Search is in full swing – Missing submarine in the wreck of the “Titanic”: That’s known – News


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So far there is no trace, reports the Coast Guard. The crew still has oxygen until Thursday – a race against time.

What happened? A submersible went missing near the Titanic wreck in the North Atlantic on Sunday morning. Contact with the nearly seven-meter-long “Titan” was lost after about an hour and 45 minutes after it began its dive off Cape Cod, the peninsula off Massachusetts.

So far there is no trace, the US Coast Guard reported on Tuesday evening: “Today these search efforts have not brought any results,” said the coordinator for the search operation, Jamie Frederick, in Boston. The emergency services had about 40 hours left. This is an estimate based on information provided by the operator.

Oceangate Expeditions


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The “Titan” belongs to the US company Oceangate, which brings private individuals to the wreck of the “Titanic” for a lot of money. The passenger ship sank in 1912 and has been lying at the bottom of the ocean at a depth of 3800 meters ever since. In the narrower sense, the “Titan” is a submersible and not a submarine. This is because she does not enter and leave ports under her own power.

The US company’s expeditions to the “Titanic” last a total of eight days and cost up to $250,000 per person. The submersibles used are initially transported by icebreakers. These depart from St. John’s, on the Canadian island of Newfoundland, and then sail around 640 kilometers through the Atlantic until the transported submersible plunges over the sunken “Titanic”.

According to the company, Oceangate’s expeditions are not genuinely for tourist purposes, but have a scientific task: to document the decay of the “Titanic” and the underwater ecosystem that shipwrecks often produce. Accordingly, the “Titan” is equipped with high-resolution cameras and multi-beam sonar devices.

Who is missing? According to the US Coast Guard, there were a pilot and four “operations specialists” on board who paid for the expedition. The “operations specialists” take turns operating the sonar devices and other tasks in the five-person submersible.

Among the passengers is billionaire British businessman Hamish Harding. Also on board are Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, their family confirmed.

Heavy passengers


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Legend:

Hamish Harding, here on a flight in 2019.

Jannicke Mikkelsen via REUTERS

Hamish Harding is known as an adventurer. He holds several Guinness World Records, including the longest dive in the Mariana Trench, the deepest place on earth, in March 2021. In June 2022, the Brit flew into space. His company Action Aviation announced on social media on Sunday that Harding was taking part in the “Titanic” expedition.

Shahzada Dawood lives and works as a management consultant in the UK. According to the Daily Mail, the 48-year-old is one of the richest men in Pakistan. His company invests in agriculture, industry and the healthcare sector. Shahzada Dawood is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the California-based SETI Institute, which searches for extraterrestrial intelligence.

One of the passengers is also the French “Titanic” expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, as his family confirmed to the BBC. Finally, Stockton Rush is on board, founder and CEO of the operating company Oceangate, as the media reported.

How big is the danger for the crew? The search for the submersible is a race against time. According to the provider Oceangate, the oxygen on board is sufficient for 96 hours in an emergency. This capacity was also confirmed by the US Coast Guard. Harding’s company, Action Aviation, said it had “survival equipment on board for this eventuality.”

How is the search going? US and Canadian ships and planes are jointly searching an area about 1,500 kilometers east of Cape Cod and Boston. They keep an eye out for the “Titan” on the water surface as well as in the sea depths. According to the US Coast Guard, the emergency services are also deploying sonar buoys that can locate objects and vehicles down to a depth of around 4,000 meters. An area of ​​around 26,000 square kilometers has already been searched.

According to an Oceangate spokesman, authorities are working to get a remote-controlled vehicle, which can reach a depth of four miles, to the scene as soon as possible.

Submarine Expert: Poor prognosis in case of a leak


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Loud Alistair Greig, Professor of Marine Engineering at University College London, submersibles usually have a drop weight. This is a mass that they can jettison in an emergency to use buoyancy to get to the surface. “If there was a power or communications failure, this could have happened and the sub would be bobbing on the surface waiting to be found,” Greig said.

Another scenario is a leak in the pressure hull and in this case the prognosis is not good. “If the submersible has sunk to the sea floor and cannot resurface under its own power, the options are very limited,” says Greig. “While the submersible may still be intact, once it’s deeper than 200 meters there are very few vehicles capable of going to such depths, let alone divers.” Even if vehicles could dive that deep, he doubted they could dock with the Titan’s hatch.

What is the condition of the «Titan»? The submersible is capable of diving four kilometers “with a comfortable margin of safety,” according to documents the company filed in April with a US district court in Virginia that has jurisdiction over the Titanic. In a May 2021 court filing, Oceangate said Titan has an “unparalleled safety feature” that checks hull integrity on every dive.

At the time of the application, the “Titan” had completed more than 50 test dives, including at the same depth as the “Titanic”, in deep waters off the Bahamas and in a pressure chamber. During a 2022 expedition, Oceangate reported that the submersible had a battery problem on its first dive and had to be manually attached to the lifting platform. This emerges from a court document.

Titanic shipwreck

Legend:

The wreck of the “Titanic” in the depths of the sea. In 1912, the ship, considered unsinkable, hit an iceberg.

Reuters

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