Searchers for Titanic Tourist Sub Heard ‘Banging’ From Area, Internal Comms Reveal
Hope of finding the Titan five – the crew on board a missing sub on an expedition to the Titanic shipwreck – have grown after rescue groups reported ‘signs of life’ and ‘banging sounds.’
A Canadian Aircraft, part of the enormous search mission looking for the missing Titanic tourists, heard ‘banging’ at 30-minute intervals in the area the submarine disappeared.
The banging was noted in emails exchanged with the US Department of Homeland Security and seen by Rolling Stone.
Richard Garriot de Cayeux, President of The Explorers Club, confirmed in a Tuesday night social media post that ‘there is cause for hope.’
In a statement he said: ‘We have much greater confidence that 1) There is cause for hope, based on data from the field – we understand that likely signs of life have been detected at the site.’
It’s unclear when the banging sounds were hurt, and officials have not confirmed the reports or said they have found the crew that has been stuck in the deep Atlantic Ocean since the submersible launched Sunday and quickly lost contact with others.
A Canadian Aircraft heard ‘banging’ at 30-minute intervals in the area the submarine disappeared, a leaked memo suggests
Last known sighting: The Titan was pictured just before it embarked on the dive into the Atlantic Ocean to view the Titanic shipwreck
Billionaire Hamish Harding, French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and Shahzada Dawood, 48, a UK-based board member of the Prince’s Trust charity, and his son Sulaiman Dawood, 19, are reported to be the people stuck in the sub.
The DHS memo on the banging sounsd read: ‘RCC Halifax launched a P8, Poseidon, which has underwater detection capabilities from the air,’ the DHS memo read, ‘reported a contact in a position close to the distress position.
‘The P8 heard banging sounds in the area every 30 minutes. Four hours later additional sonar was deployed and banging was still heard.’
The timing – or cause – of the banging is not revealed by the memo.
Garriot de Cayeux added The Explorers Club are confident the U.S. Coast Guard ‘precisely understand the experienced personnel and tech we can deeply’ and ‘believe they are doing everything possible with all resources they have’.
One of the five men on the ship, Harding, is a founding member of the Board of Trustees for the Explorers Club.
The group said they have a direct lines to Congress, The Coast Guard, Air Force and Nave and the White House.
A DHS announcement also stated that ‘the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre is working to find an underwater remote-operated vehicle through partner organizations to possibly assist.’
A massive search operation remains underway to find the missing OceanGate submersible, the Titan, after it lost contact with the mothership during its descent to the shipwreck on Sunday morning.
Rear Admiral John Mauger, who is helping coordinate the search, said it could be stuck.
‘We don’t have equipment onsite that can do a survey of the bottom,’ Mauger said on Tuesday.
‘There is a lot of debris, so locating it will be difficult. Right now, we’re focused on trying to locate it.’
Royal Navy Rear Admiral Chris Parry likened the bottom of the Atlantic to ‘being in space’, saying: ‘It’s utterly dark down there, and you have also got a lot of mud and other stuff getting swept up. You can only see about 20 feet in front of you with searchlights. There are very strong ocean currents which are pushing you along.’
The missing OceanGate submersible, the Titan, lost contact with the mothership during its descent to the shipwreck on Sunday morning
At 9.45am – an hour and 45 minutes into the dive – it lost contact with its mothership, the Polar Prince. But it wasn’t reported as missing to the US Coast Guard until 5.40pm, eight hours later. Canada ‘s Coast Guard wasn’t alerted until even later – 9.13pm on Sunday night.
The 21ft submersible has an oxygen supply of up to 96 hours but it is thought the crew of five have just 40 hours of breathable air left
The Coast Guard is coordinating the enormous search for the missing OceanGate submarine
Among those taking part in the expedition is billionaire Hamish Harding (pictured), CEO of Action Aviation in Dubai. He excitedly posted to social media about being there on Sunday
The search site is some 900 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, 400 miles southeast of Newfoundland. Getting there is a difficult enough feat without finding the missing sub beneath the ocean surface
If the mini-sub has lost power, with no working propellers, lights or heating, its five passengers will be in total darkness in temperatures of around 3C (37F) as the doomed craft rolls along the seabed.
Oceanographer and Titanic expert David Gallo said: ‘Where is it? Is it on the bottom, is it floating, is it mid-water? That is something that has not been determined yet.
‘The water is very deep – two miles plus. It’s like a visit to another planet. It is a sunless, cold environment and high pressure.’
The basic problem is that the submersible, Titan, has stopped transmitting signals, making it almost impossible to locate. It is supposed to send a sonar ‘ping’ (radar and GPS not functioning underwater) to mothership Polar Prince every 15 minutes, but the last one was at 9.45am on Sunday – an hour and 45 minutes into the dive as it was floating right above the Titanic.
For some reason, OceanGate Expeditions, the company that runs the tours of the Titanic, took eight hours to call the coastguard on Sunday. It was reported to the US Coastguard at 5.40pm, and Canada’s Coastguard was alerted even later, at 9.13pm.
Among those taking part in the expedition is billionaire Hamish Harding, CEO of Action Aviation in Dubai, and Shahzada Dawood, 48, a UK-based board member of the Prince’s Trust charity, and his son Sulaiman Dawood, 19.
The submarine’s oxygen supply was estimated at 96 hours, which gives rescue teams until Thursday morning to find the vessel.
TIMELINE OF EVENTS: The Titan lost contact with the surface sparking panic. All timings given in BST, five hours ahead of EST.
French Navy veteran PH Nargeolet (left) is believed to be taking part in the expedition, along with Stockton Rush (right), CEO of the OceanGate Expedition
As families wait in agony for news, OceanGate, who started dives to the Titanic in 2021, are facing questions after it emerged the Titan suffered electrical damage and had to be rebuilt for not being able to withstand the ocean before it vanished.
The tourist company responsible for the missing submersible also took eight hours to report it to the Coast Guard after it lost contact an hour and 45 minutes into its descent on Sunday, the DailyMail.com revealed yesterday.
By yesterday, a fleet of US and Canadian rescue ships and aircraft had swarmed to the scene, along with a growing number of private vessels.
Speaking at search headquarters in Boston, Captain Jamie Frederick of the US Coastguard announced: ‘Those search efforts have not yielded any results.’
But last night some of the commercial vessels with specialist underwater drones were sending them down. Frederick offered his ‘most heartfelt thoughts and prayers’ to the lost crew and their loved ones, and pledged they were doing ‘everything possible’. But he admitted the rescuers were entering the final hours.
When he was asked ‘Even with that amount of time left, if you were to find the submersible at this moment, would that give you enough time to save those five people on board?’ he replied: ‘I don’t know the answer to that question. All I know is we will do everything within our power to effect a rescue.’
The Titanic wreckage lies at 12,500ft, and Titan was one of the only craft in the world capable of reaching it. Even nuclear submarines cannot safely go that deep. Deep water dive specialists are assisting coastguards in the ‘unique and challenging’ operation, said Frederick.
Standing on a dockside, he told reporters: ‘Getting salvage equipment on scene is a top priority. It is very heavy equipment, it is very complex, but the best experts are on scene. If the sub is located, the experts will look at the best course of action for recovering the sub.’
Among the equipment is a decompression chamber for the five passengers should they be brought to the surface.
A thrill-seeker who intended to join billionaire Hamish Harding on the missing Titanic sub pulled out of the dive because he thought OceanGate was ‘cutting too many corners’, it has emerged.
Chris Brown, 61, had paid the deposit to go on the doomed voyage, but says he changed his mind after becoming concerned by the quality of technology and materials used in the vessel, The Sun reported on Tuesday night.
Among his concerns were OceanGate’s use of ‘old scaffolding poles’ for the ballast and the fact that its controls were ‘based on computer game-style controllers’.
He told the newspaper that despite being ‘one of the first people to sign up for this trip’, he ultimately decided the ‘risks were too high’.
Who is Stockton Rush?
Seattle-born Rush, 61, founded OceanGate Expeditions in 2009 – after trying, and failing, to buy explorer and businessman Steve Fossett’s submersible, after the adventurer died in a 2007 plane crash.
As a young man, Rush was more interested in space than deep seas: At 19, he became the youngest jet transport-rated pilot in the world, qualifying with the United Airlines Jet Training Institute.
For the next three years he flew for Saudi Arabian Airlines on his summer holidays from his aerospace engineering course at Princeton.
From 1984 he worked with the US Air Force on F-15s and anti-satellite missile programs, with the aim of eventually taking part in the space program.
Rush obtained an MBA from Berkeley and went on to work for multiple companies, specializing in sonar, subsea technology and radars.
Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate
He built a Glasair III experimental aircraft which he flew regularly, and his own Kittredge K-350 two-man submersible.
Rush always intended to take tourists to the Titanic: in 2017, he said he planned to then branch out to excursions to hydrothermal vents or deep-sea canyons, and underwater battlefield tours.
He then hoped to work with oil and gas exploration.
In 2018, the Manned Underwater Vehicles committee of the Marine Technology Society, a 60-year-old trade group, warned that the ‘current ‘experimental’ approach’ of the company could result in problems ‘from minor to catastrophic.’
The company also fired David Lochridge, who was Director of Marine operations for the Titan project, after disagreeing with his demand for more rigorous safety checks on the submersible, including ‘testing to prove its integrity’.
Additionally, the company opted against having the craft ‘classed’, an industry-wide practice whereby independent inspectors ensure vessels meet accepted technical standards.
Brown added that he feels ‘really upset about Hamish’, who is among the five passengers on the submersible, called the Titan, that are currently missing.
Brown and Harding signed up for the then-£80,000 voyage after sharing a ‘few beers’ while holidaying on Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island.
The pair paid the 10 per cent deposit for the trip, which has since more than doubled in price, while the Titan was still being developed, he claimed.
But Brown alleged that in the years that followed, he learned OceanGate had ‘missed key targets’ when depth-testing the submersible.
The multi-millionaire digital marketing tycoon found it concerning that the vessel was controlled by a modified Playstation controller.
He also is understood to have been worried by the technical issues and delays throughout the development process.
He told The Sun: ‘I found out they used old scaffolding poles for the sub’s ballast.
‘If you’re trying to build your own submarine you could probably use old scaffold poles. But this was a commercial craft.’
Brown, who says he is ‘not one to shy away from risk’, eventually emailed OceanGate and asked for a refund.
He is worried for his friend, but says Harding is not the panicking type. He believes the billionaire is likely keeping ‘extremely calm’ and ‘processing plans, schemes and ideas through his enormous brain’.
Brown said Harding will be ‘giving hope’ to the other passengers.
Marc Hagle, 74, and his wife Sharon, 73, went to space on Blue Origin’s fourth trip, in March 2022. They intended to visit the Titanic wreck with OceanGate, and paid in 2017, but sued in February this year for fraud
It has also emerged that a Florida couple sued the CEO of Titanic tourism company OceanGate Expeditions, accusing him of misleading them about their trip to visit the wreck and refusing to refund their $210,258 when they complained.
Marc and Sharon Hagle, who made their fortune in commercial real estate, are well known for their philanthropy and their adventurous spirit. In March 2022, they were on the fourth Blue Origin passenger space flight and became the first married couple to become space tourists.
In 2016, while on a trip to the South Pole, they decided their next adventure would be underwater. In 2017 they were announced as among the first customers for OceanGate, which was founded in 2009 by Seattle-born aviator and businessman Stockton Rush, now 61.
But they never got to take their trip, and in February this year sued Rush, accusing him of selling the adventure knowing it was not on schedule, and refusing to refund their cash.