The chances are now slim of finding alive the five people on board who are on board the Titan, missing since Sunday June 18 as the small submersible headed for the wreck of the Titanic. The submarine had an autonomy of 96 hours, which means that around 1 p.m. French time on Thursday, the passengers of the submarine theoretically reached the end of the oxygen reserves. On board were five people: Frenchman Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Briton Hamish Harding, Pakistani-British Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, and American Stockton Rush.
The 77-year-old has dedicated his life to the seabed. Described as an enthusiast, Paul-Henri Nargeolet is known as one of the greatest Titanic specialists in the world. Born in Chamonix in Haute-Savoie in 1946, he discovered underwater exploration when he moved to Casablanca with his parents. At the age of 9, he followed experienced divers for the first time above a small freighter. He then carried out the first part of his career as an officer in the French Navy, from 1964 to 1968, first as a clearance diver, then as a submersible pilot.
In 1986, the French Research Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea (Ifremer) recruited him to lead its fleet of deep intervention submarines, and he organized the Nautile’s first mission a year later, in associating with the American company RMS Titanic Inc to reassemble objects and exhibit them. His last dives date back to 2021. At the time, he described to the Telegraph: “You stay at the bottom for 4,5,6,7 or 8 hours, which is the longest. And even then, you don’t really want to go back up. Sometimes I go to the end of the batteries, and sometimes even more. I got scolded several times for that.”
Since 2007, he has directed the exploration program of RMS Titanic Inc, in Connecticut. In 2010, he participated in the search campaign for the flight recorders of the Airbus AF 447 and from 2021, he took part in the exploration of the wreck of La Lune, a ship that sank in 1664 off the coast of Toulon.
He has the soul of an adventurer. Hamish Harding is familiar with extreme explorations. This 48-year-old businessman, father of two, is described as a passionate explorer. He holds several mentions in the Guinness Book of Records. In July 2019, he was part of a team that flew the world’s fastest airplane around the Earth: 46 hours, 40 minutes and 22 seconds. In March 2021, he made a record dive to 4600 meters in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean known to date, aboard a two-seater submersible. Last year, he took part in a flight into space aboard the Blue Origin rocket of Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.
To be part of the OceanGate expedition and explore the wreck of the Titanic, Harding paid nearly 230,000 euros. However, according to Jacqui Goddard, a journalist who says he knows the explorer well, “he is much more than a paying passenger. None of the participants of these commercial trips are selected solely for their checkbook.
The rich heir to the Dawood empire in Pakistan is described as a fan of new discoveries. Shahzada Dawood, 48, was on board the submersible with her 19-year-old son Sulaiman Dawood. The businessman comes from one of Pakistan’s most powerful families, which made their fortune in the chemical industry. Educated in the UK and USA, Shahzada Dawood lives in Britain with his wife Christine, son Suleman and daughter Alina.
A family statement presents him as a loving father, who is very interested in photography, especially wildlife photography, and in exploring different natural habitats. He likes to learn new things. His attraction for exploration goes as far as space, he is a member of the board of directors of the Californian Institute for Research on Extraterrestrial Intelligence SETI. He is also a director of the Dawood Foundation, a charity founded in 1960, which is dedicated to education.
In total, he paid half a million dollars to participate in a unique exploration of the wreckage of the Titanic.
The last passenger of the Titan is Stockton Rush, the American boss of OceanGate Expedition, a travel organizing company he founded in 2009. He is described as a “daredevil adventurer”. He is married to Wendy Rush, the granddaughter of two Titanic victims: retail magnate Isidor Straus and his wife Ida.
The grandson of an oil and gas tycoon, the 61-year-old American began his career in 1981 as the world’s youngest jet transport pilot, aged 19. He wanted to be an astronaut or a fighter pilot, but he didn’t have enough vision. In 1984, he became an F-15 fighter aircraft flight test engineer for McDonnell Douglas. But over the past 20 years, he’s dabbled in several ocean-related tech ventures, including BlueView Technologies, which makes small high-frequency sonar systems.
This is not the first time he has had a problem with a submarine. Last year, OceanGate had already struggled to get a submersible back on the ship, leaving passengers 27 hours on board. “You know, at some point, safety is just a complete mess. I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get in your car. Don’t do anything. at some point you’re going to take risks, and it’s really a matter of risk/reward. I think I can do it just as safely by breaking the rules,” he said.
