Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way.
A massive search and rescue operation is under way in the mid Atlantic after a tourist submarine went missing during a dive to Titanic’s wreck on Sunday.
Contact with the small sub was lost about an hour and 45 minutes into its dive, the US Coast Guard said.
Tour firm OceanGate said all options were being explored to rescue the five people onboard.
Tickets cost $250,000 (£195,000) for an eight-day trip including dives to the wreck at a depth of 3,800m (12,500ft).
Government agencies, the US and Canadian navies and commercial deep-sea firms are helping the rescue operation, officials said.
Titanic’s wreck lies some 435 miles (700km) south of St John’s, Newfoundland, though the rescue mission is being run from Boston, Massachusetts.
The missing craft is believed to be OceanGate’s Titan submersible, a truck-sized sub that holds five people and usually dives with a four-day emergency supply of oxygen.
On Monday afternoon, Rear Adm John Mauger of the US Coast Guard told a news conference: “We anticipate there is somewhere between 70 and the full 96 hours available at this point.”
He also said that two aircraft, a submarine and sonar buoys were involved in the search for the vessel but noted the area in which the search is taking place was “remote”, making operations difficult.
Rear Adm Mauger said the rescue teams were “taking this personally” and were doing everything they could to bring those on board “home safe”.
Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old British billionaire businessman and explorer, is among those on the missing submarine, his family said.
On social media at the weekend, Mr Harding said he was “proud to finally announce” that he would be aboard the mission to the wreck of the Titanic – but added that because of 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”.
He later wrote: “A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow.”
OceanGate said its “entire focus [was] on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families”.
ht/ woody
“There’s no way to escape, even if you rise to the surface by yourself. You cannot get out of the sub without a crew on the outside letting you out.”
I would never, EVER, knowingly let myself be put in this situation.
Be about right if they find them floating on top of the Atlantic about a month from now, their long-aspyxiated bodies battered and broken by storms but only an ooze of blood to tell the tale of the breaking of their bones long after lack of oxygen stilled their hearts, with their fingers bloody and torn to the bone from their frantic but futile final efforts to claw their way out of their iron coffin into the fresh air and sunshine that mocked their dying efforts fully visible just on the other side of the port hole they could never breach.
SNS writes the best romantic posts, ever.
Burr & bothered
AT 10:01 PM
…you didn’t let me get to the part where their denuded bodies were intertwined in the final ecstacy of their suffering, embracing each other even as Death embraced them all.
Or words to that effect.
…althogh actually in the enclosed, anerobic ecosystem of a heat absobent tube bobbing in the sunshine, it is likely that their corpses would become mummified over time as the fluids bake out of them; but with nowhere to go it would simply recondese on whatever part of the listing tube was highest, to fall as a grisly, foul, yellowish rain back upon the dried vessels it decanted from, minus whatever was taken up in developing fungal growths that do not need oxygen to survive.
FAP FAP FAP
@SNS
It may go something like this. A few years ago archeologists in Egypt came across an airtight stone crypt thousands of years old. They opened it to find 3 skeletons in a red liquid. The stench given off by the liquid was unbearable. I guess it was a mix of body juices and decomposed flesh. No air or water ever got in the crypt, so the liquid never evaporated, or something like that.
Not romantic, but certainly disgusting and appalling.
Fucking weirdest thread I’ve ever read, Anywhere.
I hope they get rescued from Davy Jones Locker, but I’m affeared they’re gonors.
The company that owns the submersible said it was extremely safe, but the market for its services will probably vanish by Tuesday afternoon.
Brad
AT 10:52 PM
“Fucking weirdest thread I’ve ever read, Anywhere.”
…except for every OTHER Burr-centric thread…
I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I just said it was weird. LOL
…then let me throw in a theme song…
https://youtu.be/msgxhVgUc6I
My retired commercial diver friend tells me stories about divers whose physical remains have all been found squashed into their hard hat from loss of pressure EQ.
I imagine this went something like that.
5 people…96 hours of oxygen…..
I’d fart.
Fug, we’re all gonna’ die anyway, no point holding them in. What would you guys do? Panic? Take sleeping pills?
I’d rip some super tight farts.
Also, I try to limit my presence to one thread a day. Possibly 2 if I make a random comment. I am well aware a lil’ Burr goes a looong way.
“… dives with a four-day emergency supply of oxygen.”
Is that in addition to its regular supply of oxygen?
How many days is the regular supply?
Not very clear.
mortem tyrannis
izlamo delenda est …
I always say you get just so many hours of luck in your life and it’s hard to know when you’ve used it all up. I know I’ve spent most of it. I’m good.
Burr – post a “sign” spaced out every three or four comments.
After 4 or 5 just post Burrma Shave.
@Deplorable
I get you. I’ve had some tight scrapes I was lucky enough to get out of. I guess God liked me for some reason.