The US Coast Guard assumes the death of the five occupants of the submersible “Titan”. The debris found near the Titanic wreck belonged to the submersible, said US Coast Guard chief John Mauger in Boston on Thursday. This means that there is no longer any chance of survival for the five missing persons. He expressed his condolences to the family.
A remote-controlled underwater vehicle found the submersible’s stern cone on the seabed about 500 meters from the bow of the “Titanic” on Thursday morning, the Coast Guard said. A total of five large pieces of debris were discovered. They indicated a collapse of the hyperbaric chamber.
According to US reports, a US Navy underwater acoustic detection system registered the implosion on Sunday. “The US Navy was conducting an analysis of the acoustic data and discovered an anomaly attributable to an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of the Titan submersible operating site when communications were lost,” a spokesman told ABC. The newspaper “Wall Street Journal” had previously reported.
Search is being rolled back
The Coast Guard has announced that it is now scaling back its search. “We will begin to withdraw personnel and ships from the scene of the accident over the next 24 hours,” Mauger said. However, operations on the seabed would continue until further notice. At the moment the focus is on documenting the place. The data would be analyzed.
The submersible has been missing since Sunday morning (local time). The “Titan” was with five people on board on the way to the wreck of the “Titanic” that sank in 1912 at a depth of around 3800 meters. About an hour and 45 minutes after the start of the dive, contact with the mothership was lost.
In the operational area around 700 kilometers south of the Canadian island of Newfoundland, teams from the USA and Canada had started a large-scale search both on the water surface and in the depths of the ocean. Ships, aircraft, remote-controlled underwater vehicles, diving robots and other equipment were used.
Meanwhile hopes
In the meantime, underwater noise had fueled hopes that the occupants of the “Titan” would survive. The US Coast Guard has now announced that there was probably no connection between the noise and where the debris was found.
When asked if the bodies of the crew could be found, there was still no answer. The Coast Guard said it was an “incredibly unforgiving environment” around the Titanic wreck.
The occupants on board the “Titan” included the Frenchman Paul-Henri Nargeolet (77), the British adventurer Hamish Harding (58), the British-Pakistani management consultant Shahzada Dawood (48) and his 19-year-old son Suleman and the head of the Operating company Oceangate, Stockton Rush (61), who steered the boat.
British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly expressed his condolences to the family on behalf of the government. She stands by the affected families, he wrote on Twitter.
The “Titan” operating company Oceangate also condoled to the relatives. She said the five men on board were “true explorers, with a special spirit of adventure and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans.” We mourn and our hearts are with the relatives, it said. It is also an “extremely sad time” for the employees.
Oceangate offers wealthy customers an adventurous trip – the cost for the eight-day expedition is 250,000 US dollars (229,000 euros) per person. The dive trip to the “Titanic” itself usually only takes a few hours.
The Titanic sank in April 1912 on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in the North Atlantic. More than 1,500 of the 2,200 people on board died. The remains of the famous luxury liner, broken into two large pieces, were discovered in 1985.
In the face of reports of poor security for the missing submersible, experts expect consequences. “There will certainly be an investigation into this disaster, and much stricter rules and regulations will be put in place,” David Scott-Beddard, head of Titanic exhibit company White Star Memories, told CNN.
