The Titanic submersible that has been missing for days suffered a catastrophic loss of pressure that imploded the vessel, killing all five passengers aboard, the Coast Guard said on Thursday.
The submersible is owned by OceanGate Expeditions.
The five persons onboard included British billionaire, Hamish Harding; Pakistani businessman, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood; French deep sea explorer, Paul-Henri Nargeolet and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.
OceanGate Expeditions said the five deceased “shared a distinct spirit of adventure”.
First Coast Guard District Commander, Rear Adm. John Mauger said a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) had discovered a portion of the Titan roughly 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic wreck on the sea floor.
The five passengers on the submersible that was diving 13,000 feet to view the Titanic on the ocean floor died in a “catastrophic implosion,” authorities said, ending an extraordinary five-day international search operation near the site of the world’s most famous shipwreck.
The tail cone and other debris were found by a remotely operated vehicle about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, deep in the North Atlantic and about 900 east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” Mauger said.
The remotely operated vehicle found “five different major pieces of debris” from the Titan submersible, according to Paul Hankins, the US Navy’s director of salvage operations and ocean engineering.
He said the debris was “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber” and, in turn, a “catastrophic implosion”.
Mauger applauded the “huge international” and “interagency” search effort. He said teams had the appropriate gear and worked as quickly as possible.
Copyright Ships & Ports Ltd. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit given to www.shipsandports.com.ng as the source.