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Here’s How You Can Visit the Wreck of the Titanic—for $125,000

A series of expeditions will take tourists down to the ill-fated ship in 2021

Courtesy of NOAA/Institute for Exploration/University of Rhode Island (NOAA/IFE/URI)

You’re probably familiar with the RMS Titanic: in 1912, the world’s largest ocean liner of the day embarked on her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York, during which she struck an iceberg, sank, and ultimately took more than 1,500 lives. The Titanic’s final resting place remained a mystery until 1985, when American marine geologist Robert Ballard and French oceanographer Jean-Louis Michel discovered the wreck in the crushing depths of the frigid North Atlantic, nearly 2.5 miles beneath the surface of the sea. 

Rather unsurprisingly, visiting the Titanic has become a bucket-list trip for maritime historians, oceanographers, and, well, anyone who has deep enough pockets to go. However, expeditions are rare: only one team has visited the site in-person in the last 15 years. But all that’s about to change.

OceanGate Expeditions , a company that provides well-heeled clients with once-in-a-lifetime underwater experiences, has announced a series of six trips to the Titanic via submersible in 2021. Each has space for nine paying tourists, whose $125,000 tickets will help offset the cost of the expeditions (and put a pretty penny in the pocket of OceanGate owner Stockton Rush).

OceanGate’s expeditions will each run for 10 days out of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada. Nine tourists, who are actually dubbed “mission specialists” on this expedition, will join the expedition crew on each sailing, and they’ll be expected to participate in the research efforts—this isn’t just a sightseeing affair. OceanGate’s goal is to extensively document the Titanic wreck before it disintegrates entirely due to a deep-sea bacteria that eats iron, which researchers are concerned might happen within the next few decades. As this is a scientific project, mission specialists will have to meet certain physical criteria to ensure their compatibility with the expedition, not to mention training, which includes a test dive.

On each expedition, each mission specialist will be able to partake in a single six- to eight-hour dive to the Titanic via the private Titan submarine, which includes the 90-minute descent and 90-minute ascent. The sub seats five—a pilot, a scientist or researcher, and three mission specialists—and it does have a small, semi-private bathroom for emergencies, in case you were wondering.

Now, it should be known that this isn’t OceanGate’s first attempt to visit the iconic wreck: two previous expeditions had to be scrubbed. (In 2018, the sub was hit by lightning, and its electrical systems were fried, and in 2019, there were issues with sourcing a ship for the expedition.) But hey, perhaps the third time's the charm!

Several international treaties protect the Titanic—the wreck sits in international waters—but their primary goal is to prevent looters and illegal salvage operations from damaging and disrespecting the wreck. However, in terms of tourism, it’s actually perfectly legal to visit the wreck, so long as the expedition doesn’t intrude upon it (i.e., land on the deck or enter the hull.)

“A review of the International Agreement on Titanic, as well as the 2001 UNESCO Convention on Underwater Cultural Heritage, would reveal that non-intrusive visits do not even require a permit or authorization,” said Ole Varmer, a retired legal advisor to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who was instrumental in negotiating the legal protection of the wreck. “The scope of the prohibition against commercial exploitation of underwater cultural heritage is to prevent unauthorized salvage and looting; it does not include non-intrusive visits regardless of whether they are for-profit or not.”

In terms of OceanGate Expeditions, the company is working with NOAA, the federal agency in charge of implementing the International Agreement on Titanic for U.S.-based Titanic activities, to ensure it follows all protocols set down by that agreement.

There are two major factors to consider regarding ethically visiting the Titanic. First, it’s a memorial site to the lives lost during the disaster, so the wreck should be treated with respect. But that, of course, is true of all memorial sites around the world.

“Speaking as one who visited Titanic’s wreck twice during RMS Titanic, Inc.'s 1993 and 1996 Research and Recovery expeditions, I see nothing unethical about visiting the wreck, nor about helping to defray the significant expense of bringing a visitor to the wreck,” explained Charles Haas, president of the Titanic International Society. “People around the world learn by seeing and visiting. They pay for access to museums, cathedrals, monuments, exhibitions, and, yes, final resting places.”

But second, it’s a fragile piece of cultural heritage. It should be protected—the expedition organizer must take appropriate steps to ensure that it won’t disturb the wreck.

“In the past, submersibles visiting the site by RMS Titanic, Inc. [the only company legally allowed to salvage the wreck], and others have rested on the deck of the hull portions,” says Varmer. “That practice has likely caused some harm and exacerbated the deterioration of the site.  Hopefully, that will no longer be practiced or permitted.”

Per OceanGate’s description of its expeditions, the company’s submersible won’t disturb the wreck, so if you have $125,000 lying around, fee; free to spring for the bucket-list trip of 2021!

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What is submersible tourism? The Titanic expedition, explained.

How common are deep-sea expeditions like the titan’s where else do submersibles go.

Seeing the wreck of the Titanic firsthand is a journey.

One must board a submersible vessel about the size of a minivan built to withstand the pressure of descending nearly two and a half miles into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean . It takes about two hours to reach the sunken ship and another two to get back to the surface, plus time for exploration.

And even with a price tag of a quarter of a million dollars, there has been no shortage of people with interest for such an adventure. Philippe Brown, founder of the luxury travel company Brown and Hudso , said there’s a long wait list for the OceanGate Expeditions submersible experience at the center of the world’s attention. The vessel, called the Titan, vanished Sunday in the North Atlantic with five onboard , triggering a wide-reaching search mission that ended Thursday, when the Coast Guard said a remotely operated vehicle discovered debris from the vessel on the ocean floor. Pieces of the submersible indicated it had imploded in a “catastrophic event," Coast Guard officials said. A spokesperson for OceanGate said the pilot and passengers “have sadly been lost."

For the world’s richest and most intrepid travelers, a submersible trip is not so far-fetched, says Roman Chiporukha, co-founder of Roman & Erica, a travel company for ultrawealthy clients with annual membership dues starting at $100,000.

“These are the people who’ve scaled the seven peaks, they’ve crossed the Atlantic on their own boat,” Chiporukha said. The typical vacation of the ultrawealthy, like a beach getaway on the Italian Riviera or St. Barts, “really doesn’t do it for them,” he added.

That description fits tycoon Hamish Harding , who was among the five people on Titan. An avid adventurer who’s thoroughly explored the South Pole and the Mariana Trench, Harding was also on the fifth spaceflight of Blue Origin , the private space company founded by Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Capt. Hamish Harding (@actionaviationchairman)

Harding and the Titan journey represent the extreme end of the submersible tourism industry, which has been growing in popularity since the 1980s. Ofer Ketter , a longtime submersibles pilot and co-founder of SubMerge , a firm that provides consulting and operations of private submersibles, says such deep-sea journeys are rare in comparison to those in more tropical locations. For example, the luxury tour operator Kensington Tours offers a $700,000, 10-day yacht trip that includes a 600-plus-foot dive in a submersible in the Bahamas to explore the Exumas ocean floor.

Here’s what else to know about the industry.

Deep water, high pressure: Why the Titanic sub search is so complex

Missing Titanic submersible

The latest: After an extensive search, the Coast Guard found debris fields that have been indentified as the Titan submersible. OceanGate, the tour company, has said all 5 passengers are believed dead.

The Titan: The voyage to see the Titanic wreckage is eight days long, costs $250,000 and is open to passengers age 17 and older. The Titan is 22 feet long, weighs 23,000 pounds and “has about as much room as a minivan,” according to CBS correspondent David Pogue. Here’s what we know about the missing submersible .

The search: The daunting mission covers the ocean’s surface and the vast depths beneath. The search poses unique challenges that are further complicated by the depths involved. This map shows the scale of the search near the Titanic wreckage .

The passengers: Hamish Harding , an aviation businessman, aircraft pilot and seasoned adventurer, posted on Instagram that he was joining the expedition and said retired French navy commander Paul-Henri Nargeolet was also onboard. British Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son, Suleman, 19, were also on the expedition, their family confirmed. The CEO of OceanGate , the submersible expedition company, was also on the vessel. Here’s what we know about the five missing passengers.

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Missing Titanic submersible: what is the Titan tourist sub and what might have happened to it?

The five-person craft has 96 hours of oxygen on board and can dive to depths of 4km to explore wreckage of the Titanic

• Missing Titanic sub – latest updates

Search and rescue teams are racing to find a tourist submersible that went missing with five people on board during a dive to explore the wreck of the Titanic.

Contact with the Titan submersible was lost 1 hour 45 minutes into its dive on Sunday afternoon, according to the US Coast Guard. Here’s what we know about the vessel and what might have happened.

What is the Titan sub and what can it do?

The Titan is a research and survey submersible that can carry five people, usually a pilot and four “mission specialists” who can include archaeologists, marine biologists or anyone who can afford the experience as a tourist.

Made of “titanium and filament wound carbon fibre”, the 6.7-metre (22ft) craft weighs 10,432kg (23,000lbs), equivalent to about six average-size cars, and is capable of diving to depths of 4,000 metres (13,120ft) “with a comfortable safety margin”, according to operator OceanGate. It uses four electric thrusters to move around, and has a battery of cameras, lights and scanners to explore its environment. OceanGate says Titan’s viewport is “the largest of any deep diving submersible” and that its technology provides an “unrivalled view” of the deep ocean.

It has a 96-hour bottled oxygen supply, as of roughly 6am Sunday local time, according to David Concannon, an adviser to trip operator OceanGate, which would in theory last until Thursday morning . However, that limit would be affected by the breathing rate of those inside the craft, especially if there are tourists onboard with limited diving experience.

What might have gone wrong?

It is too early to say what has happened but experts have offered several of the most likely scenarios, from becoming tangled in wreckage of the Titanic, to a power failure or an issue with the sub’s communications system.

The wreckage of the Titanic, which lies about 3,800 metres (12,500ft) down on the ocean floor is surrounded by debris from the disaster more than a century ago. “There are parts of it all over the place. It’s dangerous,” said Frank Owen OAM, a retired Royal Australian Navy official and submarine escape and rescue project director.

Contact was lost 1 hour 45 minutes into the Titan’s trip, suggesting the crew may have been close to, or at, the bottom, says Owen. The Titan has a maximum speed of three knots, but would be slower the deeper it goes.

In the case of becoming tangled, or a power or communications failure, the Titan would be equipped with drop weights, which can be released in an emergency, creating enough buoyancy to take it to the surface. The Titan has an array of signals, lighting, reflectors and other equipment it can use once on the surface to attract attention.

Another scenario is that there has been a leak in the pressure hull, in which case the prognosis is not good, said Alistair Greig, a professor of marine engineering at University College London.

“If it has gone down to the seabed and can’t get back up under its own power, options are very limited,” Greig said. “While the submersible might still be intact, if it is beyond the continental shelf, there are very few vessels that can get that deep, and certainly not divers.”

Chris Parry, a retired rear admiral with the British Royal Navy, told Sky News a seabed rescue was “a very difficult operation”.

“The actual nature of the seabed is very undulating. Titanic herself lies in a trench. There’s lots of debris around. So trying to differentiate with sonar in particular and trying to target the area you want to search in with another submersible is going to be very difficult indeed.”

What can be done to find it?

US and Canadian aircraft are searching the area, as well as large ships, but the hunt was “complex” because crews do not know if the vessel has surfaced, meaning they must scour both the surface and the ocean depths, said Rear Admiral John Mauger, first district commander of the US Coast Guard, overseeing the search-and-rescue operation.

Concannon said officials were working to get a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that can reach a depth of 6,000 metres (about 20,000ft) to the site as soon as possible.

These ROVs are dropped over the side of a vessel, to which it is connected by a “umbilical cord” that enables a pilot to operate its thrusters and also relay data in real-time from its sonar and camera systems.

However, the amount of wreckage of the Titanic on the ocean floor means it could take time to discern what is debris and what is the Titan. The search teams do at least have a starting point; the vessel’s position would have been tracked until the moment contact was lost.

The company’s managing director, Mark Butler, told the AP: “There is still plenty of time to facilitate a rescue mission, there is equipment on board for survival in this event,” Butler said. “We’re all hoping and praying he comes back safe and sound.”

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Follow the timeline of the Titan submersible’s journey from departure to tragic discovery

A submersible carrying five people to the Titanic imploded near the site of the shipwreck and killed everyone on board, authorities said Thursday, bringing a tragic end to a saga that included an urgent around-the-clock search and a worldwide vigil for the missing vessel. (June 22)

The Titan submersible was touted for its unconventional design. After its catastrophic underwater implosion that killed five people, the question remains, was the design destined for disaster? (June 23) (AP Video/Production: Rodrique Ngowi)

The U.S. Coast Guard says a debris field has been found near the Titanic as rescuers search for a missing submersible en route to the ship’s wreckage. The Coast Guard put the statement on Twitter on Thursday. (June 22)

FILE - This photo provided by OceanGate Expeditions shows a submersible vessel named Titan used to visit the wreckage site of the Titanic. The wrecks of the Titanic and the Titan sit on the ocean floor, separated by 1,600 feet (490 meters) and 111 years of history. How they came together unfolded over an intense week that raised temporary hopes and left lingering questions. (OceanGate Expeditions via AP, File)

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FILE - The Titanic leaves Southampton, England, on her maiden voyage on April 10, 1912. The wrecks of the Titanic and the Titan sit on the ocean floor, separated by 1,600 feet (490 meters) and 111 years of history. How they came together unfolded over an intense week that raised temporary hopes and left lingering questions. (AP Photo/File)

FILE - This 2004 photo provided by the Institute for Exploration, Center for Archaeological Oceanography/University of Rhode Island/NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration, shows the remains of a coat and boots in the mud on the sea bed near the Titanic’s stern. The wrecks of the Titanic and the Titan sit on the ocean floor, separated by 1,600 feet (490 meters) and 111 years of history. How they came together unfolded over an intense week that raised temporary hopes and left lingering questions. (Institute for Exploration, Center for Archaeological Oceanography/University of Rhode Island/NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration, File)

FILE - In this satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies, from top to bottom, the vessels Horizon Arctic, Deep Energy and Skandi Vinland search for the missing submersible Titan, Thursday, June 22, 2023, in the Atlantic Ocean. The wrecks of the Titanic and the Titan sit on the ocean floor, separated by 1,600 feet (490 meters) and 111 years of history. How they came together unfolded over an intense week that raised temporary hopes and left lingering questions. (Satellite image ©2023 Maxar Technologies via AP, File)

The wrecks of the Titanic and the Titan sit on the ocean floor, separated by 1,600 feet (490 meters) and 111 years of history. How they came together unfolded over an intense week that raised temporary hopes and left lingering questions.

THE BUILDUP

The Polar Prince, a Canadian icebreaker ship, steamed out of Newfoundland on Friday, June 16, towing the experimental Titan submersible and carrying the five-man team headed to explore the iconic ocean liner’s watery gravesite. Three missions involving other teams had been scrapped due to bad weather in the previous four weeks, but the latest OceanGate Expeditions group was hopeful.

“A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow,” renowned adventurer Hamish Harding said Saturday on Instagram. “More expedition updates to follow IF the weather holds!”

THE DIVE DOWN

Moving about the Polar Prince, mission participants were required to wear water-activated life vests, bright orange jackets, helmets and steel-toed boots, said Arnie Weissmann, a journalist who spent eight days aboard the support ship in May before his mission was aborted. Just before a dive, they’d change into fleece vests, black flight suits bearing the OceanGate logo and warm socks — no shoes allowed on the submersible.

The team was carried to the Titan’s launch and recovery platform by one of two inflatable dinghies named Stewie and Max. Once inside, they would sit on a platform, with their legs crossed or out straight.

“You could not be in that thing if you’re claustrophobic,” Weissmann said. “It’s literally like being in a tin can because it’s got rounded sides.”

The Titan submerged at 8 a.m. EDT Sunday, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

“Once the submersible is launched you will begin to see alienlike lifeforms whizz by the viewport as you sink deeper and deeper into the ocean,” the company wrote on its website when it advertised the expedition. “The descent takes approximately two hours but it feels like the blink of an eye.”

On Sunday, the vessel lost contact with the Polar Prince around 10:45 a.m.

At 5:40 p.m., nearly three hours after the Titan was expected to resurface and nearly eight hours after the last communication, the Polar Prince notified the U.S. Coast Guard that the vessel was overdue, setting off an intense international search and rescue.

After the craft was reported missing, the U.S. Navy analyzed its acoustic data and found an anomaly that was “consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,” a senior Navy official later told The Associated Press. Though it wasn’t made public at the time, the Navy passed on that information on Sunday to the Coast Guard, which continued its search because the Navy did not consider the data to be definitive, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive technology.

By Monday afternoon, a C-130 Hercules aircraft from North Carolina and a Canadian P8 aircraft with underwater sonar equipment joined the search. Tuesday brought better weather and increased visibility, and by that morning, 10,000 square miles (25,900 square kilometers) had been searched.

A U.S. Air National Guard crew arrived that day, as did a Bahamian research vessel, Deep Energy, which deployed camera-equipped, remote-operated robots.

Meanwhile, sonar equipment detected banging noises Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, sparking hope that those aboard the Titan were still alive.

“We are smack dab in the middle of search and rescue, and we’ll continue to put every available asset that we have in an effort to find the Titan and the crew members,” Captain Jamie Frederick of the First Coast Guard District said at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

By then, crews had scoured an area twice the size of Connecticut in waters 2½ miles (4 kilometers) deep. More resources were on the way, including multiple remote-operated vehicles, a salvage system capable of recovering heavy undersea objects and a mobile hyperbaric recompression chamber. Time was running out. The submersible was only equipped with enough air to last until sometime the next morning.

THE DISCOVERY:

On Thursday morning, a robotic vehicle discovered the tail cone of the Titan on the ocean floor, followed by the front and back ends of the Titan’s hull.

“The debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” said Rear Adm. John Mauger of the First Coast Guard District.

On its website before the expedition, OceanGate told future participants what to expect upon resurfacing.

“Once on deck, you will be welcomed back by the expedition crew and be able to share the story of your incredible accomplishment,” said the company, which already had scheduled dates for a 2024 expedition.

On Thursday, the company issued a statement mourning those killed, including company CEO and pilot Stockton Rush. In addition to Rush and Harding, the others on board were Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet and two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood.

“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” OceanGate said. “We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”

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Titanic submarine tour company OceanGate Expeditions: What to know

Voyage is oceangate's fifth expedition to the wreck of the titanic this year.

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A search and rescue mission is underway for a submersible that was reported missing in the Atlantic Ocean while taking tourists to the submerged wreck of the Titanic on Monday.

The sub belongs to OceanGate Expeditions, a company that provides crewed submersible services for exploration, industry and research purposes. The U.S. Coast Guard is participating in the search and has reported that five people are aboard the vessel, including one crew member and four "mission specialists." An air search is underway and several ships are heading to the area to assist. 

OceanGate’s expeditions to the Titanic depart from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to the wreck of the Titanic about 370 miles away. The trips take eight days and each dive to the wreck and ascent to the surface reportedly takes roughly eight hours. Passengers pay about $250,000 to participate in the trip, and the latest expedition to the Titanic is reportedly OceanGate’s fifth of the year.

OceanGate, which was founded in 2009 by Stockton Rush, has several custom-built submersibles including Titan, which was designed to reach depths of 13,123 feet necessary to visit the wreck of the Titanic, which lies at a depth of about 12,500 feet. The Titan utilizes SpaceX's Starlink satellite communications system when at sea.

SUBMARINE USED FOR TOURIST VISITS TO TITANIC WRECKAGE GOES MISSING IN THE ATLANTIC

A search is underway for a submersible from OceanGate Expeditions on a tourist trip to the wreck of the Titanic was reported missing after it lost contact with the research vessel it was launched from. (Image: © NOAA/Institute for Exploration/University of Rhode Island / Fox News)

The submersible is designed to surface automatically if it encounters technical problems. A Coast Guard C-130 aircraft is searching for the sub on the surface, while a P-8 Poseidon has also been dispatched from Rescue Coordination Center Halifax. The Poseidon is an aircraft that specializes in maritime patrol operations and has underwater detection capabilities it can utilize by dropping sonobuoys in a search area.

OceanGate’s website says that the Titan has life support capabilities sufficient to sustain its five-person crew for 96 hours. According to the Coast Guard, the submersible departed the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince on Sunday morning for its trip to the Titanic, and the ship lost contact with the sub after about an hour and 45 minutes. That would leave rescuers with about 72 hours left to find the sub according to reports, unless it suffered a catastrophic failure and failed to surface.

"We are exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely," OceanGate said in a statement. "Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families. We are deeply thankful for the extensive assistance we have received from several government agencies and deep sea companies in our efforts to reestablish contact with the submersible. We are working toward the safe return of the crewmembers."

26-YEAR-OLD TITANIC MYSTERY FINALLY SOLVED BY DIVERS

Aside from its trips to the Titanic, OceanGate’s website lists several expeditions that its submersibles have conducted in recent years.

It lists expeditions in spring 2022 and fall 2023 for its "Four Subs Project" – a mission to document the wrecks of four historic submarines in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Rhode Island, including one German U-boat from World War II .

The Titanic sank after striking an iceberg in the Atlantic north of Newfoundland in April 1912. Between 1,491 and 1,513 persons died during the wreck. The wreck is lying 4000 meters.  (Getty Images / Getty Images)

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OceanGate also lists expeditions to Hudson Canyon off the coast of New York City that interested tourists may inquire about.

In years past, OceanGate expeditions have occurred in the Salish Sea near Friday Harbor, Washington; the wreck of the Andrea Doria near Nantucket, Massachusetts ; a wrecked steamboat in Lake Laberge in the Yukon Territory, Canada; a CIA diver lockout chamber off Catalina Island, California; and more.

FOX Business’ Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.

With a Titanic Tourist Vessel Missing, Here’s What to Know About Submersibles

R escuers are racing against time to locate five people onboard a commercial vessel that has gone missing in the Atlantic Ocean during an expedition to view the shipwreck of the Titanic.

The Titan—a submersible belonging to U.S. company OceanGate—is a 22 ft.-long watercraft used for site survey and inspection, as well as research and data collection. The Titan lost contact about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive, according to the U.S. Coast Guard, and the breathable air supply on board is believed to be dwindling .

As the search continued through Tuesday, sonobuoys in the ocean picked up on banging sounds that could indicate the vessel’s whereabouts. “We don’t know the source of that noise, but we’ve shared that information with Navy experts to classify it,” U.S. Coast Guard First District Commander Rear Admiral John Mauger told CBS This Morning.

Read More: ‘Likely Signs of Life’ Detected During Search for Lost Titanic Tourist Vessel

Passengers onboard have been identified as Stockton Rush, chief executive officer and founder of OceanGate Inc., and Paul-Henry Nargeolet, nicknamed PH, who is a diver and Titanic researcher.

There were also three British citizens onboard: Shahzada Dawood, 48, a member of the Prince’s Trust charity’s global advisory board; his 19-year-old son Suleman; and Hamish Harding, a billionaire businessman. The company typically charges around $250,000 to take part in its explorations of the Titanic shipwreck, which sit 12,600 ft. below the ocean’s surface.

As the search continues for the missing submersible, here’s what to know about the watercraft.

What are submersibles?

Submersibles are small, limited range watercrafts designed for a set mission that are built to allow them to operate in a specific environment, according to maritime historian Salvatore Mercogliano. These vessels are typically able to be fully submerged into water and cruise using their own power supply and air renewal system.

While some submersibles are remotely-operated—essentially manually controlled or programmed robots—these usually operate unmanned. Vessels like the missing Titan are known as human-occupied vehicles. The Titan was designed to transport five people to depths of around 2.4 miles in order to reach the Titanic shipwreck. It weighs around 11.5 tons and can also take on speeds of about 3 knots, or 3.4 miles per hour.

“It doesn’t have a lot of propulsion so it can’t sail great distances but it has just enough propulsion to sail and operate in and around the wreck and then come back to the surface,” Mercogliano told TIME.

How are submersibles different from submarines?

The primary difference between a submersible and a submarine is that the former is launched from a mother vessel, or home vessel. “It doesn’t have things like typically large propulsion systems, it doesn’t have ballast systems,” Mercogliano says. “Basically, it’s like launching a boat from a ship—a submersible is very much nested.”

Unlike submarines, submersibles also have a viewport and external cameras to view the outside space surrounding the vessel. They also have limited power reserves, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

How are submersibles safely retrieved?

Submersibles always operate in conjunction with a mother ship. They are typically launched on a raft or platform which is placed into water and ultimately descends down via four electric thrusters which help it to reach speeds of 3 knots. The vessel must remain in constant contact with the mother ship in order to coordinate a safe return. When it returns to the surface, it must be loaded back onto the surface platform.

Among other theories, experts believe that the Titan likely lost power or communication with its mother ship, the Polar Prince. Under this scenario, the Titan’s safety system would kick in, prompting the vessel to shed the weight it used to descend to the shipwreck.

Read more : See Photos of the Wreck of the Titanic When It Was First Discovered

“So in a scenario where Titan has lost communications, they dump their weights,” says Mercogliano. “They could be, for example, bobbing at the surface right now but the occupants cannot get out of that vessel because the Submersible is actually sealed from the outside.”

What are the safety regulations in place for submersibles?

Typically, marine operators must seek to have vessels “classed” by an independent body. The process would involve examining the vessel according to stringent standards and ensuring that the designs are safe. However, the Titan has not been classed in this way. OceanGate said in a blog post in 2019 that it did not seek to class the Titan because the process “does not address the operational risks.”

Instead, the company claims that “no other submersible currently utilizes real-time monitoring to monitor hull heath during a dive,” and therefore the integrity of the hull is guaranteed on each dive. It is also regarded as an experimental vessel that Mercogliano says is not bound to any particular regulations.

“Since this vessel doesn’t operate in coastal waters, it’s actually out in international waters, so there’s literally no rules and regulations that are governing it,” he says. In a 2019 profile interview for Smithsonian magazine, Rush, OceanGate’s CEO, said that there had been no injuries in the commercial submersible field for decades. “It’s obscenely safe because they have all these regulations. But it also hasn’t innovated or grown—because they have all these regulations,” he said.

But Mercogliano notes that any rules Rush may have been referring to would only apply if the vessel was in U.S. waters. “The submersible does not fly a flag, and it is not registered in any state or nation,” he said.

According to the New York Times, OceanGate was warned several times about potentially fatal outcomes of the expedition as early as January 2018, when experts became concerned about safety. The company’s own director of marine operations, David Lochridge, formulated a report that emphasized the “the potential dangers to passengers of the Titan as the submersible reached extreme depths.”

Additionally, as many as three dozen industry figures wrote a letter to Rush in March 2018, to voice their apprehension at the “experimental” approach OceanGate was using. The letter warned that the trip “could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry.”

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What we know about the tourist sub that disappeared on an expedition to the Titanic

By Emily Mae Czachor

Updated on: June 23, 2023 / 11:35 PM EDT / CBS News

Five people on board the tourist  submarine that disappeared  on an expedition to explore the  Titanic shipwreck  over the weekend did not survive a "catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," officials said Thursday.

The announcement came after the U.S. Coast Guard said the  massive search  underway in the North Atlantic had located a debris field on the sea floor, which was confirmed to be pieces of the missing sub .

"The debris field is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel," Rear Adm. John Mauger of the Coast Guard said at a briefing, offering "deepest condolences to the families." A spokesperson for OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the voyage, told reporters that the passengers, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, "have sadly been lost."

Here's what we know so far about the submersible craft and what led up to this point.

What happened?

A five-person crew on a submersible named Titan, owned by OceanGate Expeditions, submerged on a dive to the Titanic wreckage site Sunday morning, and the crew of the Polar Prince research ship lost contact with the sub about an hour and 45 minutes later, the Coast Guard   said . 

The Coast Guard first alerted mariners about the missing sub Sunday night, saying a "21 foot submarine" with a white hull was overdue and giving its last known position. "VESSELS IN VICINITY REQUESTED TO KEEP A SHARP LOOKOUT, ASSIST IF POSSIBLE," the alert message read.

The sub was lost in an area about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, in the North Atlantic, in water with a depth of about 13,000 feet, which is about level with the depth of the Titanic wreck . Amid growing concern about its  dwindling supply of breathable air , search and rescue efforts by a unified command composed of several international agencies ramped up accordingly.

The five people aboard included an operator — later identified as Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions — and four mission specialists, a term the company uses for its passengers, who paid up to $250,000 for a seat.

For days, the fate of the sub and its passengers was a mystery.

But after the debris was found, a U.S. Navy official said the Navy had detected "an acoustic anomaly consistent with an implosion" shortly after the sub lost contact with the surface Sunday, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reported. The information was relayed to the Coast Guard, which used it to narrow the radius of the search area, the official said.

Such an implosion, under the intense pressure of the depths of the sea , would have destroyed the vessel almost instantly, experts explained.

"in a fraction of a second, it's gone," Will Kohnen, chairman of the professional group the Marine Technology Society Submarine Committee, told the Reuters news agency. 

"It implodes inwards in a matter of a thousandth of a second," Kohnen said. "And it's probably a mercy, because that was probably a kinder end than the unbelievably difficult situation of being four days in a cold, dark and confined space. So, this would have happened very quickly. I don't think anybody even had the time to realize what happened." 

The Coast Guard is leading the investigation into the incident, and the National Transportation Safety Board  said Friday  it will assist.   

Who were the passengers aboard the sub? 

CBS News confirmed that the five people aboard the submersible were  Hamish Harding , a 59-year-old British billionaire, business owner and explorer; British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman; French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who had made multiple dives over the years to explore the Titanic; and Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, who was serving as pilot.

Just ahead of the Coast Guard briefing Thursday afternoon, a statement issued by OceanGate spokesperson Andrew Von Kerens offered condolences to the families of the Titan crew and recognized that all five people on board the submersible were believed to be dead.

"These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world's oceans," the company said in the statement. "Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew."

When the Coast Guard confirmed the sub's likely implosion on Thursday, Mauger said they were communicating with consulates general in both the U.K. and France.

The Dawood family, of the large Pakistan-based global business conglomerate Dawood Group, issued a statement Tuesday confirming their family members were on the expedition.

"Please continue to keep the departed souls and our family in your prayers during this difficult time of mourning," the Hussain and Kulsum Dawood family said Thursday in a statement through the Dawood Foundation. "We are truly grateful to all those involved in the rescue operations. ... The immense love and support we receive continues to help us endure this unimaginable loss."

Nargeolet, a renowned French explorer and former diver for the French Navy who was part of the first expedition to visit the Titanic wreck in 1987, was returning for another dive aboard the Titan submersible. 

In a  Facebook  post on Monday, Rory Golden, an explorer who became the first Irish diver to visit the Titanic wreckage in 2000, said he was part of the voyage but was not on the submersible that went missing.

Search and rescue efforts

Authorities  said  early Thursday morning that a Canadian vessel, Horizon Arctic, had deployed a  remotely operated underwater vehicle that reached the sea floor . The ROV ultimately located what the Coast Guard originally described as a debris field on the sea floor, which included identifiable pieces of the sub, authorities confirmed that afternoon.

"This morning, an ROV, or remote operated vehicle, from the vessel Horizon Arctic, discovered the tail cone of the Titan submersible approximately 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic on the sea floor," said Mauger at a news briefing. "The ROV subsequently found additional debris. In consultation with experts from within the unified command, the debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber."

"Upon this determination, we immediately notified the families," he added. "On behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families. I can only imagine what this has been like for them and I hope that this discovery provides some solace during this difficult time."

Mauger said authorities were "still working to develop the details for the timeline involved with this casualty and the response," and referenced the "incredibly complex operating environment along the sea floor, over two miles beneath the surface."

Paul Hankins, an undersea expert for the U.S. Navy, explained during the news conference that crews discovered "five different major pieces of debris that told us that it was the remains of the Titan." These pieces included, initially, the nose cone, which was outside of the pressure hull. 

"We then found a large debris field," Hankins said. "Within that large debris field, we found the front end bell of the pressure hull. That was our first indication that there was a catastrophic event."

A second, smaller debris field was located shortly after, and the debris found there "comprised the totality of that pressure vessel," Hankins said. 

"The debris field is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel," he said, adding that the team will continue to map the debris field area.

Asked by a reporter what the prospects were for recovering the passengers, Mauger said, "This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor, and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel. So we'll continue to work and continue to search the area down there, but I don't have an answer for prospects at this time."

Discovering the Titan debris came after multiple agencies from the U.S. and Canada spent days scouring thousands of square miles of open ocean in search of the missing sub.

The U.S. Coast Guard announced Wednesday that  underwater noises were detected  in the search area and that searches involving ROVs were  focusing on the area where the noises were heard .

On Wednesday, three more vessels had arrived to join the search, including one with side-scan sonar capabilities designed to create images of large sections of the sea floor, the Coast Guard said in a  tweet . That vessel began conducting search patterns alongside at least two others, as multiple military and other agencies worked together under a unified command. 

Frederick said Wednesday there were five "surface assets" involved in the search , and another five were expected to join the operation within the next 24 to 48 hours. He said the team also had two ROVs "actively searching," with several more due to arrive to join the search Thursday.

The Coast Guard  said  it had C-130 aircraft searching for the sub, and that the Rescue Coordination Center Halifax was assisting with a P-8 Poseidon aircraft, which has underwater detection capabilities. Canadian P-3s were also involved in the operation and deployed sonar buoys.

Just after midnight Wednesday, officials said  aircraft had detected underwater noises  in the search area, and underwater search operations were relocated as a result, though the origin of the noises remained unknown. The sounds were picked up several times Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, according to the Coast Guard. 

"With respect to the noises, specifically, we don't know what they are, to be frank with you," Frederick said. "The P-3 detected noises, that's why they're up there, that's why they're doing what they're doing, that's why there are sonar buoys in the water."

News of the vanished submersible and subsequent rescue mission originally broke Monday morning. At the time, Lt. Jordan Hart of the Coast Guard in Boston told CBS News that personnel there were leading the rescue mission, and focusing on waters off Newfoundland in eastern Canada. 

The Boston Regional Coordination Center was managing the rescue operation, as the location of the Titanic shipwreck falls within the Boston coordination center's territory, according to a  map  of jurisdictions along the East Coast of North America.

That combined search area grew to about twice the size of the state of Connecticut, and the subsurface search extended down as far as 2 and a half miles deep, Frederick said, stressing that the search and rescue teams were dealing with an incredibly complex set of circumstances.

"We also have to factor in the ever-changing weather conditions, currents and sea states that expand the search area every hour," he said earlier in the week. "There's an enormous complexity associated with this case due to the location being so far offshore and the coordination between multiple agencies and nations. We greatly appreciate the outpouring of support and offers to provide additional equipment."

What caused the noises?

Frederick acknowledged that the sounds detected underwater by Canadian aircraft could have been caused by multiple sources. 

Following the discovery of the sub debris on the sea floor, a U.S. Navy source told CBS News that the implosion would be inconsistent with banging noises heard at 30-minute intervals. Those noises, the official said, are now assessed as having come from other ships in the area.

Carl Hartsfield, an expert in underwater acoustics and the director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which is on-site at the search area as a consultant, explained that it can be challenging to differentiate between "human sounds" and "nature sounds" coming from beneath the surface.

"The ocean is a very complex place, obviously, human sounds, nature sounds, and it's very difficult to discern what the sources of those noises are at times," Hartsfield said. 

Before the sub was found, Chris Roman, an associate professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, told CBS News that, technically, it was possible that sounds from inside a submersible could have been detected, but that wasn't the only potential source of the noise.

"Sound travels very efficiently underwater. If people were intentionally making noises within the sub, it's very likely they could be detected with a sound buoy, and that position can be translated into a new search area," Roman said. But he also noted that, as Frederick mentioned in his briefing, "there's a lot of other things in the ocean that make noises."

The submarine

The unique submersible craft that disappeared was owned by OceanGate Expeditions , a company that deploys manned submarines for deep sea exploration and has in the past advertised this particular sub's voyages to carry tourists down to the wreckage of the RMS Titanic for $250,000 per seat. 

More than a century after the Titanic sank in April 1912, the wreck lies on the ocean floor about 400 miles southeast of the Newfoundland coast. 

OceanGate said recently on its website and on social media that its expedition to the shipwreck was "underway," describing the seven-night trip as a "chance to step outside of everyday life and discover something truly extraordinary." In addition to one ongoing expedition, the company had planned two others for the summer of next year, according to the site. 

Because of the sub's oxygen capacity, it can only be fully submerged for a portion of the weeklong voyage. The sub has emergency oxygen and a 96-hour sustainment capability if there's an emergency aboard, Mauger said.

In a statement Monday after news broke of the missing sub, OceanGate confirmed the missing submersible was theirs and that a rescue operation had been launched to find and recover it. The company said it was "exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely." 

"For some time, we have been unable to establish communications with one of our submersible exploration vehicles which is currently visiting the wreck site of the Titanic," said Andrew Von Kerens, a spokesperson for OceanGate. "We pray for the safe return of the crew and passengers, and we will provide updates as they are available."

Inside the Titan

Dubbed the Titan, OceanGate's deep sea vessel, was said to be the only five-person submersible in the world with the capabilities to reach the Titanic's depth, nearly 2 and a half miles beneath the ocean's surface, CBS "Sunday Mornings" correspondent David Pogue reported last year. 

BBC News reported that the vessel typically carries a pilot, three paying guests and another person described as a "content expert" by the company.  OceanGate's site says the Titan, weighing around 23,000 pounds, has the ability to reach depths of up to 4,000 meters — over 13,000 feet — and has about 96 hours of life support for a crew of five people.

Last summer, Pogue accompanied the Titan crew on the journey from Newfoundland to the site where the Titanic as lost. Several dive attempts had to be canceled when weather conditions indicated it may not be safe. At the time, he described the Titan as a one-of-a-kind submersible craft made from thick carbon fiber and coated on both ends by a dome of titanium. 

In 2018, a former employee of OceanGate Expeditions, submersible pilot David Lochridge, voiced concerns about the safety of the Titanic tour sub and filed a lawsuit against the company . 

Lochridge, who was fired by OceanGate and sued by the company for allegedly disclosing confidential information in a whistleblower complaint to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said in a court filing that the Titan would carry passengers as deep as 4,000 meters even though that depth had never been reached in a sub with its type of carbon fiber hull. According to his claim, he learned the vessel was built to withstand a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate planned to take passengers to 4,000 meters.  

Lochridge was not the only skeptic. The same year his complaint was filed, other industry leaders approached OceanGate with questions about the safety of its submersible. William Kohnen, president and CEO of Hydrospace Group, outlined his concerns in a 2018 letter to OceanGate, originally published by The New York Times, that warned of potentially "catastrophic" issues with the "experimental" sub, which was not certified. Kohnen told CBS News on Wednesday that although he did not send it, the letter was leaked to OceanGate and prompted the company to "amend a number of details that made sure the public knew" the submersible had not received its certification.

"The letter to Oceangate was meant as a professional courtesy to the CEO expressing industry concerns that the company was not following a traditional classification route for the certification of the submersible," Kohnen said. "The industry operates along an established and dynamic set of safety regulations and protocols that have served the submersible industry worldwide."

Ahead of his planned dive last summer, Pogue recalled signing paperwork that read, in part, "This experimental vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, emotional trauma, or death." 

Space inside the submarine was similar to the interior of a minivan, and, with just one button and a video game controller used to steer it, the vessel "seemed improvised, with off-the-shelf components," Pogue said.

On his voyage, the  sub was lost for a few hours , Pogue said.

"There's no GPS underwater, so the surface ship is supposed to guide the sub to the shipwreck by sending text messages," he reported at the time. "But on this dive, communications somehow broke down."

You may remember that the @OceanGateExped sub to the #Titanic got lost for a few hours LAST summer, too, when I was aboard…Here’s the relevant part of that story. https://t.co/7FhcMs0oeH pic.twitter.com/ClaNg5nzj8 — David Pogue (@Pogue) June 19, 2023

Were conditions right for the dive?

G. Michael Harris, founder of RMS Titanic, Inc. — a company that salvages artifacts from the Titanic wreckage — told CBS News on Tuesday evening that Titanic expeditions are generally conducted within a "three-month weather window" between the end of June and September, when the ocean waters are at their calmest.

Harris, who has led several expeditions to the wreckage site, questioned why the Titan's dive was conducted as early as Sunday.

"Right now, it's really early in the season. I'm not sure why OceanGate went out this soon," Harris said.

Harris also noted that when he conducts diving expeditions, he uses a transponder system, something that he believed the Titan likely did not have.

"It's a net that we navigate in so that we know where we are at all times on the wreck of the Titanic," Harris said. "We're in constant communication with the vessel up top."

Harris said the Titan was "put on a sled and dumped in the water and their only navigation is from the support ship up top."

"I don't adhere to that myself, personally," Harris said. 

Harris noted that he has worked with Nargeolet, who is listed as director of underwater research for RMS Titanic, for the past 30 years, describing him as an "all-around good guy."

Who was Hamish Harding?

Harding, the first of the passengers to be publicly identified, had previously posted on social media about joining the Titanic shipwreck expedition.

In a post shared to his  Facebook  page on Saturday, Harding wrote: "I am proud to finally announce that I joined OceanGate Expeditions for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist on the sub going down to the Titanic."

I am proud to finally announce that I joined OceanGate Expeditions for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist... Posted by Hamish Harding on  Saturday, June 17, 2023

"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," Harding's Facebook post continued. "A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow. We started steaming from St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada yesterday and are planning to start dive operations around 4am tomorrow morning. Until then we have a lot of preparations and briefings to do."

That post was Harding's most recent social media update related to the submarine trip. It included multiple photographs of him, including one that showed Harding signing his name on a banner that read "Titanic Expedition Mission V" and another that pictured the submersible vessel itself.

Richard Garriott de Cayeux, president of The Explorers Club, where Harding helped found the board of trustees, said they had spoken just a week earlier about the expedition. 

"When I saw Hamish last week at the Global Exploration Summit, his excitement about this expedition was palpable. I know he was looking forward to conducting research at the site," he said in a letter to club members after the sub's disappearance.

Harding was a veteran adventure tourist who also  traveled to space  aboard a Blue Origin rocket last year. Two years ago, he made it to the deepest part of the ocean, traveling with U.S. explorer  Victor Vescovo  to the floor of the Mariana Trench, 35,876 feet below the sea surface. That trip, in a $48 million submersible, earned both explorers the Guinness World Record for the  longest distance traveled  at the deepest part of the ocean by a crewed vessel.

"It was potentially scary, but I was so busy doing so many things — navigating and triangulating my position — that I did not really have time to be scared," Harding told  The Week  after that excursion.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Monday, June 19. Reporting contributed by Emmet Lyons, Roxana Saberi, Alex Sundby, Aimee Picchi, Aliza Chasan, Li Cohen, Caroline Hinson, Anna Noryskiewicz, Analisa Novak and other CBS News staff.

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• United States Coast Guard

Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She covers breaking news, often focusing on crime and extreme weather. Emily Mae has previously written for outlets including the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.

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What to Know About the Titan Submersible

Officials believe the vessel that set out to reach the Titanic shipwreck with five passengers suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said.

By Yonette Joseph and Eric Schmitt

A submersible watercraft with five people on board that went missing after setting out early Sunday to explore the Titanic shipwreck in the North Atlantic most likely suffered a “catastrophic implosion” with no survivors, a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman said on Thursday.

The U.S. Navy had detected “an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion” in the area of the vessel around the time communications were lost on Sunday, two senior Navy officials said on Thursday.

The identification was “not definitive,” one official said, and it was shared with the search effort. But officials made the decision to continue searching to “make every effort to save the lives on board.”

Here’s what else to know.

When and where did the submersible disappear?

The 22-foot carbon-fiber and titanium craft , called the Titan, was deployed by a Canadian expedition ship, the Polar Prince, to travel nearly 13,000 feet down to the shipwreck site, on the ocean floor off Newfoundland.

The Titan lost contact with the surface ship an hour and 45 minutes after it started to dive, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

Who was on board?

Five people were in the submersible: Stockton Rush , the founder and chief executive of OceanGate Expeditions, which operated the vessel; Hamish Harding, a British businessman and explorer; another British businessman, Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman , from one of Pakistan’s wealthiest families; and Paul-Henri Nargeolet , a French maritime expert who had been on more than 35 dives to the Titanic wreck.

OceanGate said in a statement that everyone on the submersible had “sadly been lost.”

It added: “These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans. Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”

Why was the Titan diving?

OceanGate, a private company based in Everett, Wash., organizes expeditions that can last up to nine days to travel to shipwrecks and underwater canyons.

According to the company’s website , OceanGate also provides crewed submersibles for commercial projects and scientific research.

Mr. Rush, an aerospace engineer and pilot, co-founded the company in 2009.

OceanGate called the Titan the only crewed submersible in the world that can take five people as deep as 4,000 meters — more than 13,100 feet — below the surface of the ocean.

The company has taken people on tours of the Titanic site since 2021, and guests have paid $250,000 to travel to the wreckage.

In 2018, leaders in the submersible craft industry were so worried about what they called the “experimental” approach of OceanGate that more than three dozen of them signed a letter to the company, obtained by The New York Times. They warned of possible “catastrophic” problems with the submersible’s development and the planned voyage to the Titanic wreckage.

Where is the Titanic wreck, exactly?

The R.M.S. Titanic , the biggest steamship in the world at the time, hit an iceberg four days into its first trans-Atlantic voyage in April 1912.

It sank to the bottom of the ocean, and more than 1,500 people died. The wreck was discovered in pieces in 1985, about 400 miles off Newfoundland.

Searchers scoured the sea.

The U.S. Coast Guard coordinated with the Canadian authorities and commercial vessels to search for the Titan.

A remotely operated vehicle, or R.O.V., from the Canadian vessel Horizon Arctic searched the sea floor, and a French vessel deployed its R.O.V. at the site, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Thursday on Twitter .

The U.S. Navy also sent a machine that can help recover heavy objects from the sea. Sonar buoys were deployed, and sonar was used to try to locate the submersible underwater. Aircraft from the United States and Canada, along with vessels, also scanned the ocean surface.

‘Unforgiving environment’

Search teams picked up underwater banging noises, but they did not appear to have any relation to the submersible’s wreckage, Rear Adm. John Mauger of the U.S. Coast Guard said at a news conference on Thursday.

He said a debris field found on the surface led to the discovery of the Titan’s tail cone and other pieces on the ocean floor Thursday morning, about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic wreck.

The discovery was consistent with a “catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber” in the submersible, he said, adding that it was too early to tell when the vessel imploded and that investigators were working on a time line of events.

Asked about the prospect of recovering the remains of the victims, Admiral Mauger said he did not have an answer: “This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor.”

He also said, “On behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families.”

Reporting was contributed by Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs , Daniel Victor , Derrick Bryson Taylor , Mike Ives , William J. Broad , Anna Betts , Emma Bubola , Amanda Holpuch ,  John Ismay , Jesus Jiménez , Victoria Kim , Salman Masood , Matt Richtel and  Alan Yuhas .

Yonette Joseph is a senior news editor on The New York Times’s International Desk. More about Yonette Joseph

Eric Schmitt is a senior writer who has traveled the world covering terrorism and national security. He was also the Pentagon correspondent. A member of the Times staff since 1983, he has shared four Pulitzer Prizes. More about Eric Schmitt

Titanic tourist submersible carrying 5 disappears on trip to see wreck in North Atlantic

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An intensifying search-and-rescue mission was underway Monday after a submersible watercraft used for tourist expeditions to view the wreck of the Titanic went missing Sunday with five people aboard in the North Atlantic, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard said on Twitter that it was searching for a 21-foot submersible from the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince that lost contact about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, Mass. The vessel “submerged Sunday morning, and the crew of the Polar Prince lost contact with them approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes into the vessel’s dive,” the Coast Guard wrote on Twitter.

A search-and-rescue mission is underway after a submersible used for tourist expeditions to view the Titanic wreck went missing in the North Atlantic.

One pilot or sub-commander operator and four mission specialists were on board, Coast Guard Rear Adm. John W. Mauger said in a Monday afternoon news conference. He declined to identify those on the missing vessel by name.

A C-130 aircraft is being used to conduct an aerial search both visually and with radar, according to Mauger. The Coast Guard has also coordinated with the Canadian coast guard and armed forces to deploy more assets. The Canadian coast guard also has committed a C-130 aircraft, as well as a submarine and sonar buoys to aid in the search.

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July 30, 2012

The missing vessel was designed with a 96-hour sustainment capability if there’s any emergency onboard. Mauger said officials “anticipate that there is somewhere between the 70 to full 96 hours.”

“We’re using that time, making the best use of every moment of that time to locate the vessel,” he said.

The location being searched is a “remote area” about 13,000 feet deep, making it a challenging search-and-rescue effort, he said.

The U.S. Coast Guard will continue to fly the aircraft and move additional vessels into the area over the next couple of days to help with the search.

The Guardian reported that the sub is operated by OceanGate Expeditions, a company that offers visits to the Titanic wreck .

OceanGate confirmed its vessel was missing and posted a statement on Twitter on Monday afternoon. “We are exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely,” the company said. “Our entire focus is on the crew members in the submersible and their families.”

pic.twitter.com/JmH8e47zuI — OceanGate Expeditions (@OceanGateExped) June 19, 2023

The Joint Rescue Coordination Center in Halifax, Canada, received a call at 9:13 p.m. Sunday from the maritime rescue coordination center in Boston requesting “assistance for the search of the overdue research sub,” said Lt. Cmdr. Len Hickey. The sub had lost contact with its surface vessel, Hickey said.

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Sept. 16, 2014

The center provided a fixed-wing aircraft and a Canadian coast guard vessel to aid in the search.

Hickey was unable to provide more information and referred additional questions to the Coast Guard‘s Boston base, which is leading the effort.

David Concannon, an advisor to the company, said OceanGate lost contact with the sub Sunday morning. In an email to the Associated Press on Monday afternoon, he said it had a 96-hour oxygen supply. Concannon was supposed to be on the dive but had other commitments. He said officials are working to get a remotely operated vehicle that can reach a depth of about 20,000 feet to the site as soon as possible.

The Titanic , which sank in 1912, is about 13,000 feet below the surface at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean nearly 400 nautical miles off the Newfoundland coast.

According to OceanGate’s website , which worked intermittently Monday, a deep-sea voyage to view the Titanic wreck was underway.

Representatives for the Coast Guard did not immediately return repeated requests for comment, nor did OceanGate Expeditions representatives.

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According to its website, OceanGate is a privately owned company in Everett, Wash., established in 2009, that operates a trio of five‑person submersibles for “site survey, scientific research, film production and exploration travel.” Its vessels can reach about 13,123 feet deep, the company said.

The company offers an eight-day, seven-night voyage to the Titanic wreck, according to its website. The trip runs about $250,000, according to the site.

“Become one of the few to see the Titanic with your own eyes,” the company says on its Titanic expeditions page.

The trip sets off from and returns to the city of St. John’s in Newfoundland, and takes “intrepid travelers” aboard a submersible called the Titan to explore the site of the Titanic wreck. Dive expeditions can begin as early as Day 3, according to the website. The Titan carries up to five people, the website said.

The website states no previous dive experience is necessary but details some physical requirements for passengers, including being able to board small boats in rough seas and sit for long periods of time. Explorers must also be at least 18, the website said.

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Not surprisingly, they called it Operation Titanic.

Sept. 10, 1985

Those embarking on the expedition receive a vessel orientation and safety briefing after boarding, the company said on its website.

Hamish Harding, the chairman of Action Aviation, a Dubai-based company dealing in aviation sales and acquisitions, is among those on the expedition, according to Harding’s social media posts and confirmed by Action Aviation.

The expedition left from St. Johns on Friday, Harding wrote on his Facebook page . A “weather window” had opened up, allowing for a dive to the wreck Sunday. It was likely to be the only “manned mission” this year because of the harsh winter, Harding wrote.

Action Aviation also posted on Twitter about the voyage .

“4am start this morning on the RMS Titanic Expedition Mission 5 with @oceangateexped,” Action Aviation wrote on Twitter on June 18. “The sub had a successful launch and Hamish is currently diving. Stay tuned for further updates!”

Harding wrote on Instagram that the team on the sub has “legendary explorers,” including Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a veteran and accomplished diver with more than 30 trips to the wreck site .

The Titanic was a British luxury liner that made its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912, bound for New York with 2,227 passengers and crew aboard. But the vessel, then the largest in the world, rammed an iceberg and sank in the early morning hours of April 15, killing more than 1,500 people .

In September 1985, an American and French team of researchers found the liner thousands of feet down.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Alexandra E. Petri is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer who covered trends and breaking news. She previously covered live news at the New York Times. A two-time reporting fellow with the International Women’s Media Foundation, she graduated from Penn State with a degree in journalism and international studies.

Summer Lin is a reporter on the Fast Break Desk, the Los Angeles Times’ breaking news team. Before coming to The Times, she covered breaking news for the Mercury News and national politics and California courts for McClatchy’s publications, including the Sacramento Bee. An East Coast native, Lin moved to California after graduating from Boston College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. In her free time, she enjoys hikes, skiing and a good Brooklyn bagel.

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How Could This Have Happened?

Five people died in a submersible that was only loosely regulated and may not have been inspected for safety.

The dreadful saga of the missing Titanic submersible is finally drawing to a close. On Sunday, the vessel, called the Titan, was supposed to take five people on an hours-long, 12,500-foot-deep journey to the wreckage of the Titanic, which rests at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Instead, less than two hours into the tour, the submersible lost contact with its support ship. At a press conference this afternoon, the U.S. Coast Guard announced that a remotely operated vehicle had encountered the debris of the Titan, which suggested that the passengers were killed in “a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.”

The debris of the submersible was discovered on the seafloor, about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic. For days, rescue workers had operated on the hopeful assumption that the submersible might still be intact, and that its occupants could be alive, even as their oxygen reserves began to run out. The news brings a difficult end to days of frenzied search-and-rescue efforts involving military and research vessels from multiple countries. It also underscores an important question that became more salient with each minute of the search: How, exactly, could this have happened?

In the days since the Titan lost contact with the outside world, reporters have uncovered many details about the submersible and its operator, OceanGate, a research-and-tourism company that has offered such Titanic excursions since 2021. David Pogue, a CBS journalist who traveled on the submersible last year, called the sub “janky” for its scraped-together parts, such as construction pipes serving as ballast. It had no fancy control panels, only a single button that initiates the descent, like pressing “Down” on an elevator, and was piloted using a $30 game controller. The Washington Post ’s Gene Park pointed out that such controllers are actually not so unusual for certain kinds of vehicles, even those used by the U.S. military—but the Titan’s controller appears to have been an older model, and it relied on a good Bluetooth connection, which is not the case for military craft.

And, most concerning of all, it is not clear whether the Titan was inspected for safety by outside experts. In 2018, dozens of industry experts warned OceanGate that if the company didn’t put the Titan through an independent safety assessment, its Titanic expeditions could face potentially “catastrophic” problems. Even OceanGate’s own director of marine operations was at the time worried about “the potential dangers to passengers of the Titan as the submersible reached extreme depths,” The New York Times reported this week. At least one previous dive had problems too: According to Pogue , a Titan expedition last year got lost on the seafloor for about five hours.

From the May 2004 issue: The sinking of the Estonia

Throughout it all, OceanGate and its CEO, Stockton Rush—who was among the Titan’s lost passengers—declared that innovation was more important than critics’ concerns. In a 2019 blog post , the company said it didn’t want to get the Titan certified for safety standards in part because “bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.” In interviews with Pogue, Rush said , “I think I can do this just as safely while breaking the rules” and “at some point, safety is just pure waste.” There’s no evidence that the Titan was subjected to strict regulation , either. As New York magazine has reported, submersibles are not subject to international maritime law. The United States has its own rules, but they didn’t technically apply, because the Titan launched from a Canadian ship in international waters.

(OceanGate did not respond to a request for comment about Rush’s remarks or about safety concerns regarding the Titan, nor did the company immediately respond to a request for comment about today’s announcement from the Coast Guard.)

Rush repeatedly hyped the Titan’s creative design, including a system that he said could monitor the health of its hull in real time. He and other investors spent tens of millions of dollars on OceanGate, including developing that hull, which needed to withstand the extreme pressures at the bottom of the ocean. Rush asked NASA for help, and the agency agreed , under an arrangement that allows the space agency to work with outside organizations on cutting-edge research. But NASA only “consulted on materials and manufacturing processes for the submersible,” an agency spokesperson said this week, and “did not conduct testing and manufacturing via its workforce or facilities, which was done elsewhere by OceanGate.”

Rush has said that he drew inspiration for his deep-sea adventures from the growing space-tourism industry, which has recently begun offering short jaunts beyond Earth’s atmosphere, as well as journeys to the International Space Station. There are certainly parallels between a submersible at sea and a capsule in space: Help is far away, and the environment is terrifyingly hostile. The bottom of the sea, in this case, seems even more isolated and perilous ; radio transmissions can travel through space for many light-years, but they cannot travel underwater.

Read: The Titanic sub and the draw of extreme tourism

The big difference is that space-tourism companies publicly make a big deal out of the safety measures of their craft. What they are doing privately is a different question; in 2021, for example, a Blue Origin whistleblower claimed that the company had prioritized speed over safety. (Blue Origin responded to the claims, saying its rocket was “the safest space vehicle ever designed or built.”) But those companies know that their customers have seen pictures and footage of deadly shuttle disasters, and so take pains to reassure them, even as they ask them to sign waivers that likely outline their own brand of danger in great detail. In comparison, OceanGate’s public approach to safety seems almost cavalier, less like modern-day space tourism and more reminiscent of the rushed and occasionally ramshackle efforts of the space race.

Coast Guard officials said that they are still “focused on documenting the scene” with remotely operated equipment. They don’t yet know what caused the Titan to implode, or what regulations might have prevented the disaster. The search-and-rescue effort has now become a gruesome investigation, delving into yet another mystery in a place already steeped in it.

You Can Take a Tiny Sub to the "Titanic" Shipwreck—for $125,000

Starting in May 2021, OceanGate Expeditions will take small crews of "citizen scientists" in a 5-person sub to see the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean.

By Zac Thompson

November 10, 2020 | Updated June 22, 2023

It’s been more than a century since the RMS Titanic sank in April 1912. And, if you can believe it, nearly a quarter-century has passed since Celine Dion belted “My Heart Will Go On” for the soundtrack of the 1997 movie retelling. 

Across all those decades, the ill-fated ocean liner continues to exert a pull on the public’s imagination. 

So much so, in fact, that some members of that public are willing to shell out a definitely-not-steerage-class $125,000 to board a mini submarine and descend about 12,500 feet (that’s $10 per foot) in the North Atlantic Ocean to reach the Titanic wreck site, located about 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.

Named Titan , the 5-person sub, which sort of looks from the outside like the love child of R2-D2 and an airplane engine, was created for OceanGate Expeditions , a company specializing in underwater exploration. 

Starting in May 2021, OceanGate will be operating dives to the Titanic aboard the submersible, which will launch from a 50-passenger ship setting sail from St. John’s , Newfoundland. Most of the people on the larger vessel will be researchers and crew, but nine will be paying passengers.

And over the course of the 8-day voyage, each guest will get at least one chance (more if the weather cooperates) to spend a day exploring the wreck site from the sub. 

“Demand is good” in spite of the price tag, according to OceanGate founder Stockton Rush (pictured below), who told us he expects to fill up the remaining slots in 2021's six planned expeditions by the end of this year. 

Rush says about half the customers are Titanic obsessives, while the rest are the same type of travelers drawn to space tourism and similar far-flung, budget-busting adventures. 

Rush argues that it’s really only under the sea where those explorers actually have a chance to spot new life-forms and unseen vistas. “In the vacuum of space,” he points out, “by definition there is nothing. But there’s more undiscovered life in the ocean than we’ve discovered on the surface of the planet.”

OceanGate refers to its paying customers as “mission specialists” in order to underscore that this is no Carnival Fun Ship cruise. No scuba certification or other special training is required, but each person who boards the submersible needs to have what Rush calls “basic agility” (an ability to climb a 10-foot ladder, for instance, or stand on a chair without help) and some familiarity with “unusual travel experiences” involving unpredictable weather and cramped quarters. 

Given that the sub is only big enough to accommodate three civilians, a researcher, and a pilot—and given that dives last up to 10 hours from start to finish—it’s probably not a good idea to sign up if you’re prone to claustrophobia. 

Those who do board the sub will get rare, up-close views, through a round window and high-tech cameras, of the sunken ship, the hundreds of marine species that now live on the hull, and the debris field strewn with the Titanic 's fixtures and its passengers' personal items. 

As citizen scientists, those inside the sub will assist researchers using sonar and laser scanners to measure how fast the Titanic is decaying. Rush says there are some historical riddles that still need answering as well. 

“One of the questions the archaeologists have asked,” he told us, “is what did the person in third class wear for underwear? We know the rich-people stuff, but the life of the common man never got documented. What did an immigrant take when he was leaving the Old World? What were the key items?”

Rush thinks it’s that human element that keeps us intrigued by the Titanic  after all these years. 

“You couldn’t write a better story,” he says. “You have the rich and the poor. You have opulence. You have hubris. You have tragedy. You have death.”

All that and old-timey underpants, too. 

Rush is hoping that any attention that OceanGate’s Titanic expedition grabs will inspire further aquatic explorations, whether of shipwrecks or vast underwater canyons and as-yet-unclassified creatures. 

“You’ll pardon the expression,” he says, “but the Titanic is just the tip of the iceberg.”

POSTSCRIPT, June 22, 2023 : On Sunday, June 18, 2023, the Titan submersible described above went missing during an expedition to the Titanic shipwreck site. OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush, interviewed and quoted at length for this article, was piloting the vessel, which contained four other passengers: Shahzada Dawood, Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

Following a frantic 4-day search by rescue organizations, a remote-controlled vehicle found debris from the submersible on the ocean floor, about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic . According to news reports , the U.S. Coast Guard said that the sub appeared to have suffered a "catastrophic implosion," killing all five people on board. 

In a statement released by OceanGate, the company, which had reportedly faced safety concerns about Titan before the accident, described the perished crew as "true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans."

The statement continued, "Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”

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Search Day 4: Titan submersible debris found, all onboard presumed dead

Coverage on this live blog has ended. Please click here for the latest updates.

All five people aboard the Titan submersible are believed to be dead, and debris discovered in the search area was consistent with a "catastrophic implosion," the U.S. Coast Guard said.

The debris was found off the bow of the sunken Titanic, officials said.

The search for the Titan, which went missing Sunday after it e mbark ed on a mission to survey the wreckage of the Titanic , had been focused on an area where Canadian aircraft detected "underwater noises" Tuesday and again yesterday.

U.S. Coast Guard officials had estimated the five passengers could run out of air just before 7:10 a.m. ET today, and the location of the missing vessel had remained a mystery even as the search intensified.

What to know about the search for the Titan

• The debris found at the seafloor was "consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel," the Coast Guard said.
• The Coast Guard said today that a "debris field" had been found in the search area.
• The submersible disappeared Sunday during a mission to survey the wreckage of the Titanic, which is 900 nautical miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
• A sound consistent with an implosion was heard Sunday, shortly after the submersible lost communications, the a senior U.S. Navy official said. The sound was not definitive, the official said.
• Those on board have been identified as Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the mission; British billionaire Hamish Harding, the owner of Action Aviation; French dive expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet; and prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.

White House offers condolences to families of Titan victims

The Associated Press

The White House offered its condolences to the families mourning the five people killed aboard the Titan submersible.

U.S. Coast Guard officials announced their deaths Thursday following the vessel’s catastrophic implosion in the North Atlantic.

“Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives on the Titan,” the White House said in a statement. “They have been through a harrowing ordeal over the past few days, and we are keeping them in our thoughts and prayers.”

The statement also thanked the searchers, including the Coast Guard, involved in the international effort to find the submersible.

“This has been a testament to the skill and professionalism that the men and women who serve our nation continue to demonstrate every single day,” the statement said.

David Pogue on the misinformation and misunderstandings swirling around the Titanic sub

Kat Tenbarge

Tech journalist and “CBS Sunday Morning” correspondent David Pogue, who observed an OceanGate Expeditions Titanic shipwreck trip last year, the last before the Titan disappeared this week, said a “massive amount of misinformation” has circulated online this week.

In an interview, Pogue, whose  coverage  of the submersible last year has attracted renewed interest in light of the disaster, also responded to attacks on his reporting over the past two days.

Critics on Twitter have suggested that Pogue and other journalists undersold how dangerous the submersible was or even that he conspired to shield the company from accountability. 

Pogue countered that the safety issues were the “centerpiece” of his OceanGate coverage. “There is a fundamental lack of understanding of the deep-sea diving industry process,” he said. 

Read the full story here.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet 'knew the risks that were possible with this expedition,' stepson says

Tim Stelloh

Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French diver and Navy veteran who died aboard the Titan, was “fearless” and understood the potential danger of traveling to the Titanic's wreckage, his stepson said in an interview.

"Anyone who gets into those submersibles knows the risks that could happen," stepson John Paschall said, adding: "Going into this, he knew the risks that were possible with this expedition."

Paschall described Nargeolet, who had led several expeditions to the sunken passenger ship and supervised the recovery of at least 5,000 artifacts, as “the world expert on the Titanic.”

The ocean, Paschall said, was Nargeolet’s “home away from home. He was just so comfortable out there and in any ocean and any lake or whatever it was. The water was just so connected to him.”

“And that especially goes for the Titanic,” Paschall said. “He put so much of his life into that ship.”

Paschall also recalled Nargeolet as a “really incredible stepfather” — someone who was respectful, loving and funny. 

While Nargeolet knew the risks of traveling in a submersible, Paschall said, he wanted to know more about how the company that operated the boat, OceanGate, had maintained the vessel and whether it had kept passengers properly informed.

“Were all the safety procedures followed as closely as possible?” Paschall said. “Was everyone aware of everything that was going on? Was there anything that was missed during any kind of inspection?”

19-year-old Titan passenger was ‘terrified’ before trip, his aunt says

Daniel Arkin

In the days before the Titan vessel  went into the ocean  off Newfoundland, Canada, the 19-year-old university student accompanying his father on the expedition expressed hesitation about going, his aunt said in an interview Thursday.

Azmeh Dawood — the older sister of Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood — said her nephew, Suleman, informed a relative that he “wasn’t very up for it” and felt “terrified” about the trip to explore the wreckage of the Titanic.

But he ended up going aboard  OceanGate’s 22-foot submersible  because the trip fell over Father’s Day weekend and he was eager to please his dad, who was passionate about the lore of the Titanic, Azmeh Dawood said.

'We will miss him today and every day,' Paul-Henri Nargeolet's family say

Phil Helsel

The family of French dive expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet say they will remember him for the rest of their lives after he and four other people died in the Titan submersible accident.

Nargeolet was an “extraordinary father and husband,” the family said.

"He is a man who will be remembered as one of the greatest deep-sea explorers in modern history. When you think of the Titanic and all we know about the ship today, you will think of Paul-Henri Nargeolet and his legendary work," they said in a statement.

The statement added: "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."

Nargeolet led several expeditions to the Titanic wreckage site, completing at least 35 dives in submersibles and supervising the recovery of at least 5,000 artifacts, including the recovery of the "big piece" — a 20-ton section of the Titanic’s hull — according to Experiential Media Group, where he was the director of underwater research.

The family thanked everyone involved in the dayslong rescue effort and extended condolences to the families of the others who died.

Hamish Harding remembered as an inspiration

The family of British billionaire Hamish Harding and his company are “united in grief” with the families of four other people all dead in the Titan submersible incident, Action Aviation said in a statement.

“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 company said.

Harding, a former pilot and explorer, was inducted as a Living Legend of Aviation last year, Action Aviation said.

Family of father and son killed in submersible ask for prayers

Antonio Planas

The family of the father and son who died in the Titan submersible are asking for prayers and said they found strength in rescue efforts.

Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, were among the five people killed on the submersible that imploded.

“It is with profound grief that we announce the passing of Shahzada and Suleman Dawood," the family said in a statement released by the Dawood Foundation. "Our beloved sons were aboard OceanGate’s Titan submersible that perished underwater. Please continue to keep the departed souls and our family in your prayers during this difficult period of mourning.”

The family said they were grateful to the people involved in the rescue efforts, saying that "their untiring efforts were a source of strength for us during this time."

"We are also indebted to our friends, family, colleagues, and well-wishers from all over the world who have stood by us during our hour of need," the statement said. "The immense love and support we receive continues to help us to endure this unimaginable loss.”

The Dawood family also offered condolences to the families of the other people aboard the Titan.

Acoustic 'anomaly' consistent with implosion had been detected, Navy official confirms

Mosheh Gains

Courtney Kube

A U.S. Navy analysis of acoustic data “detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion” near the Titan around the time it lost communications, a senior Navy official said.

The sound consistent with an implosion was heard Sunday, shortly after the submersible lost communications, the official said.

The sound was not definitive, the official said, and it was immediately shared with commanders, who decided to continue searching.

“This information was considered with the compilation of additional acoustic data provided by other partners and the decision was made to continue our mission as a search and rescue and make every effort to save the lives on board,” the Navy official said.

The Wall Street Journal first reported that the sound had been detected.

'Titanic' director James Cameron sees similarities between sunken ship and submersible

“Titanic” director James Cameron said he was astonished by the similarities between the ship that sank in 1912 and the Titan submersible that imploded with five people aboard.

“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, he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night. And many people died as a result,” Cameron said in an interview with ABC News.

“For a very similar tragedy, where warning signs went unheeded, to take place at the same exact site, with all the diving that’s going on all around the world … it’s just astonishing,” he added. “It’s really quite surreal.”

Cameron said submersible diving is a “mature art” and noted many people in the deep submergence engineering community wrote letters to OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the mission, pleading that what the company was doing was “too experimental to carry passengers.”

The movie director said one of the passengers aboard the Titan, French dive expert Paul Henry Nargeolet, whom he called “PH,” was a friend he had known for 25 years. He said Nargeolet’s death “is almost impossible for me to process.”

Cameron said he's made 33 dives to the Titanic wreckage site and calculated he's “spent more time on the ship than the captain did back in the day.”

Cameron’s 1997 film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet is among the highest-grossing movies of all time, raking in more than $2 billion.

Ocean depth will make recovering bodies from Titanic submersible difficult

'i hope this discovery provides some solace': coast guard's mauger.

Marlene Lenthang

The desperate search for the missing Titan has ended in tragedy after debris from the submersible was found and its five occupants were presumed dead. 

“On behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families," Rear Adm. John Mauger of the Coast Guard said this afternoon. "I can only imagine what this has been like for them and I hope that this discovery provides some solace, during this difficult time."

He said the unified command has been in contact with Britain and France, as the nations had citizens aboard the vessel. 

5 major pieces of debris led to identification of Titan, officials say

Undersea expert Paul Hanken said five major different pieces of debris told authorities that it was the remains of the Titan. 

“The initial thing we found was the nose cone, which was outside the pressure hull. We then found a large debris field, within that large debris field we found the front end bell of the pressure hull. That was the first indication that there was a catastrophic event,” he said. 

A second, smaller debris field was also found, which included the other end of the pressure hull, “which basically comprised the totality of that pressure vessel,” Hanken said.

Teams on site will continue to map the debris field on the ocean floor. 

Sonar buoys in search did not detect any implosion sounds

It's not clear exactly when the Titan imploded, but Coast Guard officials said that sonar buoys dispatched "did not hear any signs of catastrophic failure."

"This was a catastrophic implosion of the vessel which would have generated a significant broadband sound down there that the sonar buoys would have picked up," Rear Adm. John Mauger of the Coast Guard said at a news conference today.

Sonar buoys had detected noises in the water Tuesday and yesterday that were being assessed for patterns, but he said today "there doesn't appear to be any connection between the noises and the location [of the debris] on the sea floor."

Debris is consistent with a 'catastrophic implosion' of sub

The debris found at the sea floor was "consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel," Rear Adm. John Mauger of the Coast Guard said.

When asked if it's possible the vessel collided with the Titanic, he said it was found off the bow of the Titanic.

Carl Hartsfield with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said the debris data is consistent with an implosion in the water column.

" It's in an area where there's not any debris of the Titanic, it is a smooth bottom. To my knowledge ... there's no Titanic wreckage in that area and again 200 plus meters from the bow, and consistent with the location of last communication for an implosion in the water column," he said.

Dawood's older sister feels like she's been 'caught in a really bad film'

The older sister of Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood feels "absolutely heartbroken" that her brother and her 19-year-old nephew were aboard the Titan vessel.

"I feel very bad that the whole world has had to go through so much trauma, so much suspense," Azmeh Dawood said in a phone interview this afternoon, speaking from the home in Amsterdam she shares with her husband.

"I feel like I’ve been caught in a really bad film, with a countdown, but you didn’t know what you’re counting down to," she said, fighting back tears. "I personally have found it kind of difficult to breathe thinking of them."

Azmeh claimed that her nephew did not want to go on the submarine but agreed to take part in the expedition because it was important to his father, a lifelong Titanic obsessive. Suleman "wasn't very up for it" and "terrified," she claimed, explaining that the 19-year-old expressed his concerns to another family member.

"If you gave me a million dollars, I would not have gotten into the Titan," she said.

Tail cone of Titan found 1,600 feet from bow of the Titanic floor, Coast Guard says

“This morning, an ROV from the vessel Horizon Arctic discovered the tail cone of the Titan submersible approximately 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic on the sea floor," Rear Adm. John Mauger, said this afternoon.

Afterward, the ROV found additional debris and it was found to be consistent with the "the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," he said.

The families of the five crew members on board were notified afterward.

OceanGate says those aboard sub have 'sadly been lost'

OceanGate issued a statement moments ago on the status of the sub:

"We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost.

"These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans. Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.

"This is an extremely sad time for our dedicated employees who are exhausted and grieving deeply over this loss. The entire OceanGate family is deeply grateful for the countless men and women from multiple organizations of the international community who expedited wide-ranging resources and have worked so very hard on this mission.

"We appreciate their commitment to finding these five explorers, and their days and nights of tireless work in support of our crew and their families. This is a very sad time for the entire explorer community, and for each of the family members of those lost at sea. We respectfully ask that the privacy of these families be respected during this most painful time."

Rush 'got unlucky,' friends say

Elizabeth Chuck

Rush, the OceanGate executive who is on board the missing Titan submersible with four other people, is an intelligent explorer who is adept at managing risk, according to longtime friends.

Rush is "one of the most risk-averse people I know,” said Guillermo Söhnlein, who co-founded OceanGate.

Söhnlein said he last spoke with Rush about two weeks before the Titan’s expedition, its third to the Titanic site. Rush did not express any worries about the upcoming voyage.

“If anything, it’s the other way around,” Söhnlein said. “Any explorer will always tell you that on every expedition, on every mission, on every dive, something always goes wrong. You have to anticipate that something is going to go wrong. And the more guides you conduct, the more missions you conduct, the more expeditions you do, the more you start limiting those things.”

Another friend, oceanographer Gregory Stone, said Rush was upfront about the dangers of his missions.

“He wasn’t selling tickets like it was Disneyland. He was telling people exactly what it was — it was a dangerous thing,” Stone said. “He had taken every precaution possible, and he got unlucky. Something happened.”

Pakistani businessman is not a 'risk-taker,' friend says

Dawood, the Pakistani businessman aboard the Titan, is a "quiet and unassuming" person and not a "daredevil" by nature, according to one of his friends.

"I think he would want his legacy and his memory to be one where ... he wouldn't want to be seen as some daredevil, risk-taking explorer," said Bill Diamond, the chief executive of the SETI Institute, a California-based organization that searches for signs of extraterrestrial life. (Dawood is on the group's board of trustees.)

"I think he would want to be remembered as a humble businessman, curious about the world and fascinated by the opportunity to take this excursion and be on this expedition," said Diamond, who spoke to NBC News via Zoom.

Diamond said he believed Dawood would never do anything that would jeopardize the life of his 19-year-old son, Suleman, who is also aboard the Titan.

"I'm sure he would not have brought his son along if he thought this was something seriously dangerous," Diamond said. "I think he knew the risks, at the same time I think he felt that the technology was tried and tested and safe enough."

Coast Guard says 'debris field' found in Titan search area

The Coast Guard said in a tweet at 11:48 a.m. ET that a remotely operated vehicle discovered a "debris field" in the Titan vessel search area.

"Experts within the unified command are evaluating the information," the agency said.

Officials are planning to hold a news briefing at 3 p.m. ET.

Search is a 'needle in a haystack,' expert says

While remaining realistic about the chances of finding the Titan on the vast ocean floor, scientists are still offering a glimmer of hope.

Rob Larter, a marine geophysicist with the British Antarctic Survey, said in London today that it’s incredibly difficult to find an object the size of the Titan in a totally dark environment. He says it’s not going to be found with active sonar from a surface ship, but rather with a towed or autonomous vehicle that’s near the seafloor. Even those vehicles can see just a matter of meters.

“I’ve been involved in searches for hydrothermal vent sites,” he said. “We’ve had the vehicles just a few tens of meters away and missed them and then come back and find them. So it really is, you know, literally it’s just a needle in a haystack situation unless you’ve got a pretty precise location”

Jamie Pringle, an expert in forensic geosciences at Keele University in the United Kingdom, says the first 24 hours are critical in these kinds of rescue operations and that time period has long passed.

“So there’s always a chance. It’s never zero. But I think obviously the longer the time elapses, the lower the chance of success,” he said.

Larter called it a “desperate situation” buy says you try to stay optimistic as long as possible.

“It’s kind of unimaginable if people are alive, trapped in a submersible with oxygen supplies running down,” he said.

Chance of finding survivors 'close to zero,' retired Navy captain says

Corky Siemaszko

With the trapped Titan passengers likely out of oxygen, David Marquet, a retired Navy captain, said today "the probability is perilously close to zero that we will be able to recover them alive."

The Titan had 96 hours worth of oxygen, he told NBC News' Tom Costello.

"Things generally work up to the design spec, but they don’t somehow magically last beyond the design spec," Marquet said, referring to the oxygen estimates.

Dawood's friend says his death would be 'a tremendous loss for the world'

Ammad Adam met Shahzada Dawood at a United Nations conference in February 2020. Dawood gave a speech about empowering women and girls in Pakistan, and Adam was impressed by his remarks. The two kept in touch over the last three years, striking up a friendship via Facebook.

Adam, 34, is now "praying for a miracle" and hoping that Dawood and the four other passengers aboard the Titan will be found alive.

"I can tell you that Shahzada was a real great gentleman, a fine gentleman," he said. "I know everyone says, 'Oh, such and such is a good person,' but he's actually a genuinely kind-hearted person and you could see that in his actions."

Adam said Dawood dedicated much of his adult life to charitable activity, including donating to Covid relief funds in the early days of the pandemic.

"I hope for a miracle from God," Adam said, "because his death would be a tremendous loss for the world. He tries to help people who need help, and we need more people like that."

Teen trapped in missing sub is U.K. business school student

Henry Austin

The youngest of the five people aboard the missing submersible had just completed his first year at the Strathclyde Business School in the Scottish city of Glasgow.

The University of Strathclyde said in a statement that it was “deeply concerned” about Suleman Dawood, 19, “his father and the others involved in this incident.”

“Our thoughts are with their families and loved ones and we continue to hope for a positive outcome,” the statement added.

Weather at site is 'pretty good' for search, marine forecaster says

Julianne McShane

Weather at the scene of the search consists of winds blowing at 14 mph with gusts up to 19 mph, according to a tweet from the Coast Guard , which added that there are 4 to 5 foot swells in the water and the air temperature is about 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

Chris Parker, president and chief forecaster at Marine Weather Center , described those conditions as "pretty good," adding that they are mild to moderate for the area, which he said normally experiences higher waves and stronger winds of 30 to 40 knots on the Beaufort Wind Scale .

"An average 30-foot sailboat would be happy in those conditions unless they're going into the wind," he told NBC News of the conditions today.

"Those conditions should not be at all problematic" for the search, he added.

'A lot of the systems worked, but a lot of them really didn’t,' says Discovery Channel host who tested out the Titan

Josh Gates, the host of Discovery Channel’s "Expedition Unknown," told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Wednesday that he tested out the Titan for a possible segment for his show in 2021 and that "a lot of the systems worked, but a lot of them really didn’t" at the time.

"In the course of going out on Titan and diving down inside of it, it just became clear to us at that time that there was a lot that still needed to be worked out with the sub," he said on "Anderson Cooper 360."

"Ultimately, I just felt by the end of that trip that I just couldn’t get comfortable with Titan at that time. I felt that it needed time to go out and do missions and kind of get into a groove before we were going to go and film with it," Gates added.

Gates said the Titan offers a more comfortable fit inside compared to other submersibles due to the carbon fiber i t is partially made out of , allowing it to be larger than other subs that can only fit two to three people.

"On the one hand you have this incredibly innovative, novel design; on the other hand there are a lot of unknowns," he said of the Titan, adding that it has been “very surreal” and “haunting” to watch the search for the missing submersible.

OceanGate CEO has personal connection to famous Titanic victims

Rush, who developed and piloted the missing sub, had a ''pressing need'' to document the Titanic’s watery graveyard — but he had a personal connection to the wreck, as well.

His wife, Wendy Rush, is a great-great-granddaughter of two of the Titanic’s best-known victims, Isidor and Ida Straus. 

Isidor Straus was the co-owner of the Macy’s department store. His wife, Ida, refused to be separated from him when the Titanic started sinking, giving up her own seat on a lifeboat to stay with him on board. Survivors recount seeing them arm in arm on the ship’s deck as it went down. 

Their fate aboard the Titanic was portrayed in James Cameron’s movie, in which an elderly couple choose to spend their last moments in bed together as water comes rushing onboard. Theirs has been remembered as a '' love story for the ages .''

According to the Straus Historical Society, Wendy Rush is the daughter of Dr. Richard Weil III, who is the son of Richard Weil Jr., a former president of Macy’s New York. Weil Jr. is the son of Minnie Straus, Isidor and Ida’s daughter. 

Wendy Rush, née Weil, married Rush in 1986, according to a New York Times wedding announcement . 

A tale of two disasters: Missing sub captivates the world days after deadly migrant shipwreck

Chantal Da Silva

As  rescuers raced to find  the five people who  vanished after launching a mission  to survey the Titanic, another disaster at sea that’s feared to have  left hundreds of people dead  has been swept from the spotlight.

Last week’s sinking of a fishing boat crowded with migrants trying to get from Libya to Italy sparked arrests, violent protests and questions about authorities’ failure to act or find a long-term solution to the issue. But many human rights advocates are frustrated that the world seems to have already moved on and that the resources and media attention being dedicated to the Titan rescue efforts far outweigh those for the sunken migrant ship.

“It’s a horrifying and disgusting contrast,” Judith Sunderland, associate director for Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division, said in a telephone interview, reflecting on the apparent disparities in resources and media attention on the two crises.

“The willingness to allow certain people to die while every effort is made to save others ... it’s a, you know, really dark reflection on humanity,” she said.

Senior British submariner helps with search

Alexander Smith

The British government said today it has dispatched one of its senior submariners, Lt. Cmdr. Richard Kantharia, to assist with the rescue mission.

Kantharia was already embedded in the U.S. Atlantic submarine fleet and joined the rescue effort Tuesday, a spokesperson for No. 10 Downing St. said by email.

Britain is also providing a Boeing C-17 Globemaster aircraft to transport equipment involved with the search.

Dawood family says 'sole focus' is on rescue of father and son

Sabrina Dawood, the sister of Shahzada Dawood, 48, one of the five people on board the Titan along with his 19-year-old son, Suleman, told Sky News in a Facebook message yesterday that "the Dawood family’s sole focus is the rescue of our beloved Shahzada and Suleman Dawood."

"We trust that the family will be granted privacy as we deal with this crisis," she said.

She added the family is also "deeply grateful" for news organizations' "constant coverage" of the missing submersible, but that they "are unable to address any questions or comments at the moment."

Searchers will need to 'get very, very lucky' to find sub, expert says

Simon Boxall, who teaches oceanography at England's University of Southampton, laid out in stark terms the daunting task facing those trying to find the cylindrical vessel. "The only way they are going to succeed is to get very, very lucky," he told NBC News by telephone early today.

On land, he explained, officials would have an array of tools at their disposal, from GPS and infrared tech to old-fashioned binoculars. "Underwater, that all goes out of the window," said Boxall, who believes given the extensive search by air that it's unlikely the craft is still bobbing around on the surface.

One way to scour the seabed is to send a robotic submersible down there with a light and a camera. That would be like going to an area twice the size of Connecticut "with a flashlight and just having a look around for something this small — it’s a big, big task,” he said.

Officials are also relying on sonar: bouncing sound off the seabed to create an image of what's down there, a painstaking task that Boxall likened to painting the Golden Gate Bridge "with a child's paintbrush."

If it lost power, the submersible likely drifted down to the seabed, traveling up to 15 miles on strong, deep-ocean currents that take water all the way to Antarctica, he said. Compounding that, this area is "very bumpy" and there is "this great big thing called the Titanic, which sank in the area, scattering all kinds of things far and wide."

Magellan ROV to assist in today's search efforts

The Magellan “working class” remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, will assist in the day’s search , Rear Adm. John W. Mauger of the Coast Guard said on NBC’s “TODAY” show.

A working class ROV has a manipulator arm that can attach to a hull point and potentially lift it off the surface, Explorers Club President Richard Garriott previously told NBC New York in an interview.

The Explorers Club, a society dedicated to scientific exploration and field study that two Titan passengers — Harding and Nargeolet — are part of, previously criticized the Coast Guard for not permitting the use of the Magellan ROV earlier.

Responding to the criticism, Mauger said: “We really had to start from scratch and bring all the capability that was available to bear on this problem,” adding that officials “made decisions to prioritize” what was closest to the site.

Coast Guard will 'continue with the search and rescue efforts'

Rear Adm. John W. Mauger said on the "TODAY" show that the Coast Guard is "going to continue with the search and rescue efforts" throughout the day despite fears of the oxygen supply on the vessel running out.

"We use all available data and information to prosecute those searches but we continue to find particularly in complex cases that peoples' will to live really needs to be accounted for as well," he said.

Mauger added that "teams were working really hard through the night" and that medical personnel were also moving into the site today.

Two more ROVs deployed

The Horizon Arctic, a Canadian-flagged ship, which is helping with the search and rescue mission, has deployed its remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, which is now on the seabed, the Coast Guard said on Twitter .

Meanwhile, the French government-backed vessel L'Atalante is about to deploy its own ROV, Victor 6000, into the ocean, the Coast Guard said .

Coast Guard's estimated time for oxygen running out reached

It's now 7:08 a.m. ET, the time that the Coast Guard estimated the oxygen on the missing submersible could run out.

The exact situation onboard the vessel, which had 96 hours of oxygen when it set off, according to its specs and Coast Guard officials, is not known.

Experts have pointed out that there are a number of variables that could impact the consumption of oxygen onboard.

"There are so many variables," Simon Boxall, who teaches oceanography at England’s University of Southampton, told NBC News. “We have no idea how long they will actually last in terms of oxygen — all that we know is that it’s imminent.”

Social media users tracking marine traffic in search area via satellite

As the search for the submersible stretched into today, some social media users said they were following the effort and tracking marine traffic in the area via satellite.

"Never in my life would I have thought I’d be awake at 2:50am watching ships, on satellite, looking for billionaires stranded in a sub, AT the Titanic in 2023 but here I am refreshing Twitter again," one user tweeted , writing that the person was using the app MarineTraffic .

"I’ve been checking periodically all night," one user responded just after 4:30 a.m. ET.

"Haven’t been able to tear myself away from the computer for days now," another wrote .

The MarineTraffic app announced yesterday it was “making all positional data, including satellite positions, available for free for the Polar Prince in the ongoing search & rescue mission.”

Impossible to know exactly how much oxygen left in sub, expert says

The Coast Guard predicts the oxygen supply on the submersible will run out at around 7:08 a.m. ET today. But it doesn't quite work like that, according to Simon Boxall, who teaches oceanography at England's University of Southampton.

"There are so many variables," Boxall told NBC News. "We have no idea how long they will actually last in terms of oxygen — all that we know is that it's imminent." One of the main factors governing the rate of oxygen consumption is the physical state of those on board. If their bodies start to shut down due to hypothermia, Boxall said, it would mean "they're using a lot less oxygen" — albeit presenting a new danger for the crew.

Although the Coast Guard has presented this timeline, officials know about these variables, according to Boxall. "It's not like" at 7.08 a.m. the rescuers will "pack up their bags and say, 'Right, we'll do a recovery operation, but we're taking the urgency off," he said. "They will still see this as being very urgent for next couple of days."

2 new vessels arrive on scene, conducting search patterns

Two new vessels have arrived on the scene and are conducting search patterns in the bid to find the Titan, a Coast Guard spokesperson said this morning.

The Canadian CGS Ann Harvey and the Motor Vessel Horizon Arctic, a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, arrived to aid in the bid to find the missing submersible, Petty Officer Ryan Noel said.

The Coast Guard had previously said the two vessels were en route to the search site.

Noel said rescuers were also in the process of trying to get “one of the newer ROVs onsite down there." He could not confirm which ROV that was, but said the Coast Guard would be providing updates as more information became available.

Search patterns show more sea scanned in bid to find the Titan

The Coast Guard released a new image yesterday showing search patterns so far as efforts expanded in the race to find the missing sub.

It also released search patterns Tuesday, with the difference depicted below.

Searchers had covered an area twice the size of Connecticut on the surface, and the search underwater is about 2 ½ miles deep, officials said yesterday.

Ex-senior naval officer has 'no optimism' about underwater noises

The search and rescue mission was given fresh hope after a Canadian aircraft detected "underwater noises" on Tuesday and yesterday. But Chris Parry, a former rear admiral in the British Royal Navy, says he isn't greatly encouraged.

"I've got no optimism about that at all," Parry told NBC News. "Put your head in the water, you’re going to hear a lot of mechanical noises, particularly in the vicinity of a disintegrating wreck like the Titanic."

He called the optimism "clutching at straws."

The Titanic brought them together, and a tiny vessel could doom them

The five-person crew rescuers are racing to find went missing after departing on a mission Sunday morning from the Polar Prince, a Canadian research vessel, to survey the Titanic firsthand.

The passengers are now at the center of a much higher-stakes race against the clock — a frantic international search and rescue effort that must succeed before the 22-foot vessel runs out of oxygen this morning.

The passengers are Rush, who lives in Seattle and served as the vessel’s pilot; Harding, a British tycoon who lives in the United Arab Emirates; Dawood and his son, Suleman, scions of a Pakistani business dynasty; and the French mariner and Titanic expert Nargeolet, who has been nicknamed “Mr. Titanic.” 

The men are likely bound together forever, no matter what happens next.

French deep sea robot arrives to join search

Due to join the hunt today was Victor 6000, an undersea robot dispatched by the French government that has the rare ability to dive deeper than the Titanic wreck.

The French research vessel L'Atalante, which is carrying the robot, has now arrived in the same area as other ships involved in the search as of 4 a.m. ET., according to the tracking website Marine Traffic.

Victor 6000 is so named because it can dive to 6,000 meters — some 20,000 feet. That puts the Titanic, 12,500 feet down, easily within its range.

It's familiar territory for Ifremer, the state-run French ocean research institute that operates the robot and was part of the team that first located the Titanic wreck in 1985. The institute dispatched the remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, this week at the request of the U.S. Navy.

It isn't able to lift the missing submersible own its own, but it could hook up the 10-ton carbon-fiber and titanium tube to another ship capable of bringing it to the surface, Olivier Lefort, the head of naval operations at Ifremer, told Reuters. “This is the logic of seafarers. Our attitude was: We are close, we have to go,” he said.

Desperate search for sub as oxygen supply dwindles

The search for the missing submersible grew more frantic this morning, with officials fearing the oxygen supply on the vessel could soon run out.

Coast Guard officials estimated that the Titan, which had a 96-hour oxygen supply, could run out of air just before 7:10 a.m. ET, but the exact situation onboard the vessel, including potential efforts to conserve oxygen, is not clear.

The search for the sub, which went missing Sunday after embarking on a mission to explore the Titanic, has been focused on an area where Canadian aircraft detected “underwater noises” Tuesday, and again yesterday.