A small tourist submarine, used to travel to the sinking area of ??the Titanic, is missing in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of North America, several media quoted by the BBC reported on Monday. The US Coast Guard said a search and rescue mission had been launched. Without saying how many people were on board, the company organizing the trip, OceanGate Expeditions, said in a statement quoted by CBS News “to explore and mobilize all options to bring the crew back safely.”
“We are working very, very hard” to find him, said Rear Admiral John Mauger, US Coast Guard. According to him, the research, above and below water, concerns an area “about 1,450 km east of Cape Cod, at a depth of about 4,000 m”. “It’s a remote area and it’s complicated to conduct research in such an area,” he added, estimating that the submersible still had oxygen reserves of 70 hours or more.
The aerial search, unsuccessful throughout the day, has been suspended for the night, the US Coast Guard tweeted around 9 p.m. Monday (0100 GMT Tuesday). The Polar Prince vessel, from which the submersible departed, and a National Guard unit continued to conduct surface searches into the evening, they added.
Among the passengers is wealthy British businessman, aviator and space tourist Hamish Harding, 58, CEO of Dubai-based private jet sales firm Action Aviation. “The sub has been successfully launched and Hamish is currently diving,” the company tweeted on Sunday, noting that the mission began “this morning at 4am.”
Rear Admiral Mauger would not give information on those on board “out of respect for the families”, saying only that according to the operator, it was a pilot and four other people. Contacted by AFP, Action Aviation declined to comment.
Two planes, an American C-130 and a Canadian P8 equipped with a sonar capable of detecting submarines, are engaged in the search, according to the American Coast Guard. OceanGate Expeditions said in a statement quoted by media “to explore and mobilize all options to bring the crew back safely.” She did not respond to requests from AFP.
On its site, the company indicates that a mission visiting the Titanic was “in progress”, from June 12 to 20. The company’s only device capable of diving to Titanic’s depth is the Titan, “a submersible designed to take five people to depths of 4,000 meters”, with a 96-hour endurance for a crew of five.
Without having studied the craft itself, Alistair Greig, professor of marine engineering at University College London, raised two possible theories based on images of the device published by the press. He believes that if he had a problem with the electricity or communications, he could have been brought to the surface, floating “waiting to be found”. “Another scenario is that the hull has been compromised,” and there has been a leak. “So the prognosis is not good,” he added. And “very few vessels can go” to the depth it might have sunk, he said.
Leaving Southampton on April 10, 1912 for New York, the Titanic, a gigantic ocean liner, the largest in the world when it was launched, was shipwrecked after hitting an iceberg five days later. Of the 2,224 passengers and crew, nearly 1,500 perished. The wreck was discovered in 1985 650 kilometers off the Canadian coast, at a depth of 4,000 meters, in international waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Since then, treasure seekers and tourists have been visiting it.