Tag: OceanGate Titan

  • Suleman Dawood was ‘terrified’ before Titan trip, his aunt says

    Suleman Dawood was ‘terrified’ before Titan trip, his aunt says

    The late 19 year old Suleman Dawood, son of the late Shahzada Dawood, Vice-Chairman of Engro Corporation, was reportedly ‘terrified’ before his trip aboard the OceanGate submersible, according to his aunt Azmeh Dawood.

    In an interview with NBC news, Azmeh – Shahzada’s older sister – shared that the young Suleman had informed a relative prior to his voyage to see the Titanic wreckage that he “wasn’t very up for it” and “felt terrified”. 

    However, the trip tragically fell over Father’s Day weekend and young Suleman, eager to please Shahzada, ended up accompanying him. According to Azmeh, Shahzada was very passionate about the lore of the Titanic.

    She recalls her younger brother was “absolutely obsessed” with the Titanic from a young age, recounting the time when Shahzada met her husband and asked if they could sit down and watch a four-hour documentary about the Titanic. 

    Thus, she was hardly surprised when she learned that her brother had purchased tickets for the OceanGate mission.  

    The Dawood family released a statement on Twitter, announcing the death of their loved ones and extending their condolences to the families of the other departed passengers.

    A catastrophic implosion

    On the fourth day of the frantic search to find the OceanGate submersible before its oxygen supply ran, search parties discovered debris 1600 feet from the bow of the Titanic that were said to be part of the OceanGate craft. 

    The U.S. Coast Guard said the debris found on the seafloor was “consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.” All aboard have been presumed dead.

    A summary of events 

    The OceanGate submersible disappeared Sunday during a mission to survey the wreckage of the Titanic. 

    The Coast Guard said on Thursday that a “debris field” had been found in the search area. Today, it was confirmed that the debris found was “consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.”

    A sound consistent with an implosion was heard Sunday, shortly after the submersible lost communications, according to a senior U.S. Navy official, reported by NBC. The sound was not definitive, the official said.

    James Cameron, director of the blockbuster film ‘Titanic’ and a prolific deep sea explorer, in an interview with CNN shared that he knew the vessel had likely imploded by Monday. He learned through his sources of a sound detected in the vicinity of the Titanic on Sunday. 

  • ‘Banging sounds’ heard underwater in search for missing Titanic submersible 

    ‘Banging sounds’ heard underwater in search for missing Titanic submersible 

    In a frantic search for the missing OceanGate Titan submarine, a Canadian maritime surveillance aircraft is reported by Al-Jazeera to have detected ‘banging sounds in the area every 30 minutes.’ 

    On Sunday, the submersible went missing in the North Atlantic Ocean 100 minutes into its voyage to see the wreck of the Titanic. Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman Dawood are onboard the vessel.

    The United States Coast Guard said that one of the Canadian aircrafts involved in the search for the deep-sea vessel has detected “underwater noises in the search area”. 

    Remotely operated vehicles  (ROVs) were then relocated “in an attempt to explore the origin of the noises”, the coastguard said on Wednesday, Al-Jazeera reports.

    So far, the ROVs have “yielded negative results”, said the coastguard in a tweet. Still, they are continuing their search.

    Rolling Stone magazine, citing internal US government communications, was the first to report the news of what was described as “banging sounds in the area every 30 minutes”. 

    The magazine cited an internal email sent to U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials. “Four hours later additional sonar was deployed and banging was still heard,” the magazine reported.

    The oxygen supply on OceanGate’s Titan will run out by Thursday morning, according to officials. 

    A foreseeable tragedy?

    The former director of marine operations for OceanGate, David Lochridge, had previously raised safety concerns about Titan before being fired from his position.

    Lochridge’s concerns about the safety of the missing submersible are still contained in a response he filed to the lawsuit that OceanGate brought against him for breaching a non-disclosure agreement.

    Lochridge wrote an engineering report in 2018 that said the craft under development needed more testing and that passengers might be endangered when it reached “extreme depths”. 

    According to his claim, he learned the vessel was built to withstand a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate planned to take passengers to 4,000 meters, CBS news reports.