KEY POINTS
- Titan parts were discovered Thursday morning near the wreck of the Titanic
- The submersible went missing early Sunday
- The loss of the craft and crew was confirmed Thursday afternoon
The Titan submersible was lost at sea and its passengers are dead.
During a press conference Thursday, Rear Adm. John Mauger of the U.S. Coast Guard revealed that parts of the Titan submersible had been detected 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic wreck on the ocean floor.
The multinational search for the submarine and hopes of finding its crew alive had captured the world’s attention.
Mauger said it was too early to determine the exact time of the depressurization event, and there was no mention of whether the bodies would be recovered.
The agency also identified additional debris that was consistent with a “catastrophic implosion” of the submarine’s pressure chamber.
This press conference followed an earlier announcement by the U.S. Coast Guard that Mauger and Capt. Jamie Frederick, the First Coast Guard District response coordinator, would discuss the findings of the Horizon Arctic’s remotely operated vehicle (ROV) near the Titanic wreck.
The Titan, a submarine operated by OceanGate Inc., a deep-sea tourism company, went missing Sunday during an expedition to reach the Titanic wreck, which rests nearly 12,500 feet below the surface in the North Atlantic Ocean. The onboard oxygen was estimated to last only 96 hours.
On Sunday morning, the submersible descended with five passengers: Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate; Shahzada Dawood, a British-Pakistani billionaire, and his son Suleman Dawood; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a former French Navy commander; and Hamish Harding, a British billionaire and adventurer.
The multinational search effort involved assets from the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, Canadian Coast Guard, Royal Canadian Air Force, U.S. Air National Guard and Royal Canadian Navy.
