Submersible watercraft on a voyage to the Titanic wreckag£ reportedly goes missing

A submersible watercraft with five people on board has been missing since shortly after it set out on Sunday to explore the site of the Titanic shipwreck in the North Atlantic, New York Times is reporting.

At a news conference on Tuesday afternoon, Capt. Jamie Frederick of the U.S. Coast Guard estimated that there was only about 40 hours of breathable air left on the vessel. The American and Canadian Coast Guards, commercial vessels and aircraft have been involved in searching for the missing vessel.

The five people in the missing submersible are: Mr. Rush, the company founder; Hamish Harding, a British businessman and explorer; the British executive Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, from one of Pakistan’s wealthiest families; and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French maritime expert who has been on more than 35 dives to the Titanic wreck site.

According to the US Coast Guard, the occupants of the vessel have less than 40 hours of breathable air left. The 22-foot carbon-fiber and titanium craft, called
The Titan, was deployed by a Canadian expedition ship, the M.V. 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 on Sunday, the U.S. Coast Guard said.

A massive search is underway to find the vessel but experts say authorities will face a highly complex mission to recover the craft and any survivors.

It is reported that guests who wish to travel to the wreckage pay as much as $250,000. In 2018, leaders in the submersible craft industry were so worried about what they called the “experimental” approach of OceanGate and warned of possible “catastrophic” problems with the submersible’s development and the planned voyage to the Titanic wreckage.