The search for a missing submarine linked to the Titanic has become an investigation and rescue mission that will take an indefinite amount of time, officials said, as tributes poured in from around the world for the five people killed in the ship’s explosion deep in the North Atlantic. ,
All aboard were killed when the submarine exploded near the site of the iconic shipwreck, it was announced Thursday, bringing a tragic end to a five-day saga that saw an urgent round-the-clock search and around-the-world search for the ship Titan. Monitoring included.
Rear Admiral John Mauger of the First Coast Guard District said an investigation into what happened was already underway and would continue to investigate the area around the Titanic where the wreckage was found.
“I know there are also a lot of questions about how, why and when this happened. Those are questions about which we will now gather as much information as possible,” Mauger said, adding that it was a ‘complex case’ that happened in a remote part of the ocean and involved people from many different countries.
The first hint of the timeline came Thursday evening when a senior US Navy official said that after being informed of the Titan’s disappearance on Sunday, the Navy went back and analyzed its acoustic data and found an “anomaly” that could indicate an explosion or detonation. was in line with In the general vicinity of the location the ship was operating when communications were lost. The official discussed the sensitive acoustic detection system on condition of anonymity.
Among those killed were Stockton Rush, CEO of Oceangate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the submersible; two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Prince Dawood and his son Sulaiman Dawood; British adventurer Hamish Harding; and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargiolet.
Oceangate, which has been detailing the Titanic’s decay and its surrounding water ecosystem through annual tours through 2021, including for paying tourists, issued a statement calling all five of those killed “true explorers”. told, who shared a distinct sense of adventure and a deep passion for discovery.” and protecting the world’s oceans.”
Tributes to those killed and praise for the searchers who tried to save them poured in from around the world. The White House thanked the Coast Guard as well as Canadian, British and French partners who helped with the search and rescue efforts.
“Our thoughts are with the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives on Titan. He has been going through a painful ordeal over the past few days and we are keeping him in our thoughts and prayers, it said in a statement.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry wrote on Twitter that it appreciated the “multinational efforts over the past several days in search of the ship”. The Dawood family also thanked everyone involved in the search.
“His tireless efforts were a source of strength to us during this time,” the family said in a statement. “We are also grateful to our friends, family, colleagues and well-wishers from around the world who stood by us in our time of need.”
Titan was launched at 6 a.m. Sunday and reported late Sunday afternoon about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Rescue workers sent ships, planes and other equipment to the place of disappearance.
Authorities were hoping that underwater sounds detected on Tuesday and Wednesday could help narrow their search, whose coverage area has expanded to thousands of miles — twice the size of Connecticut and 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometer) in deep water.
However, any lingering hopes of finding the crew alive were dashed on Thursday morning when the submersible’s 96-hour air supply was feared exhausted and the Coast Guard announced that an explosion at an altitude of about 1,600 feet had occurred. Wreck field has been found (488 meters from Titanic)
“The debris is consistent with catastrophic damage to the pressure chamber,” Mauger said.
The Coast Guard said Thursday that noises heard in the past were likely produced by something other than Titan.
“There doesn’t seem to be a correlation between the noises and the location (of the wreck) on the ocean floor,” Mauger said.
The Navy official who spoke about the “discrepancy” heard on Sunday said the Navy passed the information on to the Coast Guard, which continued its search because the Navy did not consider the data definitive.
In 2021 and 2022, at least 46 people have successfully traveled from Oceangate’s submersibles to the Titanic wreck site, according to papers filed by the company in the US District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, which oversees cases related to the Titanic wreck. But the safety of the submersible was raised by both a former employee of the company and former passengers.
David Lockridge, Oceangate’s former director of marine operations, argued in 2018 that the method the company devised to ensure the hull’s soundness relied on acoustic monitoring which detects cracks and pops when the hull is stressed under pressure. may impose – was insufficient and may be “subject”. Passengers in the experimental submarine may face potentially extreme danger.
“This was problematic because this type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component was about to fail – often milliseconds before detonation – and would not detect any existing defects before the hull was pressurized,” Lockridge’s lawyers said of the wrongful termination. Claim written in
Oceangate disagreed. It added, “Lokridge is not an engineer and was not hired or asked to perform engineering services on Titan,” and noted that the acoustic monitoring and testing protocols of the company’s chief engineer He was fired after refusing to accept the assurances of In fact, it is more suitable than the method proposed by Lokridge for detecting any defects.
One of the company’s first customers compared a dive carried out at the site two years ago to a suicide mission.
“Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand it. You can’t kneel. Everyone is sitting close to each other or on top of each other,” said Arthur Loible, a retired businessman and adventurer from Germany. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”
During the 2 1/2-hour descent and ascent, the lights were turned off to save energy, he said, with the only light coming from a fluorescent glow stick.
The dive was repeatedly delayed to fix problems with batteries and balance weights. In total, the journey took 10 1/2 hours.
Nikolai Rotterman, a deep-sea ecologist and lecturer in marine biology at the University of Portsmouth in England, said Titan’s disappearance highlights the dangers and unknowns of deep-sea tourism.
“Even the most reliable technology can fail, and therefore accidents will happen. With the rise in deep sea tourism, we should expect more incidents like this.
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Associated Press writer John Gambrel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Ben Finley in Norfolk, Virginia; Holly Reimer in Concord, New Hampshire; Lolita C. Baldor in Washington; Frank Jordan in Berlin; Danica Kirka in London; Jean Johnson in Seattle; Munir Ahmed in Islamabad; and John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.
