Produced by: Hitansh Gaur
OceanGate Expeditions, a company that deploys vessels for deep sea expeditions, revealed that one of its submarines went missing in the Atlantic ocean. The submarine was headed to visit the wreckage of Titanic, which sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg.
The submarine called Titan was carrying five passengers in this expedition. The vehicle is programmed to send a beep to the mother ship every fifteen minutes to convey that everything is okay. But, the company reported that the last beep was received around Monday afternoon when they were just above the wreckage. The vessel is built to go to a depth of 13,120 feet and the wreckage of Titanic sits 12,500 feet below.
The Titanic expedition submarine was carrying famous British Billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani billionaire Shehzada Dawood and his son, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and a 73-year-old explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet.
Hamish Harding is a Dubai-based British billionaire who is the founder of Action Group and Action Aviation, an international aircraft brokerage firm.
Billionaire Hamish Harding has been in deep waters earlier also, as he created a Guinness World Record for longest duration spent at the deepest point of the sea in the Mariana Trench. He spent four hours and 15 minutes there in 2021. He also holds the record for longest distance covered at the bottom of the ocean- three miles.
Billionaire Hamish Harding also created a record in 2019 for the fastest circumnavigation of the Earth, as he travelled across north and south poles inside a Gulfstream jet.
The British billionaire has an Indian connection too, as Hamish Harding was the person who sourced the aircraft for bringing eight cheetahs to India from Namibia last year. Harding, who is the Chairman of Action Aviation, had personally managed everything for the journey of cheetahs. He had posted a video on Facebook in which he said, "Proud to be involved in the project of cheetah reintroduction to India.”
Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleiman belong to one of the richest families in Pakistan. Shehzada Dawood is a trustee of the Seti Institute, a research organisation in California and lives in the UK with his wife, Christine, and their children Suleman and Alina. He is also Vice Chairman of Dawood Hercules Corporation, part of the Dawood Group conglomerate.
Reports suggest that the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, Stockton Rush is also one of the passengers on the Titan submersible.
The last passenger on this expedition is reportedly French explorer and Titanic expert Paul Henry Nargeolet. He has led several expeditions to the Titanic and completed dozens of dives in the submersible himself. He has even supervised the recovery of thousands of artefacts, including a section of the Titanic’s hull weighing 20-tonnes.