater voyage, a piece of kit designed to balance the vessel broke.
It was reattached with zip ties.
"It was a suicide mission back then," he alleged to Bild.
He added: "It must be hell down there. There’s only 2.5m (8ft) of space, it’s four degrees, there’s no chair."
"I feel bad, I’m nervous, I have a sinking feeling in my stomach. I was incredibly lucky back then."
He revealed the Titanic dive was the 'most extreme' expedition he's ever been on.
Read the full story here.
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