Rescue crews from the United States and Canada are looking for a submersible that was bringing five people to the Titanic debris site when it lost communication with it in the middle of the Atlantic. When the sub descended from its support ship on Sunday, it had a four-day supply of oxygen on board.
On Friday, a 22-foot submersible and its support ship departed from St. John’s. On Sunday morning, the submarine sank with five personnel inside, according to the Coast Guard. About an hour and a half after first making contact with the submersible, the Canadian ship monitoring it lost it.
Along with the French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, aka Mr. Titanic, and British millionaire adventurer Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Sulaiman Dawood are also traveling on the ship. Stockton Rush, the CEO, and creator of OceanGate Expeditions, was confirmed as the fifth passenger on Tuesday by the company.
In order to communicate with its surface ship, the Titan employs two mechanisms. Text messages can be exchanged, and safety pings are sent out every 15 minutes to show that the sub is still alive and well.
About an hour and a half after the Titan plummeted on Sunday morning, both systems failed. When the Titan’s twin communications systems abruptly lost contact, it was a warning flag, according to veteran tech journalist David Pogue, who visited the renowned accident site in 2022 onboard the Titan.
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“There are only two things that could mean. Either they lost all power or the ship developed a hull breach and it imploded instantly. Both of those are devastatingly hopeless,” Mr. Pogue told CBC on Tuesday.
Another option, according to University College London maritime engineering expert Alistair Greig, who spoke to the Associated Press, was a leak in the Titan’s pressure hull.
“Options are very limited,” he warned, in the event that the ship had reached the ocean floor and was unable to surface on its own. “While the submersible might still be intact if it is beyond the continental shelf, there are very few vessels that can get that deep, and certainly not divers.”
Another scenario is that the Titan came into contact with the Titanic‘s wreckage and got stranded or had its onboard systems shut off. The amount of time it would take to arrive at the wreckage would roughly equal the time between it entering the sea and when it lost contact.
