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The President of the Explorers Club, Richard Garriott de Cayeux, has thanked the the public for “all your support and hard work” on the effort to find and save the Titan submersible.
In a statement on social media, Garriot de Cayeux said he believed the efforts so far have “have importantly improved the odds of a positive outcome” to the situation, although he remained critical of authorities for not acting fast enough.
He said the arrival of the Magellan and the use of side-scan sonar will help improve the odds of finding the submersible.
We continue to come together for our friends, their families and the ideals of The Explorers Club, and the cause of safe scientific exploration of extreme environments.
There is good cause for hope, and we are making it more hopeful.
I thank you! Keep searching!
Ten ships and several remote subs have joined the hunt for the missing submersible
Rescue teams searching for the missing Titan submersible saw reason for optimism on Wednesday after they reported hearing underwater noises in the Atlantic.
While stressing that the sounds were “inconclusive” and not confirmation the crew was still alive, the news did raise the question of what happens if the sub is located – and what equipment will be necessary to retrieve it.
Jonathan Yerushalmy has taken a look at the surface vessels and the underwater robots being used in the search and rescue operation.
Updated
The US Coast Guard issued hand outs on Wednesday showing a visual depiction of the updated search patterns used in the ongoing search for the 21 foot submersible Titan.
Rescuers intensify search as fears grow over Titan’s remaining oxygen supply
The search for a submersible that went missing during a dive to the wreck of Titanic has entered its fourth day, amid concerns the oxygen supply sustaining its five passengers is running dangerously low.
Equipment from the US, Canada, UK and France is heading to the scene of the search, about 640km (400 miles) south of St John’s, Newfoundland, joining an international coalition of rescue teams that is sweeping a vast expanse of the North Atlantic for the Titan after it went missing on Sunday, nearly two hours into its dive.
Officials still hold out hope of a rescue. A US Coast Guard captain, Jamie Frederick, said on Wednesday:
When you’re in the middle of a search-and-rescue case, you always have hope.
The search is focused on an area where underwater sounds have been heard but their origin remains a mystery. As of Wednesday night local time, remotely operated deep-sea vehicles (ROV) were heading to the site from Canada, the UK and France, the US Coast Guard said.
For more on what we know so far about the search for the missing sub, read the full story by Graham Russell.
Around the world, the story of the missing Titanic submersible and its rescue operation’s race against time has been riveting onlookers.
Views of the Titanic movie’s Wikipedia page surged on Wednesday, according to data from movie analytics site FlixPatrol as others find themselves caught up in the tragedy of the situation.
Erin Geary, a 27-year-old research assistant in Atlanta, Georgia, described feeling sad, anxious and mystified as she watched the rescue operation for the Titan submersible unfold. She said she and her father had gotten caught up imagining what survival tactics the five passengers might be resorting to.
Thursday’s Daily MIRROR: “Holding On To Hope” #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/Q5vrBJVH9j
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) June 21, 2023
On social media sites on Wednesday, commentary ranged from despair at the Titan occupants’ plight, to incredulity that anyone would want to embark on a risky mission in a small vessel.
Some people expressed frustration that the tourist voyage had received such an expensive rescue operation while bigger boat tragedies with less prominent passengers, such as the deadly wreck of a fishing boat carrying hundreds of migrant passengers near Greece last week, failed to rally the same public outcry.
Thursday’s Daily EXPRESS: “Rescue Robot Is Last Chance Of Survival” #TomorrowsPapersToday pic.twitter.com/lPD5NgXIXY
— Allie Hodgkins-Brown (@AllieHBNews) June 21, 2023
In Boston, near the Coast Guard base that has been delivering public updates on the search, paralegal Jenna Roat said on Wednesday that she had been captivated by the rescue efforts along with her family and friends.
- Reuters
Updated
There are several possible scenarios for what may have happened to the Titan submersible. Ron Allum, a deep-sea engineer and explorer, told the Guardian he believed it was unlikely that the vessel’s pressure hull had suffered a catastrophic failure:
Sound travels particularly well underwater.
A catastrophic implosion could be heard for thousands of miles and could be recorded.
An implosion would likely trigger signals in military hydrophones, devices used in the world’s oceans for recording or listening to underwater sounds.
Allum said:
To me it sounds like the sub’s pressure hull is intact, but it’s demobilised from power.
In such an event, the Titan is likely to have automatically dropped release weights to resurface. Allum added:
One of the reasons I suspect the sub may not be able to surface after dropping a release weight could be that it may be partially flooded … If you have water in the pressure hull, it’s quite a large volume. The drop weights usually aren’t that big, and that could be what’s keeping it on the bottom.
It also means that if the occupants are sitting in a half-flooded pressure hull, that could also be catastrophic. They could become hypothermic. I don’t know how well the CO2 scrubber systems would work if they’re wet.
Hypothermia is a significant risk as the water temperature around the depth of the Titanic, at 3,800m below sea level, is around 0 to 1C.
How long the Titan would take to retrieve if it is found depends on where and what state the vessel is in, Ron Allum, a deep-sea engineer and explorer, told the Guardian.
Allum worked with James Cameron on his Last Mysteries of the Titanic live documentary in 2005, and Cameron’s Deepsea Challenger expedition to reach Earth’s deepest-known point in 2012.
He said:
If the pressure hull is flooded, you’re now talking about the dry mass of a vessel. You could be lifting a very heavy weight.
If the pressure hull is still intact … it’s going to be much lighter. Submersibles are generally neutrally buoyant.
If it were intact, an ROV [remotely operated vehicle] could attach to it and it could at least bring it up to shallower water where they could get a stronger lift cable to it to lift it out of the water.
The ROV may have to work around the wreckage … it may take a few hours to release the sub from the sea floor.
If the pressure hull was not flooded or hadn’t suffered a catastrophic failure then an ROV could possibly lift it from the sea floor – that ascent may take an hour or two.
I think you could get the sub out of the water in 12 hours or so.
If there was a catastrophic failure and the pressure hull is flooded, it’s going to be a different operation. There would be no race against time there because the occupants would not have survived.
If the Titan has already surfaced and is found on the ocean, opening the pressure hatch and extracting the people onboard would also take time. Allum said:
They are totally reliant on it being lifted out of the water either by their own launch and recovery mechanism or by another ship.
That extraction process would take around an hour if a surface support ship was nearby, he estimated.
Michael Guillen was the first correspondent to report live from the wreck of the Titanic but has recalled how the vessel he was on nearly ended up trapped.
Dr Guillen was working as science editor for America’s ABC network in 2000 when he travelled in a Russian submersible lowered from the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh research ship to tour the wreck.
He told BBC Radio 4 how they toured the bow “where everything had gone well” before they headed over to the stern where the vessel became trapped in the “huge” propeller” for an hour.
As we approached the stern area - flying over what’s called the debris field - we were caught up... in a very fast-moving underwater current. So we ended up getting stuck in the propeller.
All of a sudden, there was just a crash. We just felt this collision, and all of sudden debris... just huge chunks, rusted chunks of the Titanic started falling on top of us.
Dr Guillen said the pilot, who used to fly Russian Mig fighter jets, worked to jostle the submarine out “like you get your truck, your car stuck in the mud”. When it came lose, there was a feeling that the vessel was floating.
We didn’t want to say anything. I was like ‘My gosh, is it possible that we are out of this?’
Then I turned to Viktor, and I said: ‘OK?’ That was all.
He only spoke broken English. And I’ll never forget [how] he said this in a very low growling Russian accent: ‘No problem.’”
I breathed a sigh of relief.
The passengers aboard the Titan are likely “freezing cold and very uncomfortable” while the await rescue according to experts monitoring the situation.
Retired Navy Captain David Marquet, a former submarine captain told CNN that the ambient temperature of the water around them made for a difficult environment for those five passengers aboard.
They’re freezing cold. The water entirely surrounding the ship is at freezing or slightly below. When they exhale, their breath condenses. There’s frost on the inside of the parts of the submarine. They’re all huddled together trying to conserve their body heat. They’re running low on oxygen and they’re exhaling carbon dioxide.
Captain Marquet also said the passengers on board will be trying to keep very still and calm to control their breathing for “as long as possible” to give rescuers the time they need to find them.
It’s not a zero percent chance of recovering them.
A British man who spent more than three days trapped in a vessel on the seabed said Wednesday he was “very frightened” for those on board a submersible missing near the wreck of the Titanic.
Roger Mallinson and Roger Chapman were saved in the deepest sub rescue in history after their small vessel became trapped on the Atlantic seabed off the coast of Ireland at a depth of 1,575 feet (480 metres) in 1973.
Mallinson, now aged 85, said he had deep concerns for the five on board the missing Titanic submersible
It sounds very, very dangerous, I’m very frightened for them.
If they are waiting to be rescued I think everyone wants to get into one area and make as much noise as they can.
I can’t understand how these people have been left abandoned out in the middle of the Atlantic without any communication, it just doesn’t make any sense.
Mallinson recalled feeling pessimistic during his own ordeal, saying that “once everything goes wrong, it goes wrong, and everybody that comes down seems to do wrong.”
It was very stressful, very cold and you just had to try and keep warm, you didn’t want to burn oxygen.
You got dressed up properly. I had a big woolly jumper, so I got my woolly jumper on and then my overalls back on top.
Roger Chapman didn’t have a woolly jumper so we had a lot of white rags and we mummied him.
Mallinson said he didn’t feel relief until the hatch opened, and a pod of watchful dolphins had left.
When the dolphins disappeared then you realised you’re safe. They stayed with us the whole 84 hours, thousands of dolphins arrived to look after us, they knew there was a problem.
You couldn’t talk to the surface on the underwater phone because thousands of dolphins chattered every time you spoke.
Former Royal Navy officer Chapman died in 2020, having been awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2006 for services to shipping.
I’ve lost my mate One wonderful thing was that when he died I was able to go to his funeral and play the organ for him.
- AFP
The search for the missing submersible off in the North Atlantic is raising legal questions about who might be responsible for any mishap.
In the case of the Titan, passengers on board were asked to sign a waiver form that stressed the risk of death, however legal experts say this may not be enough to protect the company from liability.
Speaking to MSNBC, Stanford University law professor Nora Freeman Engstrom said that a court may be open to setting aside the waiver.
Updated
What we know so far
Rescue operations searching for the Titan submersible have focused their efforts on a remote area of the North Atlantic where a series of underwater noises have been detected. Noises were detected by Canadian P-3 aircraft on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, US Coast Guard officials said in a press conference this afternoon.
Experts have not yet identified the source of these noises, and officials have warned the sounds may not have originated from the missing vessel. Analysis of the noises has been “inconclusive”, Coast Guard Capt Jamie Frederick said. Remotely operated vehicle (ROV) searches have been deployed in the area where the P-3 aircraft recorded the noises, US Coast Guard officials said.
The five passengers on board the missing Titan sub had 96 hours of breathable air, according to its operator OceanGate’s specifications. This would mean oxygen could run out by Thursday morning, but experts say the air supply depends on a range of factors.
More ships and underwater vessels are being brought in to join the search and rescue operations, US Coast Guard officials said. Three search vessels arrived on the scene on Wednesday, including one that has side-scanning sonar capabilities. The full scope of the search is twice the size of Connecticut and 2.5 miles (4km) deep, Capt Frederick said.
Documents show that the sub’s operator, OceanGate, had been warned there might be catastrophic safety problems posed by the way the experimental vessel was developed. David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations, said in a 2018 lawsuit that the company’s testing and certification was insufficient and would “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible”.
The disappearance of the submersible en route to the wreck of the Titanic has highlighted the businesses that offer extreme expeditions – and their clienteles. Among the five people on the missing Titan submersible are two billionaires – Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old businessman who made his fortune selling private jets and holds three Guinness world records for previous extreme trips, and the British-based Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, who is onboard with his 19-year-old son Suleman.
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A man who was on the Titan last year told Sky News that the submersible “was not safe”. Speaking to the outlet, former passenger Arthur Loibl said that “everybody was nervous” during the 2021 expedition to the Titanic wreck.
– Guardian staff
Updated
Per Reuters, Sean Leet, Horizon Maritime’s chairman, said “all protocols were followed” but did not specify how communication with the sub were cut off.
“There’s still life support available on the submersible, and we’ll continue to hold out hope until the very end,” Leet told reporters.
Updated
Sal Mercogliano, a former merchant mariner, and maritime historian at Campbell University, tells New York Magazine that OceanGate wasn’t “breaking the laws, but they’re operating in a very gray area” .
He told the magazine’s Clio Chang:
The catch with OceanGate and the Titan was they were basically operating outside territorial waters — they’re past the 12-mile limit, and they’re launching off a Canadian vessel. There didn’t appear to really be any sort of jurisdictions applying to this vessel.
And so, the company wasn’t required to undergo inspections to follow rules that apply to submersibles being operated in US waters.
Read more here.
Updated
Billionaires and the Titanic: the allure of extreme expeditions
The disappearance of the submersible en route to the wreck of the Titanic has highlighted the businesses that offer extreme expeditions – and their clienteles.
Among the five people on the missing Titan submersible are two billionaires – Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old businessman who made his fortune selling private jets and holds three Guinness world records for previous extreme trips, and the British-based Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, who is onboard with his 19-year-old son Suleman.
In an Instagram post on Saturday, Harding said that he would “finally” begin the 12,500ft dive at 4am on Sunday morning and it was “likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023”.
It wasn’t Harding’s first trip to the bottom of the seas. He has already navigated to the deepest point in the world’s oceans, the Mariana Trench, a depth of about 10,925 metres (36,000 feet) in the Pacific.
Harding has also been up very high. Last year, he was one of six people onboard the fifth human flight of Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin New Shepard rocket that reached an apogee (height) of 351,000 ft (66 miles or 107 km) above earth.
These adventures do not come cheap.
Tickets for the Titanic submersible cost $250,000 (£195,000). The trip is organised by OceanGate, an exploration tourism company founded and run by Stockton Rush, an American multimillionaire. He is also missing, as is Paul Henri Nargeolet, the French deep-sea diver, who has visited the wreck site more than 30 times and is known as “Mr Titanic”.
A video advert for the trip says: “This is not a thrill ride for tourists, it is much more, it is an eight-day one-of-a kind experience.”
Read more:
Updated
A timeline of the missing vessel’s voyage
Here’s a timeline of the past few days:
Tuesday
2.50pm GMT/9am ET: France says it will help with search by deploying Atalante, a ship equipped with a deep-sea diving vessel. It is expected to arrive late on Wednesday.
The Titan submersible is seen launching from a platform in an undated photo.
During the day: Sounds detected over several hours by Canadian Lockheed P-3 Orion aircraft, equipped with gear to trace submarines. CNN and Rolling Stone magazine report banging sounds at 30-minute intervals had been detected.
Wednesday
US Coast Guard, US navy, Canadian Coast Guard and OceanGate Expeditions establish a unified command to handle the search.
6am GMT/1am ET: US Coast Guard confirms Canadian P-3 aircraft detected underwater noises. It says remotely operated vehicle (ROV) searches are directed to the area of the sounds and the data is also sent to US navy experts for analysis.
Thursday
10am GMT/5am ET: Approximate deadline for when the air in the submersible will run out, based on the US Coast Guard’s estimate that the Titan could have up to 96 hours of air supply from the time it was sealed.
Updated
A friend of Hamish Harding, the British billionaire on board the missing submersible, has called Harding “an extremely logical guy.”
Speaking to Sky News, Chris Brown said, “He’s an extremely logical guy, quite intellectual, I’m quite sure he’s going through all the possibilities. We don’t know what the situation is…
Whatever the situation is, I’m sure he’s going through all the permutations, combinations of what could be done… I wouldn’t be surprised if it was him who came up with the knock every 30 minutes so that you can tell it’s a human doing it rather than just pieces of metal banging together.”
“I’m sure he’ll be a calming influence on the other guys down there because it’s going to be everybody to keep calm and breathe as little as possible.”
Chris Brown, a friend of British billionaire Hamish Harding, has told Sky News that he is hoping for a miracle as the search for the missing Titan submersible continues.
— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 21, 2023
Latest: https://t.co/OB9RZbLnsf pic.twitter.com/20jcXdrKbF
A man who was on the Titan last year told Sky News that the submersible “was not safe.”
Speaking to the outlet, former passenger Arthur Loibl said that “everybody was nervous” during the 2021 expedition to the Titanic wreck.
Loibl went on to describe the cramped conditions of the vessel, saying, “There is no seat, you cannot stand, you cannot kneel, you only sit for 10 and a half hours.
Our legs are like a crab, like a snake because it was so small, nothing was comfortable.”
He also added that the vessel was “very, very cold” as the temperature outside the submersible was 4 degrees Celsius.
When asked whether he felt that the submarine was safe, Loibl replied, “No, it was not safe.”
A new documentary on the missing submersible is set to air this week.
On Wednesday, Variety reported that a new documentary is scheduled to air on the UK broadcaster Channel 5 on Thursday at 7pm local time.
The ITN-produced documentary will be called: “Titanic Sub: Lost at Sea” and will be presented by host Dan Walker.
“This program will chart everything from the exploration itself, to the rise of extreme tourism, to the rescue attempts, but above all it will tell a very human story that has captured the nation which is about 5 people, all with families, who are trapped at the bottom of the ocean. Our expertise and heritage in fast-turnaround documentaries and reputation for responsible filmmaking means we always treat such stories with great sensitivity,” ITN’s managing director for content Ian Rumsey said.
Polar Prince co-owner says 'every possible effort' being put into bringing crew home
Horizon Maritime, the Canadian company that co-owns the Polar Prince research vessel that launched the Titan sub, has released a statement following the press briefing.
The company said it was working to “ensure every possible effort is put into bringing people home”.
FULL MEDIA STATEMENT: https://t.co/JYUV8BsmFs pic.twitter.com/RYQEUXITPW
— Horizon Maritime (@HorizonOffshore) June 21, 2023
Updated
Shahzada Dawood, the British-Pakistani businessman on board the missing Titan sub, is an explorer whose expedition to the Titanic wreck followed a yearslong passion for science and discovery, his friends and family have said.
Dawood, 48, who boarded the vessel with his 19-year-old son, Suleman, loves Star Trek and Star Wars, as well as sharing pictures of his faraway adventures, according to Ahsen Uddin Syed, a friend of Dawood who used to work with him at Engro Corporation, the chemicals-to-energy conglomerate where Dawood is the vice-chair.
“He is an explorer,” Syed told the New York Times. “Traveling, science, are part of his DNA.”
Like his father, Suleman Dawood also loves science fiction, according to a statement from Engro.
Photograph: DAWOOD HERCULES CORPORATION/AFP/Getty Images
Updated
Here’s a clip from the US Coast Guard’s press briefing earlier today, where officials said rescue operations searching for the Titan submersible have focused their efforts on a remote area of the North Atlantic where a series of underwater noises have been detected.
Horizon Maritime’s chairman, Sean Leet, says his team is in “constant contact” with the crew of the Polar Prince, the Titan sub’s mothership on the surface that is also part of the search operation.
He says the ship has been supporting Titanic expeditions for “several years” and that it will “stay out until the search is completed”.
Updated
Rescue teams are “very well aware” of the “time sensitivity” around the search mission for the missing Titan sub, the Horizon chairman, Sean Leet, says.
He says the North Atlantic Gulf is always a “challenging” place but that the current weather conditions are “not overly significant”.
Leet says:
The equipment that’s been mobilised for this is the finest in the world, the most capable in the world. We have to hold on to hope.
Updated
Horizon Maritime, the company that owns the support vessel Polar Prince, which took the Titan submersible out for the expedition on Sunday, is holding a news briefing from St John, Newfoundland.
Horizon has mobilised the Polar Prince and the 94-metre Horizon Arctic to add vessel support for the search and rescue mission to find the missing sub, Sean Leet, Horizon’s chairman, says.
The marine industry in this region “is no stranger to responding to difficult incident”, he says.
We work together to ensure every possible effort is put into bringing people all the people on board. We care deeply about their wellbeing.
All of us here in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, the United States and around the world are unified in this work.
He says it has been a “difficult few days” for the crew on board the Titan sub and the Polar Prince.
Updated
What we know of search and rescue operation after latest US Coast Guard update
Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
Rescue operations searching for the Titan submersible have focused their efforts on a remote area of the North Atlantic where a series of underwater noises have been detected. Noises were detected by Canadian P-3 aircraft on Tuesday and again on Wednesday, US Coast Guard officials said in a press conference this afternoon.
Experts have not yet identified the source of these noises, and officials have warned the sounds may not have originated from the missing vessel. Analysis of the noises has been “inconclusive”, Coast Guard Capt Jamie Frederick said. Remotely operated vehicle (ROV) searches have been deployed in the area where the P-3 aircraft recorded the noises, US Coast Guard officials said.
The five passengers on board the missing Titan sub had 96 hours of breathable air, according to its operator OceanGate’s specifications. This would mean oxygen could run out by Thursday morning, but experts say the air supply depends on a range of factors.
More ships and underwater vessels are being brought in to join the search and rescue operations, US Coast Guard officials said. Three search vessels arrived on the scene on Wednesday, including one that has side-scanning sonar capabilities. The full scope of the search is twice the size of Connecticut and 2 1/2 miles (4km) deep, Capt Frederick said.
Documents show that the sub’s operator, OceanGate, had been warned there might be catastrophic safety problems posed by the way the experimental vessel was developed. David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations, said in a 2018 lawsuit that the company’s testing and certification was insufficient and would “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible”.
Updated
Recovering the missing Titan submersible and bringing its crew to safety in time using the latest advanced deep-sea rescue equipment would be an extremely difficult task, an expert has said.
Even if Titan is located, a successful rescue would require remote-controlled vehicles (ROVs) capable of allowing operators on the surface a clear view of the submersible’s location, any obstacles that may be present and where to attach cables capable of lifting it thousands of metres through the water.
If the Titan and its five-person crew did arrive at the Titanic wreck, they will be located 3,800 metres (12,500ft) below the surface on the seabed – too deep for most ROVs to reach. Only a “tiny percentage of the world’s submarines operate that deeply”, David Marquet, a former US Navy submarine commander, told CBC.
'We have to remain optimistic and hopeful', says US Coast Guard
Capt Jamie Frederick of the US Coast Guard says we “have to remain optimistic and hopeful” while the team is conducting a search and rescue operation.
The Coast Guard carry out search and rescue cases on a daily basis “and sometimes we don’t find what we’re looking for”, he says.
There are a lot of factors you have to consider. After considering all those factors, sometimes you’re in a position where you have to make a tough decision. We’re not there yet.
If we continue to search, potentially we could be at that point ... That’s a discussion we will have with the families long before I am going to discuss here publicly.
Updated
More noises heard in search area today, says US Coast Guard
The US Coast Guard’s Capt Jamie Frederick says it is his understanding that “noises” were heard yesterday and this morning.
Carl Hartsfield of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution says it is “very difficult” to discern what the sources of the noises heard by the Canadian P-3 aircraft are.
He says there have been “multiple reports” of noises “and every one of those noises is being analysed, tracked, looked for patterns and reported upon”.
The noises “have been described as banging noises”, Hartsfield says, but acoustic analysts “have to put the whole picture together in context and they have to eliminate potential man-made sources”.
Updated
Passengers on missing sub have 'limited rations', says US Coast Guard
There are some “limited rations” of food and water on the Titan sub, the US Coast Guard’s Capt Jamie Frederick says.
I can’t tell you exactly how much they have on board, but they do have some limited rations aboard.
Updated
Experts 'don't know' what the detected noises were, says US Coast Guard
Capt Frederick says “we don’t know” what the noises that have been heard in the area of the site are, but that there is always hope in a search and rescue case.
The good news, what I can tell you, is that we’re searching in the area where the noises were detected, and we’ll continue to do so.
He says data from the Canadian P-3 aircraft has been shared with US Navy experts for further analysis “which will be considered in future search plans”.
Updated
Search area 'two times the size of Connecticut', says US Coast Guard
The unified command team is working “tirelessly” in response to this “incredibly complex” search operation to find the missing Titan sub, Capt Frederick says. He says that the team are in close contact with the family members of the five crew members on board the sub.
The team currently has five surface assets searching for the sub and expects to have a total of 10 surface assets searching in the next 24 to 48 hours, he says.
The surface search is now approximately two times the size of Connecticut and the subsurface search is up to two and a half miles deep, he says.
Updated
Capt Jamie Frederick of the US Coast Guard has started speaking at a news conference in Boston.
Updated
US Coast Guard to hold briefing
The US Coast Guard will hold a press briefing to discuss the latest on the search for the missing Titan submersible at 1pm local time (6pm BST).
Capt Jamie Frederick will lead the press conference. We will be covering it live on the blog. You’ll also be able to stream it live at the top of the page.
Updated
David Marquet, a retired US Navy captain, said OceanGate may have gone “a little too far” with launching submersible carrying five people to the wreck of the Titanic.
In an interview with the BBC, Marquet said he admired “the innovative spirit” of the company behind the vessel now missing hundreds of miles off the Newfoundland coast.
“Sometimes we push the bounds and innovation gets ahead of where regulation is,” he said. He added:
But when you’re putting people down at 13,000ft, the laws of Mother Nature are gonna take over. So I think they might have gone a little too far.
I admire the spirit, but we know from years of safe submarines, what it takes. All the discipline, the rigour of the operational testing, the operational risk mitigation that you have to do to maintain submarine safe.
Updated
The Guardian’s Leyland Cecco in Toronto and Spoorthy Raman in St John’s have spoken to people in the town where the Titan submersible set off on Friday.
They write:
St John’s, Canada’s easternmost city in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, remains the closest city to the liner’s final resting place and has become the launching site for expeditions traveling to the wreck site, nearly 400 miles (650km) away – and more than 12,000ft (3,800 metres) below the surface of the ocean.
On Tuesday, the city, known for its brightly coloured “biscuit box” houses, was blanketed in a thick haze of fog and rain as residents made sense of the news.
“To hear that there are people in distress possibly and not knowing where they are and if we’re ever going to find them … it’s heart-wrenching,” said Anne Simmons, operations manager at a local tour company. “The whole world is watching because it’s the Titanic. Everybody knows about it.”
Here is their full dispatch:
Updated
Here’s more from R Adm John Mauger, of the US Coast Guard, who said rescue efforts are prioritising both surface and sub-surface searches for the missing sub.
Mauger, speaking to BBC News, said:
This has been a very complex and difficult case for all of us but as we continue to actively search for the submersible and the people onboard our thoughts are with the crew members and their families who, I can imagine, are having a very difficult time at this point.
He added:
We have two vessels, two remote-operated vessels, a remote-operated vehicle conducting a sub-surface search, and we have an aircraft and surface vessels which are conducting the surface search at this moment.
Updated
Sub may have less than 20 hours of oxygen left, says US Coast Guard
The crew of the submersible Titan may have less than 20 hours of breathable air remaining, if they are still alive, a US Coast Guard official has said.
R Adm John Mauger, speaking to BBC News, said it is hard to determine exactly how long they have, due to various factors. The 20 hour estimate is based on an initial estimate that said the vessel had a 96-hour supply of oxygen.
Mauger estimates that there are now 20 hours of oxygen supply left on the Titan sub. He's live on @BBCNews now.
— Jessica Parker (@MarkerJParker) June 21, 2023
Updated
The veteran Titanic diver Joe MacInnis has just been speaking on CNN about the banging heard from the Titan search site overnight. He says it’s a “sign of hope”:
It’s an indication, possibly, of human activity that is coordinated. And this is the kind of thing that we hope [for]. We’re all engaged in this kind of collective imagination, what’s going on down there?
We’re beset with fear and sadness and hope and uncertainty. But these sounds have given us a sense of hope. And let’s hope that we can solve this problem before the oxygen runs out. We haven’t got much time left.
The Canadian explorer MacInnis is one of the biggest and most respected names in Titanic folklore, having been an integral part of Robert Ballard’s 1985 expedition that discovered the wreck of the doomed ocean liner 12,500ft below the surface of the Atlantic.
Earlier this week he spoke to the Guardian’s Leyland Cecco about the search operation for the missing submersible Titan. Read the interview here:
Updated
The US coast guard has released an updated weather on scene in the Titan sub search area, where gusty winds of up to 23mph and wave heights up to 7ft are possible.
Updated weather on scene: winds at 23mph with gusts up to 30mph. Sea state is 6-7ft swells with an air temp of 50°f. #Titanic
— USCGNortheast (@USCGNortheast) June 21, 2023
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The French ship Atalante, carrying a robot that can dive to 20,000ft (6,000 metres) underwater, is expected to arrive late today to join the search operation for the missing sub.
The unmanned robot, called Victor 6000, can dive deeper than other equipment now at the site in the North Atlantic and has arms that can be remotely controlled to cut cables or perform other manoeuvres to release a stuck vessel, Reuters reported, citing the robot’s operator, Ifremer.
Victor “is not capable of lifting the submarine on its own” but it can help hook the Titan sub to a ship with the capacity to lift it to the surface, Ifremer’s head of naval operations, Olivier Lefort, said.
Victor is able to do visual exploration with all the video equipment it has. It is also equipped with manipulating arms which could be used to extricate the sub, such as by sectioning cables or things that would be blocking it at the bottom.
He said the 25-strong crew required to operate the robot “can work non-stop for up to 72 hours” once it reaches the site. He added:
We don’t know what happened. The noises that were heard give us hope the submarine is on the seabed and that people are still alive, but other scenarios are possible. Even if hope is slim, we’ll go all the way.
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Magellan, an international exploration company that digitally mapped the Titanic wreckage last year, has said it is “ready to support” the search for the missing submersible.
The British firm, which specialises in deep ocean investigations and recovery operations, said on its website that it was contacted by the sub’s operator, OceanGate, on Monday and “immediately offered our knowledge of the specific site and also our expertise operating at depth considerably in advance of what is required for this incident”.
A statement by Magellan said:
We have been working full-time with UK and US agencies to secure the necessary air support to move our specialist equipment and support crew.
It was previously reported that US authorities had failed to give Magellan the necessary permits to participate in the search. The Telegraph reported that a team of deepwater specialists had been waiting to leave an airport in the Channel Islands since Monday evening, but that US officials had indicated that they would prefer to use a New York-based vessel instead.
When asked for comment about these reports, Magellan told ABC News it “does not wish to comment on any specific media report”.
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What we know about conditions inside the missing sub
The five passengers on board the missing submersible have less than 24 hours of air supply left – if they are still alive.
The Titan vessel has 96 hours of air supply, according to its specifications. On Tuesday at about 17.00 GMT, the US Coast Guard said the Titan sub had enough air for 41 hours, which would mean a deadline of roughly 10.00 GMT on Thursday.
Those inside the sub will be “resting, breathing as little as possible, and trying to keep calm” in order to conserve energy, Joe MacInnis, who has made two trips to the wreck of the Titanic, told CNN earlier today.
OceanGate, the company that operates the sub, has not commented on conditions and provisions on the Titan, the BBC reports. But based on the accounts of those who have previously been inside the vessel, there will have been food and water available.
Mike Reiss, a producer and writer for The Simpsons, boarded the Titan vessel last summer. Sandwiches and water were available on the sub, but he recalled being told that many passengers did not eat during the journey, and that the rudimentary toilet on board had never been used, the New York Times reported.
CBS News correspondent David Pogue went on the OceanGate Titan in November, and compared the sub to being in a “minivan without seats”. In an interview with NPR, Pogue said:
There really is no safety gear in there except for a fire extinguisher and fire masks, which we practised putting on and taking off. That’s pretty much it, because there’s not much you can do if something goes wrong.
Images from OceanGate show a vessel measuring 6.7 x 2.8 x 2.5 metres, where only one passenger can stretch their legs out at one time.
I found an old PDF promoting the Titanic-bound Titan submarine. It shows a "typical seating configuration" for 5 people.
— Ben Goggin (@BenjaminGoggin) June 20, 2023
only 1 person can extend their legs.
This looks like hell folks. pic.twitter.com/NPCUniq0fs
As the Guardian’s science editor Ian Sample points out, if the Titan has surfaced, the danger for the crew is not over: the hatch appears to be bolted from the outside, meaning those inside will still need to rely on emergency oxygen to breathe.
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Vessel with sonar search capabilities joins search operation, says US Coast Guard
Three vessels have arrived on the scene to join the rescue operation, the US Coast Guard has said.
Among them are the Canadian Coast Guard’s scientific research vessel, the John Cabot, which has sonar search capabilities, the Canadian Atlantic Merlin and subsea support vessel Skandi Vinland.
Three vessels arrived on-scene Wednesday morning, the The John Cabot has side scanning sonar capabilities and is conducting search patterns alongside the Skandi Vinland and the Atlantic Merlin. #Titanic
— USCGNortheast (@USCGNortheast) June 21, 2023
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Shortly after sunrise on Friday, a hulking icebreaker departed the protected waters of St John’s, Newfoundland, and ventured into the unpredictable vastness of the north Atlantic Ocean. Onboard the ship was an array of scientific monitoring equipment, cameras and a sleek, 22ft-long submersible, named Titan.
The passengers onboard the chartered Polar Prince vessel were excited at the prospect of reaching the final resting site of the RMS Titanic, even if it meant cramming themselves inside the hollow body of Titan.
But the small carbon fibre craft disappeared on Sunday, nearly two hours after it dipped below the surface, en route to the remains of the sunken ocean liner. The disappearance has prompted a frantic international search, with both Canada and the US marshalling all available resources in a race against time.
The Titanic never reached its destination of New York City. But along the east coast of Canada, the legacy of the doomed ship still looms large more than a century after it sank.
More than 120 victims of the disaster are buried in the Fairview cemetery in Halifax, Nova Scotia, at the time the city nearest to the sinking with rail and shipping connections. The city’s Museum of the Atlantic showcases artefacts from the ship, including a deck chair, personal effects and wreckage, as well as the white canvas mortuary bags used for the victims.
St John’s, Canada’s easternmost city in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, remains the closest city to the liner’s final resting place and has become the launching site for expeditions travelling to the wreck site, nearly 400 miles (650km) away – and more than 12,000 feet (3,800 meters) below the surface of the ocean.
On Tuesday, the city, known for its brightly coloured “biscuit box” houses, was blanketed in a thick haze of fog and rain as residents made sense of the news.
Read the full story by Leyland Cecco and Spoorthy Raman here:
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History has shown that attempts to rescue stricken submarines do not always end well, nonetheless those trying save the crew and passengers on board OceanGate’s Titan sub may take inspiration from the successful rescue of two British submariners 50 years ago, whose tiny vessel was raised from the depths of nearly 1,600ft, 150 miles off Ireland.
The two men were aboard the Pisces III, a 6ft-diameter deep-sea submersible that had been laying transatlantic telephone cable on the Atlantic seabed, off the coast of Cork. Having got into difficulties, the Pisces III plunged nearly 1,600ft (500 metres), where it lay for three days.
Above it, a desperate sea rescue operation was in full swing to get to pilot Roger Chapman and engineer/pilot Roger Mallinson in time. The rescuers got to the men just as the sub had 12 minutes of oxygen left in its cylinders.
The mission to save the two submariners captivated the world, here’s how the Observer covered the successful conclusion to the rescue in September 1973.
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Sabrina Dawood, whose brother Shahzada Dawood is aboard the Titan sub with his 19-year-old son Suleman, has said the family’s “sole focus” is on the search and rescue efforts.
In a statement to Sky News, she said:
May Shahzada and Suleman return to us safe and sound. We are sure they would be as moved as we are by the support of the global community during this period of difficulty.
She asked that the family would be granted privacy “as we deal with this crisis”.
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Reports that rescuers searching for the Titan have detected noises in the area where it went missing could suggest the submersible is at the surface, a submarine search and rescue expert has said.
Frank Owen said his “confidence went up by an order of magnitude” when he heard reports of banging being detected by floating sound detectors. He told the BBC:
There’s a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, onboard this craft is a retired French navy diver. He would know the protocol for trying to alert searching forces … on the hour and the half hour you bang like hell for three minutes.
The sound signal being picked up by a buoy close to the surface could mean the sub itself is near or at the surface, he added.
Below about 180 metres, the water temperature drops very rapidly. That creates a layer that the [sonar signal] bounces off. But if you’re in the same depth water it tends to go quite straight.
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Our video team has compiled a report on the latest footage and Coast Guard information from the search:
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Timeline of Titan's voyage
Reuters has published a timeline of the Titan’s voyage, starting on Friday when it set off:
Friday: expedition sets off from St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.
Saturday: British billionaire and adventurer Hamish Harding, one of those onboard the submersible, posts on Facebook: “Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023. A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow.”
Sunday 08.00 GMT: Time the submersible originally aimed to start its descent, according to a post by Harding on Instagram. It actually started its descent later, according to the US Coast Guard.
12.00 GMT: The submersible starts what should be a two-hour descent to the Titanic wreck, nearly 4,000 metres down, according to the US Coast Guard.
13.45 GMT: Communications between the submersible and the surface vessel are lost 1 hour and 45 minutes after starting its descent.
19.00 GMT: Titan is scheduled to return to the surface, the US Coast Guard says but fails to appear.
21.40 GMT: Coast Guard receives report about an overdue submersible from the research vessel Polar Prince about 900 nautical miles east of Cape Cod on the US coast.
Monday: US and Canadian ships and planes are swarming the area, some dropping sonar buoys that can monitor to a depth of almost 4,000 metres, US Coast Guard R Adm John Mauger says. Officials have also asked commercial vessels for help.
Tuesday: 14.50 GMT France says it will help with search by deploying Atalante, a ship equipped with a deep-sea diving vessel. It is expected to arrive late on Wednesday.
During the day: Sounds detected over several hours by Canadian Lockheed P-3 Orion aircraft, equipped with gear to trace submarines. CNN and Rolling Stone magazine report banging sounds at 30-minute intervals had been detected.
Wednesday: US Coast Guard, US Navy, Canadian Coast Guard and OceanGate Expeditions establish a unified command to handle the search.
06.00 GMT: US Coast Guard confirms Canadian P-3 aircraft detected underwater noises. It says remotely operated vehicle (ROV) searches are directed to the area of the sounds and the data is also sent to US Navy experts for analysis.
Thursday: 10.00 GMT: Approximate deadline for when the air in the submersible will run out, based on the US Coast Guard’s estimate that the Titan could have up to 96 hours of air supply from the time it was sealed.
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Detecting the Titan’s exact location will be a “significant challenge”, Dr Jamie Pringle, a reader in forensic geosciences at Keele University, has told Sky News.
Pringle said the area of the Atlantic floor is “really remote” and the submersible is very small. “It might be nice and flat and be sitting proudly on top, which would be great,” he said.
“It could be partially submerged, and of course, there’s lots of submarine canyons and submarine seamounts … Those issues are very difficult.”
He added that the vessel’s loss of contact suggested there had been an electrical problem, so it would probably be “very cold [and] very dark” inside the craft.
“They were only meant to be going down for eight hours, I believe – this many days is going to be difficult,” he said.
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US Coast Guard: source of noise still unknown
R Adm John Mauger of the US Coast Guard, who is heading the search for the Titan, has told CBS News it is a complex operation and an international effort.
Mauger confirmed an aircraft had detected noise in the water picked up by sonar buoys on Tuesday, but said: “We don’t know the source of that noise.”
He said there were a lot of metal objects at the site of the Titanic wreck, which could be where the noise was coming from.
Mauger added that the search operation would continue “as long as there’s an opportunity for survival” and that more vessels would be arriving at the site to join it, the BBC reported.
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The latest official update on the search operation was several hours ago.
The US Coast Guard tweeted that a Canadian P-3 aircraft had “detected underwater noises in the search area” and that ROV (remote operated vehicle) operations had been “relocated in an attempt to explore the origin of the noises”.
Those ROV searches had “yielded negative results but continue”, the coastguard said, adding that the data from the aircraft had been “shared with US Navy experts for further analysis which will be considered in future search plans”.
Canadian P-3 aircraft detected underwater noises in the search area. As a result, ROV operations were relocated in an attempt to explore the origin of the noises. Those ROV searches have yielded negative results but continue. 1/2
— USCGNortheast (@USCGNortheast) June 21, 2023
Estimates suggest as little as a day’s worth of oxygen could be left if the vessel is still functioning.
It is unclear whether or how rescue teams could reach the submersible if it is on the ocean floor.
However, some experts have suggested the fact that a sonar buoy relatively close to the sea’s surface picked up the banging noises could mean the Titan is not too deep.
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Joe MacInnis, who has made two trips to the wreck of the Titanic, has said Paul-Henri Nargeolet, one of the five onboard the submersible, is an “extraordinary leader” in a crisis.
“He’s been in all kinds of problematic situations and he’s resolved them … He’s the guy you want next to your side in this kind of situation,” MacInnis told CNN.
He said the five would be:
… conserving energy. Resting, breathing as little as possible, and trying to keep calm. That is the most important thing.”
The three biggest risks for a deep ocean dive were fire, hull failure and getting entangled in a wreck, MacInnis said, adding that news that a Canadian plane had detected banging noises was heartening:
We’re all caught in this swirl of emotions from sadness to hope, fear, uncertainty … There’s some possible promise in what we’ve just heard.
Here are some undated photographs of the Titan submersible and its interior provided by its operator, OceanGate Expeditions:
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At least five vessels are now at the Titanic wreck site, Sky News has reported, with four more underway but unlikely to reach the area on Wednesday.
Sky said marine tracking data showed the research vessel Polar Prince, the Titan submersible’s “mother ship”, was at the site, along with a Bahamian pipe-laying vessel, Deep Energy, and a commercial Vessel, Skandi Vinland.
The Canadian coastguard vessels John Cabot and Atlantic Merlin arrived overnight, while the French research craft L’Atalante – carrying a deep-sea diving robot submersible – should reach the scene in the evening.
Four others, including two more Canadian coastguard vessels, a Canadian navy ship and a private offshore support vessel, looked unlikely to arrive until Thursday, Sky said.
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An oceanographer has told the BBC the underwater noises give hope that those on board are still alive.
“There are plenty of sound sources in the ocean, but it does give hope,” Simon Boxall, a senior lecturer in oceanography at the University of Southampton, told the World Service.
“I think one of the scenarios that everyone feared was that the submersible had basically imploded. So it does give some hope that this is still a rescue operation, rather than just a recovery operation.”
Here is the latest on the search from the Associated Press:
A Canadian military surveillance aircraft detected underwater noises as a massive search continued on Wednesday in a remote part of the North Atlantic for a submersible that vanished while taking five people down to the wreck of the Titanic.
A statement from the US Coast Guard did not elaborate on what rescuers believed the noises could be, though it offered a glimmer of hope for those lost abroad the Titan as estimates suggest as little as a day’s worth of oxygen could be left if the vessel is still functioning.
Meanwhile, questions remain about how teams could reach the lost submersible, which could be as deep as about 12,500ft (3,800 metres) below the surface. Newly uncovered allegations also suggest there had been significant warnings made about vessel safety during its development.
The Coast Guard said a Canadian P-3 Orion had “detected underwater noises in the search area”. Searchers then moved an underwater robot to that area to search. However, those searches “have yielded negative results but continue”.
“The data from the P-3 aircraft has been shared with our US Navy experts for further analysis which will be considered in future search plans,” the Coast Guard said.
Rolling Stone magazine, citing what it described as internal US Department of Homeland Security emails on the search, said that teams heard “banging sounds in the area every 30 minutes”.
Underwater sounds can come from a variety of sources but the reports have sparked hope in some, including Richard Garriott de Cayeux, the president of the Explorers Club who said it had “much greater confidence” now after speaking to officials in Congress, the US military and the White House.
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OceanGate has described the Titan as “the largest of any deep diving submersible” with an “unparalleled safety feature” that assesses the integrity of the hull throughout every dive.
Made of titanium and filament wound carbon fiber, the sub is less than 7 metres long and weighs 9,072kg in the air but is ballasted to be neutrally buoyant once it reaches the seafloor, the company says.
It is capable of diving 4km (2.4 miles) “with a comfortable safety margin”, according to court documents filed by the company in April.
The Titan is intended to only hold five people for a one-day expedition: two hours to reach the Titanic, a few hours exploring the wreck, then a two-hour trip back up.
Video recorded last year by CBS shows a small chamber with about as much space inside as a minivan, no seating, and passengers sitting on the floor.
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Two Britons who have visited the wreck of the Titanic have expressed confidence in the submersible’s crew and said there is a chance they will be recovered.
Dik Barton, the first British diver to see the Titanic wreck, told ITV’s Good Morning Britain it a “dangerous” and “hostile” place to be and he “100%” felt in danger during previous expeditions.
“There’s a local ebb and current of water which moves around, it’s not consistent,” Barton said. “The strength of the submersible is relatively limited. The thrusters are quite strong but, at the end of the day, you have to conserve your power because it’s your life support system and navigation system.”
Barton said he was with Paul-Henry Nargeolet, reported to be on board the Titan, calling him “an extremely capable submersible operator pilot” who had been down to the wreck 37 times.
“I have enormous respect for him and his ability, and, quite frankly, if there’s anybody I’d ever want to be in a position, God forbid, in this circumstance then it would be [Paul-Henry].
Oisin Fanning told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he had also been on the submersible with Nargeolet and OceanGate’s chief executive and founder Stockton Rush.
“The two guys on the sub currently, so Paul and Stockton, are both consummate professionals,” he said. “I mean, to be honest, if I was in trouble, I’d want to be on a sub with them.”
He added: “They will be conserving energy from day one. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the oxygen lasts a lot longer because they’ll know exactly what to do … I think there is a very good chance they will be found. These are not fly-by-nighters, these are very highly professional people.”
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What we know about the search operation
A major search and rescue operation is under way for the Titan. Here is what we know so far:
The US Coast Guard, US Navy and Canadian Coast Guard are coordinating the search with input from OceanGate, the submersible’s operator.
Deep Energy, a pipe-laying vessel with underwater capabilities, and Polar Prince, the vessel the Titan launched from, are on the scene. Other craft, including a Canadian vessel with a mobile decompression chamber and the French research ship Atalante, which has an underwater robot that can descend to 4,000 metres, are en route.
The US Navy is sending a Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System, designed to recover heavy undersea objects such as aircraft or small vessels, and the US military is sending unspecified assets.
Two US C-130 aircraft are providing air support and carrying out search and rescue flights, as well as two Canadian planes.
ROVs (remote operated underwater vehicles) from the British company Magellan, which specialises in deep ocean investigations, imaging and recovery operations, have been offered but are mostly in Europe so would take time to reach the area.
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Here are brief profiles of the five people onboard the Titan, courtesy of the Associated Press:
Stockton Rush founded OceanGate Inc in 2009 to provide crewed submersibles for undersea researchers and explorers. He is the vessel’s pilot and has a background in aerospace and technology.
In an interview with CBS last year, Rush defended the safety of his sub but said nothing is without risk. “What I worry about most are things that will stop me from being able to get to the surface – overhangs, fish nets, entanglement hazard,” he said.
Described as “a real pioneer” and “a risk-taker” by friends, at 19 Rush became the youngest jet transport rated pilot in the world in 1981, and flew commercial jets in college, according to his company biography.
Hamish Harding lives in Dubai in the UAE. He 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. In a Facebook post on Saturday, Harding said he was “proud” to be part of the Titan mission to the Titanic.
Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, father and son, are members of one of Pakistan’s most prominent families. Their firm, Dawood Hercules Corp, based in Karachi, is involved in agriculture, petrochemicals and telecommunication infrastructure.
Shahzada Dawood also is on the board of trustees for the California-based SETI Institute, which searches for extraterrestrial intelligence, and a member of the global advisory board at the Prince’s Trust International, founded by King Charles III to address youth unemployment.
Paul-Henri Nargeolet is a former French navy officer who is considered a Titanic expert after making multiple trips to the wreckage over several decades.
He is director of underwater research for E/M Group and RMS Titanic Inc, has completed 37 dives to the wreck and supervised the recovery of 5,000 artefacts, according to his company profile.
He led the first recovery expedition to the Titanic in 1987 while with the French Institute for Research and Exploitation of the Sea, and was expedition leader on the most technologically advanced dive to wreck in 2010, using high-resolution sonar and 3D optical imaging.
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The Titan could be in extremely deep water: the wreck of the Titanic, where the submersible with its five passengers was heading, has lain on the seabed at a depth of 3,800 metres since the liner struck an iceberg and sank in 1912.
Search teams have detected underwater sounds, the US Coast Guard has said, as the clock ticked down to the last 24 hours of the craft’s presumed oxygen supply.
Canadian aircraft detected the sounds, the Coast Guard said. Robotic undersea search operations have been diverted to the area but there was still no tangible sign of the Titan, it added.
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OceanGate Expeditions, which operates the Titan, was repeatedly warned that there might be catastrophic safety problems posed by the way it was developed, the Associated Press has reported.
The undersea exploration company, based in Everett, Washington, has been making yearly voyages to the Titanic since 2021.
David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations, wrote an engineering report in 2018 that said the craft under development needed more testing and that passengers might be endangered when it reached “extreme depths,” according to a lawsuit filed that year in the US district court in Seattle.
OceanGate sued Lochridge that year, accusing him of breaching a non-disclosure agreement, and he filed a counterclaim alleging that he was wrongfully fired for raising questions about testing and safety. The case settled on undisclosed terms several months after it was filed.
Lochridge’s concerns mainly focused on the company’s decision to rely on sensitive acoustic monitoring – cracking or popping sounds made by the hull under pressure – to detect flaws, rather than a scan of the hull.
Lochridge said the company told him no equipment existed that could perform such a test on the 5in-thick (12.7cm-thick) carbon-fiber hull.
“This was problematic because this type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is about to fail – often milliseconds before an implosion – and would not detect any existing flaws prior to putting pressure on to the hull,” Lochridge’s counterclaim said.
Further, the craft was designed to reach depths of 4,000 meters (13,123ft), where the Titanic rested. But, according to Lochridge, the passenger viewport was only certified for depths of up to 1,300 metres (4,265ft), and OceanGate would not pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport certified for 4,000 metres.
OceanGate’s choices would “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible,” the counterclaim said.
However, the company said in its complaint that Lochridge “is not an engineer and was not hired or asked to perform engineering services on the Titan”.
Updated
Here’s a recap of developments overnight:
Underwater noises have been detected by a Canadian aircraft in the search area for the missing submersible, according to the US Coast Guard. Searches yielded negative results but will continue. The data has been shared with the US Navy experts for further analysis, the Coast Guard said.
Search crews have heard banging sounds at 30-minute intervals, according to US media. CNN and Rolling Stone cited internal government memos saying banging had been detected, and reported that after additional devices were deployed four hours later, noises were still heard. The memos did not clarify when on Tuesday the banging was heard, or for how long.
The Explorers Club, of which two passengers in the missing sub are members, says there is “cause for hope” based on field data, asserting that “likely signs of life have been detected at the site”.
The submersible’s hatch appears to be bolted from the outside. So even if the sub has surfaced and is spotted by search operations, the danger is not over, as the crew inside would still need to rely on emergency oxygen to breathe until the hatch is opened by rescue teams.
The Titan crew is estimated to be down to about 30 hours of breathable air. Ten hours ago, Coast Guard officials said the crew of the missing submersible had about 40 hours of breathable air left.
So far, more than 25,900 sq km of sea has been searched by aircraft for the missing vessel – part of a unified command of aircraft and ships of the US Coast Guard, US Navy, Canadian Coast Guard and OceanGate Expedition.
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Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of the search for the submersible vessel Titan that went missing during a voyage to the wreck of the Titanic with five people onboard.
Rescue teams are continuing the search for the OceanGate Expeditions tourist submersible, which was reported overdue on Sunday evening about 435 miles south of St John’s, Newfoundland.
Those onboard Titan are believed to be British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58; 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.
Authorities have not confirmed the identity of any passenger. On Tuesday, officials estimated the five people onboard had about 40 hours of breathable air remaining.
We’ll bring you updates on the search as they happen.
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