British explorer on missing submarine said he knew the risk of such voyages
Hamish Harding, a British explorer aboard the submarine missing in the North Atlantic, acknowledged in a 2021 interview that he had gone on deep-sea missions in the past knowing rescue wouldn’t be an option.
“If something goes wrong, you don’t come back,” he told Indian newsmagazine The Week after making a record-breaking trip to Challenger Deep, the deepest depths of the Mariana Trench. At nearly seven miles, the Mariana Trench is much deeper than the Titanic site the submarine was supposed to visit, which is about two and a half miles down.
During the 2021 voyage, Mr. Harding, a 58-year-old British businessman, and Victor Vescovo, an American explorer, set a Guinness World Record for the longest time spent traversing the deepest part of the ocean in a single dive. Their dive of 4 hours and 15 minutes also set a record for farthest distance traveled along the deepest part of the ocean.
“It was potentially scary, but I was so busy with so many things – navigating and balancing my position – that I didn’t really have time to be scared,” Mr Harding told The Week.
The ship used for the Challenger Deep dive had a four-day reserve of oxygen, as well as water and emergency rations, but was sailing so deep that no other submarine “is capable of going there to rescue you,” he said.
Mr. Harding – the founder and chairman of Action Aviation, a sales and aviation company based in Dubai – has also made aerial adventures. He flew to space last summer on a Jeff Bezos mission Blue origin rocket carrier and holds a record for the fastest circumnavigation of the Earth through both geographic poles by aircraft. And in 2022, he aided an effort to do so reintroduce cheetahs to India.
Action Aviation called Mr Harding “an extremely able individual who has successfully undertaken challenging expeditions”, in a statement on Tuesday. The company added: “We look forward to welcoming him home.”
Mr Harding wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday that he was proud to finally announce that he had joined OceanGate’s mission “on the submarine descending to the Titanic.”
In a Instagram message with photos of the submarine and of him signing a flag for the Titanic mission, Mr Harding wrote that the group had departed from St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada on Friday and planned to begin dive operations on Sunday around 4 a.m. to start.
Despite winter being particularly harsh in Newfoundland this year, “a weather window has just opened,” he added.
On Monday, the president of The Explorers Club, a New York-based organization of which Mr. Harding served as a board member, alerted members of the club to the disappearance of the submarine that carried Mr. Harding and four others.
“When I saw Hamish at the Global Exploration Summit last week,” wrote the club’s president, Richard Garriott de Cayeux, “His excitement about this expedition was palpable. I know he was looking forward to doing research on the site.
“We all hope that the submarine is located as soon as possible and that the crew is safe.”