A tragic event occurred in the North Atlantic Ocean’s depths when the deep-sea submersible Titan, which was carrying a crew of five people, met its tragic end close to the Titanic’s century-old wreckage. The U.S. Coast Guard claims that the submersible had a ‘catastrophic implosion’ all in around 30 milliseconds that claimed the lives of everyone on board. The Titan, operated by OceanGate, is a submersible that can carry 5 people—a pilot and four crew members—to depths of up to (13,100 feet), according to the company’s website. These purposes of investigation include “research, media production, data collection, site survey, and deep-sea testing.
The Titanic is located about 900 miles (1,450 km) east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and 400 miles (640 km) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. It sank in 1912 on its first voyage after colliding with an iceberg, killing more than 1,500 people.
According to Ocean Gate’s website, the trip or expedition to the wreck, which it has been conducting since 2021, costed $250,000 per person which is billed as “a chance to step outside of everyday life and discover something truly extraordinary”. The submersible operation has begun on Sunday and according to the reports by early Thursday, the vessel’s oxygen supply should have run out.
The submersible objective was to investigate the depths where the Titanic wreckage is located. A Canadian aircraft taking part in the search mission had earlier in the week heard noises of water crashing nearby where the submersible vanished. They searched More than ten thousand square miles of ocean, an area almost equal to the size of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. The attempt was stretched to the ocean’s depths on around 4 days with the deployment of two specialised deepsea vehicles, where extreme pressure and total darkness had threatened to hinder any rescue operation.
Before the Coast Guard made its announcement, OceanGate Expeditions, the American firm in charge of the submersible, issued a statement lamenting the tragic deaths of the whole crew, including Stockton Rush, the founder and CEO of the company and the Titan’s pilot.
The five people on board included the 58-year-old British billionaire Hamish Harding, the 48-year-old British citizen Shahzada Dawood, who is of Pakistani descent, and his 19-year-old son Suleman; the 77-year-old French oceanographer and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who has made numerous trips to the wreck; and Stockton Rush, the American founder and CEO of OceanGate. Due in part to the mysterious surrounding to the Titanic, the missing submersible and the following search for it attracted attention on a global scale.