All four passengers, one crew aboard missing ‘Titan’ submersible feared dead

Five days after the submersible vessel, Titan went missing in deep sea while conveying tourists exploring site of wreck of the iconic Titanic ocean going luxury ship, all five of its passengers are now believed to be dead after the vessel ran out of oxygen.

On Wednesday, search and rescue operations involving United States, Canada and France entered its third day after a tourist submersible ‘Titan’ vanished in deep waters while conveying a group wealthy tourists on a voyage to the wreck of the iconic cruise liner, Titanic.

The tourist underwater vessel, Titan had gone missing in deep waters off Canada’s coast for the third day.

The sinking of the Titanic, which killed more than 1,500 people, has been immortalized in books and films, including the 1997 blockbuster movie “Titanic,” which renewed popular interest in the wreck.

Those aboard Titan for a tourist expedition that costs $250,000 per person included British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, and Pakistani-born businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, with his 19-year-old son Suleman, who are both British citizens.

French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, and Stockton Rush, founder and CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, were also reported to be on board. Authorities have not confirmed the identity of any passenger.

Meanwhile, rescuers searched a vast swath of the North Atlantic racing against time to find the 21-foot-long Titan.

One pilot and four passengers were inside the miniature sub early on Sunday when it lost communication with a parent ship on the surface about an hour and 45 minutes into its two-hour dive.

The Titan was built to stay underwater for 96 hours, according to its specifications – giving the five people aboard until Thursday morning before air runs out.

U.S. and Canadian aircraft have searched more than 7,600 square miles of open sea, an area larger than the state of Connecticut, U.S. Coast Guard Captain Jamie Frederick told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday.

The Canadian military has dropped sonar buoys to listen for any sounds that might come from the Titan, and a commercial vessel with a remote-controlled deepwater submersible was also searching near the site, Frederick said.

Separately, a French research ship carrying its own deep-sea diving robot vessel was dispatched to the search area at the request of the U.S. Navy and was expected to arrive Wednesday night local time, the Ifremer research institute said.

Rescuers face significant obstacles both in finding the Titan and in saving the people aboard, according to experts.

The wreck of the Titanic, a British ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912, lies about 900 miles (1,450 km) east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and 400 miles (644 km) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland.

On Thursday, reports confirmed that the Titanic-bound submersible which went missing on Sunday with five people on board suffered a ‘catastrophic implosion,’ killing everyone on board, according to US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, Thursday.

A remotely operated vehicle found the tail cone of the Titan about 1,600 feet away from the bow of the shipwreck, he said.

Passengers; Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, and Stockton Rush, the CEO of the tour organizer, OceanGate Expeditions, died in the craft.

The submersible was descending to explore the wreckage of the luxury liner, located 900 miles east of Cape Cod and about 13,000 feet below sea level.

The five passengers on the Titan submersible that was diving 13,000 feet to view the Titanic on the ocean floor died in a ‘catastrophic implosion,’ authorities said Thursday, bookending an extraordinary five-day international search operation near the site of the world’s most famous shipwreck.

The tail cone and other debris were found by a remotely operated vehicle about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, deep in the North Atlantic and about 900 east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, the First Coast Guard District commander, told reporters.

The remotely operated vehicle found ‘five different major pieces of debris’ from the Titan submersible, according to Paul Hankins, the US Navy’s director of salvage operations and ocean engineering.

The debris was ‘consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber’ and, in turn, a ‘catastrophic implosion,’ he said.

As of now, there does not appear to be a connection between the banging noises picked up by sonar earlier this week and where the debris was found.

The US Navy detected an acoustic signature consistent with an implosion on Sunday and relayed that information to the commanders leading the search effort, a senior official said. But the sound was determined to be ‘not definitive,’ the official said.

Mauger, for his part, said rescuers had sonar buoys in the water for at least the last 72 hours and had ‘not detected any catastrophic events.’ Listening devices set up during the search also did not record any sign of an implosion, Mauger added.

The remotely operated vehicles will remain on the scene and continue to gather information, Mauger said. It will take time to determine a specific timeline of events in the “incredibly complex” case of the Titan’s failure, Mauger said. The Coast Guard official said the agency will eventually have more information about what went wrong and its assessment of the emergency response.

Response: Mauger applauded the “huge international” and “interagency” search effort. He said teams had the appropriate gear and worked as quickly as possible. The Coast Guard official also thanked experts and agencies for assisting with the search for the Titan submersible.

Already, Engro Corporation Limited, where Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood was vice chairman, has issued a statement on the deaths of Dawood and his son Suleman — who were among the five people on board the Titan submersible.

“With heavy hearts and with great sadness, we grieve the loss of our Vice Chairman, Shahzada Dawood, and his beloved son, Suleman Dawood. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Dawood family at this tragic time. We extend our heartfelt condolences to the family, colleagues, friends, and all those around the world who grieve this unthinkable loss,” the company tweeted on Thursday.

Dubai-based Action Aviation, the company owned by passenger Hamish Harding released a statement on behalf of his family.

“Today, we are united in grief with the other families who have also lost their loved ones on the Titan submersible,” the statement read. “Hamish Harding was a loving husband to his wife and a dedicated father to his two sons, whom he loved deeply. To his team in Action Aviation, he was a guide, an inspiration, a support, and a Living Legend.”

The statement went on to praise the efforts made to search for the Titan sub.

“We know that Hamish would have been immensely proud to see how nations, experts, industry colleagues and friends came together for the search, and we extend our heartfelt thanks for all their efforts. On behalf of the Harding family and Action Aviation, we would like to politely request privacy at this incredibly difficult time,” it said.

The family of French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet said he will “be remembered as one of the greatest deep-sea explorers in modern history.”

The statement signed by Nargeolet’s children and wife said that they hope people think about Paul-Henri and his work when they think about the Titanic, “but what we will remember him most for is his big heart, his incredible sense of humor and how much he loved his family. We will miss him today and every day for the rest of our lives.”

His stepson, John Paschall, described him as an “incredible stepfather” and someone who was caring and had a great sense of humor. He recalled how his mother and Nargeolot drove across the country to attend his college graduation in 2014 after their flight got canceled.

“They hop into their small, blue Mini Cooper and they drive 16 hours across the country from Connecticut to Chicago, drive through the night. I am quite certain that he did a lot of the driving. They showed up with one hour to spare for graduation,” he told CNN. “They made it there. At that time, my mom was very sick of cancer and meant so much to me that she could be there for that moment. That is something I will never forget about him.”

Meanwhile, James Cameron, who directed the hit 1997 film “Titanic” and has made 33 dives to the wreckage, said he saw some similarities between the Titan tragedy and the sinking of the famous ship it was bound for.

“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result,” Cameron told ABC News Thursday.

He added, “And with a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded to take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry sent condolences to the Dawood family after OceanGate announced they believe all the individuals on the Titan submersible have been lost.

Prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman were among the five people in the submersible.

“Our deepest condolences to the Dawood family and the family of other passengers on the sad news about the fate of Titanic submersible in the North Atlantic. We appreciate the multinational efforts over the last several days in search of the vessel,” the foreign ministry statement read.

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly also expressed his condolences and said in a tweet that the United Kingdom is closely supporting the families of those who died.