LOST UNDER SEA
Who was on the Titanic tourist submarine?
Contact with the passengers on board was lost about an hour and 45 minutes after its dive into the mid-Atlantic ocean
ALL five passengers on board the Titan submersible lost their lives.
The sub - owned and operated by OceanGate Expeditions - was taking a crew of people 12,500ft underwater as part of its £200,000-a-head tour of the 1912 shipwreck.
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Who was on the Titanic tourist submarine?
On Thursday, June 22, 2023, OceanGate announced the death of its CEO, Stockton Rush, along with the remaining passengers.
"We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost," the statement reads.
This announcement came following the discovery of a debris field near the Titanic wreckage.
When news of the OceanGate submarine's disappearance was first reported it was unclear how many - if any - people were on board.
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These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans."
OceanGate Expeditions said of the passengers
It was later confirmed that there were five passengers on board.
Two of the missing people were leading the undersea expedition, while the other three trippers had paid £200,000 to become ";mission specialist crew members."
The expeditions company said of their deaths: “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.
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“We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”
On June 28, the US Coast Guard announced that a search had recovered “presumed human remains” from the sea floor.
Here's what we know about the five people on board:
Stockton Rush
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Stockton Rush was the CEO of OceanGate, the company he founded in 2009.
Rush became the youngest jet transport-rated pilot in the world at the age of 19, after obtaining his DC-8 Type/Captain’s rating at the United Airlines Jet Training Institute in 1981.
He had a BSE in Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University and an MBA from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.
Hamish Harding
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Hamish Harding was a businessman, aviator, and space tourist from the UK who was based in the UAE.
He graduated from Cambridge with a degree in natural sciences and chemical engineering and runs the commercial and private aircraft company Action Aviation.
Harding held several Guinness World Records thanks to his various missions as an explorer and space tourist.
He had two sons, Rory and Giles, with his wife Linda, and also a stepdaughter, Lauren, and a stepson called Brian.
Shahzada Dawood
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Shahzada Dawood was a UK-based businessman and billionaire from .
Dawood was the vice chairman of the public investment holding company Dawood Hercules Corporation.
He was also a friend of King Charles and was a board member of the King’s charity The Prince's Trust International.
Sulaiman Dawood
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Sulaiman was the son of , born in 2004, in Karachi, Pakistan.
He was just 19 years old.
Before the OceanGate expedition, Sulaiman lived in the UK with his dad, his mum Christine, and his sister Alina.
Paul-Henri Nargeolet
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Paul-Henri Nargeolet was the Director of Underwater Research for E/M Group and RMS Titanic, Inc.
He led the OceanGate expedition alongside Stockton Rush.
Nargeolet was born in Chamonix, France, although he spent 13 years of his life growing up in Africa with his family.
At the age of 16, he returned to Paris to complete his education and served in the French Navy for over 20 years.
He later joined the French Institute for Research and Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER), where, according to his , he ";led the first recovery expedition to the Titanic in 1987."
OceanGate described Mr Nargeolet as the “Titanic’s greatest explorer”.
What happened to the Titanic tourist submarine?
On June 19, 2023, 11 decades after the sinking of the Titanic, it was reported that the tourist submarine had gone missing.
The sub had set out to visit the wreckage of the doomed Titanic ship on Sunday, June 18, but never returned.
The sub - named Titan - was designed by a team of Nasa engineers but was reportedly steered by a reinforced Playstation controller.
Titan was understood to have lost contact with the Polar Prince just one hour and 45 minutes into its journey to the ocean floor.
On June 21, 2023, banging sounds were heard underwater in the search for the missing vessel.
Searchers said they heard banging in 30-minute intervals while looking for the Titan.
It was later revealed that the sub imploded yards from the Titanic, killing the crew of five in "milliseconds."
When asked about recovering the bodies, a US Coast Guard said the sea floor was an “incredibly unforgiving, incredibly complex environment."
Titanic OceanGate Submarine News
Everything you need to know about the missing submarine, which vanished near the Titanic on June 18, 2023.
- What happened to the OceanGate Submarine?
- When did it go missing?
- Who was Hamish Harding?
- How deep is the Titanic in the ocean?
- Could the passengers have escaped the submarine alive?
- Do submarines like this disappear often and has this happened before?
- Who was taking part in the rescue effort?
- Who was Paul-Henry Nargeolet and what was he known for?
- Who else was missing on the stricken vessel?
- When did the Titanic sink and have people explored the wreckage before?
How deep is the Titanic and where did it sink?
The remains of the Titanic are on the ocean floor about 350 nautical miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
The wreckage has been sitting 3,800 meters below the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean since it sank in 1912.
This equates to a depth of around 12,500 feet.
American oceanographer and marine geologist Robert Ballard and French oceanographer and engineer Jean-Louis Michel discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985.
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The ship was found lying in two main pieces about 2,000 feet apart.
In 2012, the Titanic wreckage was named a Unesco World Heritage site.
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