Deep-sea ship carrying 5 people to Titanic wreck reported missing, search ongoing

A salvage operation was underway in the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean on Monday searching for a technologically advanced submersible vessel carrying five people to document the remains of the Titanic, the iconic ocean liner that sank more than a century ago.

The ship was reported late Sunday night about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, according to Canada’s Joint Rescue Coordination Center in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Lt. Cmdr. Len Hickey said a Canadian Coast Guard ship and military aircraft were assisting the search effort, which was led by the US Coast Guard in Boston.

Rear Admiral John Mauger, commander of the US Coast Guard, said additional resources would arrive in the coming days.

“It’s a remote area, and it’s challenging to conduct a search in that remote area,” he said. “But we are deploying all available resources to make sure we can locate the ship and rescue the people on board.”

According to the Coast Guard, the vessel submerged Sunday morning and its support vessel, the Canadian research icebreaker Polar Prince, lost contact with it approximately one hour and 45 minutes later.

The Polar Prince will continue to conduct surface searches overnight and the Canadian P8 Poseidon aircraft will resume its surface and subsurface search in the morning, the Coast Guard said on Twitter.

The submersible was operated by OceanGate Expeditions.

David Concannon, an adviser to OceanGate, said the sub had a 96-hour supply of oxygen as of about 6 a.m. Sunday. In an email to The Associated Press, Concannon said he was supposed to be on the dive, but he couldn’t go due to other client business. He said officials were working to bring a remote-controlled vehicle that can reach a depth of 6,000 meters (about 20,000 feet) to the site as soon as possible.

OceanGate expeditions to the Titanic wreck site include archaeologists and marine biologists. The company also attracts people who pay to attend, known as “mission specialists.” They take turns operating the sonar equipment and performing other tasks in the five-person submersible. The Coast Guard said Monday there was a pilot and four “mission specialists” on board.

OceanGate said its focus was on those on board and their families.

“We are deeply grateful for the extensive assistance we have received from various government agencies and deepwater companies in our efforts to re-establish contact with the submersible,” he said in a statement.

British businessman Hamish Harding was one of the mission specialists, according to Action Aviation, a company of which Harding is president. The company’s managing director, Mark Butler, told the AP that the crew left on Friday.

“There is still plenty of time to facilitate a rescue mission, there is equipment on board to survive this event,” Butler said. “We all hope and pray that he returns safely.”

Harding is a billionaire adventurer who holds three Guinness World Records, including the longest held at the full depth of the ocean by a crewed vessel. In March 2021, he and ocean explorer Victor Vescovo dove to the lowest depth of the Mariana Trench. In June 2022, he took to space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.

Harding was “waiting to conduct an investigation” at the Titanic site, said Richard Garriott of Cayeux, president of The Explorers Club, a group to which Harding belonged.

“We all join in the fervent hope that the submersible will be located as quickly as possible,” he said in a statement.

The expedition was OceanGate’s third annual voyage to document the deterioration of the Titanic, which struck an iceberg and sank in 1912, killing nearly 700 of its approximately 2,200 passengers and crew. Since the discovery of the remains in 1985, it has been slowly succumbing to metal-eating bacteria. Some have predicted that the ship could disappear in a matter of decades as holes are torn through the hull and sections disintegrate.

The initial group of tourists in 2021 paid between $100,000 and $150,000 each to take the trip.

Unlike submarines that leave and return to port under their own power, submersibles require a ship to launch and retrieve them. OceanGate contracted the Polar Prince to transport dozens of people and the submersible vessel to the North Atlantic wreck site. The submersible would make multiple dives in a single expedition.

The expedition was scheduled to depart from St. John’s, Newfoundland, in early May and end in late June, according to company filings in April with a US district court in Virginia overseeing Titanic matters. .

CBS journalist David Pogue, who made the voyage last year, noticed his ship turned around looking for the Titanic.

“There is no GPS underwater, so the surface ship is supposed to guide the sub to the wreck by sending text messages,” Pogue said in a segment broadcast on CBS Sunday morning. “But on this dive, communications were somehow disrupted. The submarine never found the wreck.”

The submersible, named Titan, is capable of submerging 4,000 meters or 13,120 feet “with a comfortable margin of safety,” OceanGate said in its court filing.

It weighs 20,000 pounds (9,072 kilograms) in air, but is weighted to neutral buoyancy once it hits the seabed, the company said.

Titan is made of “filament-wound titanium and carbon fiber” and has been shown to “withstand the enormous pressures of the ocean depths,” OceanGate said. OceanGate told the court that Titan’s viewing window is “the largest of any deep-diving submersible” and that its technology provides an “unmatched view” of the ocean depths.

In a May 2021 court filing, OceanGate said the Titan had an “unmatched safety feature” that tests the integrity of the hull on every dive.

At the time of the filing, Titan had undergone more than 50 test dives, including to the depth equivalent to Titanic, in deep water off the Bahamas and in a pressure chamber, the company said.

During its 2022 expedition, OceanGate reported that the submersible had a battery problem on its first dive and had to be manually attached to its lifting platform, according to a November court filing.

“In high seas status, the submersible sustained modest damage to its external components and OceanGate decided to cancel the second mission for repairs and operational improvements,” the document states.

However, more missions followed. The company reported that 28 people visited the wreck site last year.

Experts said Monday that rescuers face big challenges.

Alistair Greig, professor of marine engineering at University College London, said submersibles often have a drop weight, which is “a mass that they can release in an emergency to bring them to the surface using buoyancy.”

“If there was a power failure and/or communication failure, this could have happened, and the submersible would be floating on the surface waiting to be found,” Greig said.

Another scenario is a pressure hull leak, in which case the prognosis is not good, he said.

“If it’s sunk to the bottom of the sea and can’t get back up on its own, your options are very limited,” Greig said. “While the submersible could still be intact, if she is beyond the continental shelf, there are very few vessels that can go that deep, and certainly not divers.”

Even if they could go that deep, he doubts they could attach themselves to the hatch of the OceanGate submersible.

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AP writers Danica Kirka, Jill Lawless and Sylvia Hui in London, Robert Gillies in Toronto, Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates contributed to this report.