Hope remains as crews desperately search for the submersible that went missing on Sunday whilst exploring the wreck of the Titanic, but with each passing day the possibility of a positive outcome diminishes.
As per reports, the submersible – which has five people onboard – lost contact an hour and forty-five minutes into its dive, while the vessel is only said to be carrying three days’ worth of emergency oxygen.
News of the sub, called Titan, has spread quickly around the world. At least five vessels are now at the Titanic wreck site, with more on the way to aid in the search effort.
Given the limited oxygen reserves on board, a race against the clock is now on. Earlier today it was reported that banging sounds have been detected in the area where Titan went missing, but experts agree that the circumstances are “against” those on board.
The submersible’s passengers have been identified as Hamish Harding, Stockton Rush, Paul-Henry Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman.
OceanGate, the company that took the tourists to visit the wreck of the Titanic, said in a statement: “Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families.”
For said families, a painstaking wait is playing out. Yesterday, the stepson of Hamish Harding issued a desperate plea for thoughts and prayers for his missing stepfather.
Harding’s stepson, Brian Szasz, wrote: “Hamish my stepdad is lost in a submarine thoughts and prayers that the rescue mission will be successful.🙏🖤“
According to reports, Harding is a billionaire private jet dealer who regularly embarks on adventures around the world.
He was onboard Blue Origin’s fifth flight to Space with a human crew, while he broke the record for the longest time spent at full ocean depth during a dive he did in the Mariana’s Trench’s deepest segment.
Rescue teams from the US and Canada are desperately trying to locate the missing submersible, which vanished 435 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada.
Marine operations specialist and author Mike Welham told Sky in an interview that the aforementioned detection of noises underwater was “really good news”, but that any rescue operation “takes time”.
“Time is critical and if these guys hopefully are still alive down there now, which there are the indications this is so, they’ve got to find them,” Welham said, likening the search operation to “somebody putting a 50p piece in a football field and trying to find it”.
