The family of a crew member who died on the missing Titanic sub have blasted the delay in a rescue mission being launched.
Authorities weren’t alerted to Titan’s disappearance until eight hours after it vanished on Sunday – and high-tech underwater robots only hit the seabed today after the vessel’s oxygen supply likely ran out, reports The Sun.
The operator of a submersible missing near the wreck of the Titanic said it believed all five people on board were dead, due to what the Coast Guard described as a “catastrophic” implosion of the vessel in the ocean depths.
The solemn announcement from Oceangate came hours after rescuers said a “debris field” had been discovered following a dayslong search – adding to fears that, even if the vessel were still intact, its oxygen may have run out.
“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,” Oceangate said in a statement.
“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” it said.
“We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.” The US Coast Guard said the debris was consistent with a “catastrophic implosion” of the vessel.
OceanGate’s sub, Titan, vanished less than two hours into its descent 12,500 feet down to the Titanic wreckage on Sunday.
It failed to resurface that afternoon, with its final “ping” to mothership Polar Prince placing the sub directly above the ruins.
But operators failed to notify the Coast Guard until 12.40pm – eight hours after contact was lost.
Kathleen Cosnett, a cousin of British billionaire Hamish Harding, slammed OceanGate for taking “too long” to alert authorities.
The 69-year-old told the UK Telegraph: “It’s very frightening.
“[It] took so long for them to get going to rescue [them], it’s far too long.
“I would have thought three hours would be the bare minimum.”
Mr Harding paid $377,000 for the trip along with businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman, 19, a student at Glasgow University.
It was led by OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, 61, and veteran French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77.
The US Coast Guard has also been criticised for being slow to authorise private groups with state-of-the-art equipment to aid the rescue effort.
It’s understood teams applied as early as Monday to help, but were not contacted until last night, reports the Daily Mail.
The small tourist sub had been lost since Sunday, somewhere in a vast swath of the North Atlantic between the ocean’s surface and nearly 4km below.
Marine scientist and oceanographer David Mearns, who specialises in deep water search and recovery operations, earlier said the discovery of debris indicated a break-up of the submersible.
“The only saving grace about that is that it would have been immediate, literally in milliseconds, and the men would have had no idea what was happening,” Mr Mearns, who was friends with two of those on-board, told Sky News.
A surge of assets and experts had joined the operation in the past day, including two more Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs).
The French research ship Atalante deployed an unmanned robot able to search at depths of up to 6000m (nearly 20,000 feet) below water on Thursday, the US Coast Guard tweeted.
The 21-foot (6.5-metre) Titan began its descent at 8am on Sunday and had been due to resurface seven hours later.
But the craft lost communication with its mothership less than two hours into its trip to see the Titanic.
Ships and planes scoured 20,000 square km of surface water – roughly the size of the US state of Massachusetts – for the vessel.
The Titanic’s watery grave is situated 640km off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, and more than 4km below the surface of the North Atlantic.
The Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in 1912 during its maiden voyage from England to New York with 2,224 passengers and crew on board. More than 1500 people died.
It was found in 1985 and remains a lure for nautical experts and underwater tourists.
The pressure at that depth as measured in atmospheres is 400 times what it is at sea level.
In 2018, OceanGate Expeditions’ former director of marine operations David Lochridge alleged in a lawsuit that he had been fired after raising concerns about the company’s “experimental and untested design” of Titan.