Rescuers race to find Titanic submersible as oxygen reserves run out

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An international fleet of ships and aircraft have joined the search for a missing submersible and its five crew members after the vessel went missing off the coast of Newfoundland during a weekend dive to the Titanic wreck.

The 21-foot craft, known as the Titan, is believed to be equipped with 96 hours of oxygen, or enough to last until early Thursday morning. The U.S.-based company that operates the sub, OceanGate Expeditions, says the craft dives to a maximum depth of 4,000 metres.

The Titan’s crew includes a British billionaire-explorer, a former French navy officer, two members of one of Pakistan’s richest families and the chief executive officer of OceanGate. The company brings paying tourists to examine the famous ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank in 1912, killing all but about 700 of the roughly 2,200 passengers and crew.

By Tuesday, the U.S. and Canadian coast guards, the U.S. Navy, the Canadian Armed Forces, and OceanGate were involved in the search, in an area about 700 kilometres south of St. John’s. Canadian Fisheries and Oceans Minister Joyce Murray said additional search assets were also on the way from Britain and Germany.

The remote location and possible depth of the submersible made the search “unique,” said Captain Jamie Frederick of the First Coast Guard District in Boston, which is leading an effort that had already scoured about 26,000 square kilometres as of Tuesday morning.

“You’re dealing with a surface search and a subsurface search and frankly that makes it an incredibly complex operation,” he said.

The launch ship, Polar Prince, lost contact with the Titan about one hour and 45 minutes into its dive on Sunday morning and began its own search before contacting the Coast Guard later that day, Capt. Frederick said. The Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Halifax confirmed the vessel was reported overdue around 9:13 p.m. Sunday.

A group of private and public vessels were converging on the search site Tuesday. Canadian Coast Guard vessel John Cabot was scheduled to arrive in the evening, said Capt. Frederick, while the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Sycamore was also on route. The Bahamas-flagged cable layer Deep Energy had joined the search, while a Canadian military Aurora patrol aircraft was conducting sonar searches. U.S. search officials said two Hercules aircraft flights were completed overnight from the coast guard station in Elizabeth City, N.C.

Capt. Frederick said an underwater robot had started searching in the vicinity of the Titanic and that there was a push to get salvage equipment to the scene in case the sub is found.

In 2021, OceanGate began what it expected to become an annual voyage to chronicle the deterioration of the wreck, which has been slowly succumbing to metal-eating bacteria since its discovery in 1985.

In describing its first expedition, OceanGate said that, in addition to archeologists and marine biologists, the expeditions would include roughly 40 paid tourists. The initial group of tourists was funding the expedition by spending anywhere from US$100,000 to US$150,000 apiece.

The five-person crew on Sunday’s expedition included Hamish Harding, a British businessman who lives in Dubai. Mr. Harding is a billionaire adventurer who holds three Guinness World Records, including the longest duration at full ocean depth by a crewed vessel. In March, 2021, he and ocean explorer Victor Vescovo dived to the lowest depth of the Mariana Trench. In June, 2022, he went into space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.

French explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet is on board, according to a social-media post by Mr. Harding. A former French navy officer, Mr. Nargeolet is director of underwater research for E/M Group and RMS Titanic Inc., and has completed 37 dives to the wreck, according to his company profile.

Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, members of one of Pakistan’s most prominent families, were also on the vessel, according to a family statement. The father and son’s firm, Dawood Hercules Corp., based in Karachi, is involved in agriculture, petrochemicals and telecommunication infrastructure.

The fifth crew member was OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, a company spokesperson confirmed by e-mail. Mr. Rush founded OceanGate Inc. in 2009 to provide crewed submersibles for undersea researchers and explorers, according to the company’s website.

Questions about the Titan’s safety had previously been addressed to the company in 2018 by former employee David Lochridge. According to court documents, the submarine pilot expressed his concerns multiple times, including in a quality-controlled inspection report, particularly over “the lack of non-destructive testing performed on the hull of the Titan,” and the danger to passengers if the vessel was submerged at extreme depths.

Mr. Lochridge alleged in the court documents that the engineering company had only built the vessel to descend to a certified pressure of 1,300 metres, and OceanGate refused to pay the manufacturer to build a viewport that could meet its required depth of 4,000 metres.

Mr. Lochridge was immediately fired by OceanGate and then sued for breach of contract. He countersued for wrongful termination, and the case was settled out of court in November, 2018.

In an interview with CBS News last year, Mr. Rush defended the safety of his submersible but said nothing is without risk.

With files from The Canadian Press and Associated Press