Rescue teams in a remote area of the Atlantic Ocean continued on Tuesday in an authentic race against time with five people trying to find the submarine that disappeared during a journey to the wreckage of the “Titanic”.
The “Titan” submarine is carrying a pilot, British businessman Hamish Harding, who had already made a spacewalk, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, and a fifth passenger, according to family members and other sources cited by international agencies.
Communications with the submarine were lost 45 minutes after the dive began, on Sunday evening (local time), said the company OceanGate Expeditions, owner of the ship and organizer of trips to the wreckage of the “Titanic”.
According to the Canadian Joint Rescue Coordination Centre, quoted by the US agency AP, communications were lost when the ship was about 700 kilometers south of São João da Terra Nova.
The submarine had a 96-hour reserve of oxygen when it put to sea around 6 a.m. (local time) on Sunday, according to David Concannon, an OceanGate consultant, who is turning the operation into a time trial.
“It’s a remote area and it’s challenging to search that remote area,” US Coast Guard Commander Admiral John Mauger admitted.
The surface and underwater searches are taking place in an area “about 900 miles east of Cape Cod [Estados Unidos]at a depth of about four thousand meters,” explains Mauger, quoted by the French agency AFP.
“We are using all available resources to ensure we can locate the ship and rescue those on board,” mention.
The Canadian Coast Guard is also taking part in the operations, involving a US C-130 and a Canadian P8 equipped with sonar capable of detecting submarines.
The “Titanic” sank on its maiden voyage between the United Kingdom and the United States in April 1912 after colliding with an iceberg.
The disaster claimed the lives of 1,514 of the 2,224 passengers and crew.
The wreck of the luxury ocean liner was not found until 1985, more than seven decades after the sinking.
British businessman is one of the passengers on the submarine
One of the passengers on the missing submarine, Hamish Harding, is president of Action Aviation, a private jet sales company founded in 2004.
The 58-year-old businessman announced on social media on Saturday that he was part of the submarine’s crew.
“The submarine has been successfully launched and Hamish is currently diving,” his company wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
RMS TITANIC EXPEDITION
I am proud to finally announce that I have become a member @OceanGateExped for their RMS TITANIC mission as a mission specialist on the submarine descending to the Titanic.@ExplorersClub @actionaviation @One_More_Orbit #PolarPrince
Full story at: https://t.co/7UWUrKGyTQ
– Hamish Harding (@ActionAviation0) June 17, 2023
Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood lives in the United Kingdom and sponsors the SETI Institute (English acronym for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), whose mission is to investigate and understand the origins of the universe, according to the Spanish agency EFE.
The expedition to the wreck of the “Titanic” cost $ 250,000 (about 229,000 euros at current exchange rates) per sea tourist this year.
Source: DN
