The five passengers of the submersible lost since Sunday in the North Atlantic, near the wreck of the “Titanic”, most likely died in the “catastrophic implosion” of this small scientific tourism submarine, announced Thursday, June 22 the US Coast Guard and the expedition organizer. “We now believe that our boss Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet are sadly dead,” said the American company OceanGate Expeditions in a press release.
“The debris field” found by the search robots near the mythical wreck, by nearly 4,000 meters deep, “is compatible with a catastrophic implosion” of the submersible, declared, for his part, the rear admiral John Mauger of the United States Coast Guard, during a press briefing in Boston, on the northeast coast of the United States. He spoke of a “catastrophic loss” of pressure at the origin of the accident.
The boss of OceanGate, the American Stockton Rush, was on board, alongside a wealthy British businessman, Hamish Harding (58), former diver and navy soldier, Frenchman Paul- Henri Nargeolet (77) – nicknamed “Mr. Titanic” -, and Pakistani tycoon Shahzada Dawood (48) and his son Suleman (19) – both also having British nationality.
“Sincere condolences”
The Coast Guard, leading an international search team, had announced at midday on Twitter that a “debris field” had been located “in the search area” by an underwater robot ” near the Titanic”, the famous cruise liner which sank 111 years ago off the coast of the United States and Canada.
Rear Admiral Mauger offered his “sincere condolences” to the families of the missing and specified that “staff and ships will be demobilized within 24 hours”.
Aerial surveillance using C-130 or P3 aircraft, ships equipped with underwater robots: the means deployed in particular by the American and Canadian armies continued Thursday morning to arrive at the site where the Polar Prince is stationed, the ship from which the submersible left on Sunday, the Titan. Among these means, theAtalanta, ship of the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer), arrived on site early Thursday. It is equipped with a robot, the ROV Victor 6000, capable of diving as far as the wreck of the Titanic, which lies nearly 4,000 meters deep.
Potential negligence
THE Titan, about 6.5 meters long, dived on Sunday and was expected to resurface seven hours later but contact was lost less than two hours after leaving. The machine had a theoretical autonomy of 96 hours in diving.
Tuesday noon, the US Coast Guard had warned that there were “about 40 hours of breathable air” on board. Rescuers had estimated at 11:08 GMT (1:08 p.m. in France) this Thursday the time at which passengers could run out of oxygen on board the Titan, a small deep-sea explorer from the American private company OceanGate Expeditions.
Wednesday’s announcement of the detection of underwater noises by Canadian P-3 planes raised hopes and oriented the multinational armada of rescuers dispatched to the scene, without the origin of the noises being determined.
The surface search area was 20,000 square kilometers. Since the beginning of the research, information implicating OceanGate has been revealed on possible technical negligence of the underwater tourism device.
A 2018 complaint says a former company executive, David Lochridge, was fired after raising serious doubts about the safety of the submersible. According to this former director of marine operations, a porthole at the front of the device was designed to withstand the pressure suffered at 1,300 m depth and not at 4,000 m.
For $250,000 a seat, passengers embarked on an exploration of the remains of what was one of the greatest maritime disasters of the 20th century. THE titanic wrecked on her maiden voyage in April 1912, after colliding with an iceberg, killing nearly 1,500 passengers and crew.
Since the discovery of the wreck in 1985, scientists, treasure seekers and wealthy tourists have visited it, thus maintaining the myth.