Missing Titanic submersible: What we know about the search for the vessel and those on board

Published

2 years ago

June 20, 2023

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A search and rescue mission is under way to find a missing submersible with five people on board that lost contact near the wreck of the Titanic.

OceanGate Expeditions confirmed that one of its submersibles had gone missing in the Atlantic Ocean while taking passengers to see the famous wreck.

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Here is what we know so far.

Where and when did the submersible go missing?

The submersible went missing on Sunday in the Atlantic, some 435 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada.

The Titan was launched as part of an expedition involving The Polar Prince, an icebreaker that was hired by OceanGate and formerly operated by the Canadian Coast Guard.

The ship ferried dozens of people and the submersible craft to the North Atlantic wreck site, where the Titan was scheduled to make multiple dives.

It is understood from OceanGate that Titan has a 96-hour oxygen supply in case of emergencies meaning only around two days of “life support” remain.

What is the Titan?

The Titan is a small submersible operated by OceanGate – a US-based company which offers crewed submersibles for industry, research and exploration.

Tickets cost $250,000 (£195,000) for an eight-day trip including dives to the wreck.

According to the company, the Titan is capable of diving 13,120ft “with a comfortable safety margin”.

It takes the craft around two hours to descend approximately 12,500ft – where the Titanic wreck lies in a trench in the Atlantic.

The vessel, which weighs around 23,000lbs (10,432kg), operates by pinging back a message every 15 minutes to signal to those ashore that it is safe.

However, Sky News understands that those pings have stopped.

In a May 2021 court filing, OceanGate said the Titan had an “unparalleled safety feature” that assesses the integrity of the hull throughout every dive.

At the time of the filing, Titan had undergone more than 50 test dives, including to the equivalent depth of the Titanic, the company said.

During its 2022 expedition, OceanGate reported that the submersible had a battery issue on its first dive and had to be manually attached to its lifting platform, according to a November court filing.

What about the rescue effort?

US and Canadian ships and planes have been involved in the rescue efforts, but the remote location and depth make the operation particularly challenging.

Also, it is unclear whether the Titan is still underwater or had surfaced and was unable to communicate.

US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger said: “It is a remote area and it is a challenge to conduct a search in that remote area.

“We are deploying all available assets to make sure that we can locate the craft and rescue the people on board.”

The Polar Prince is being used to search the surface where the submersible was launched. Canadian Boeing P-8 Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft and two Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft also conducted overflights.

OceanGate Expeditions said it was “mobilising all options” to rescue those on board.

What do we know about the people on board?

• Hamish Harding

British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, was confirmed as one of the passengers by his stepson Brian Szasz, who said on Facebook that his stepfather was in his “thoughts and prayers”.

Mr Harding is the current chairman of Action Aviation – a sales and operations company that offers a range of services in the business aviation industry.

Posting on social media before the trip, Mr Harding said he was joining OceanGate Expeditions – the company that supplied the vessel – as a mission specialist.

He wrote that due to bad weather in Newfoundland, Canada, the expedition was likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023.

Based in the United Arab Emirates – where Action Aviation headquarters is based – Mr Harding described himself on social media as a world explorer.

He holds the Guinness world record for the fastest circumnavigation of the Earth via the North and South Poles by an aircraft – 46 hours, 40 minutes and 22 seconds.

In 2016, Harding accompanied former astronaut Buzz Aldrin to the South Pole, when Aldrin became the oldest person ever to reach the Antarctic region, at 86.

Last year, he also took part in the fifth human space flight by Blue Origin – an American aerospace company founded by Jeff Bezos.

Jannicke Mikkelsen, an explorer and friend of Hamish Harding, told Sky News she believed Mr Harding would be an “important asset” to the others in the submersible.

“He will go through the emergency checklists and procedures together with the captain of the submersible,” she said.

“He will also be a good inspiration to the rest of the team to keep calm. I really believe Hamish is the one that can help lead this team – because he has been in tricky situations in the past on expeditions.

She added: “I’m terrified if they are stuck at the bottom of the ocean with 96 hours of air and not able to get back to the surface – this is what I fear the most.”

• Stockton Rush

Stockton Rush is chief executive and founder of OceanGate Inc – a company that provides crewed submersible services to enable researchers and explorers to access the oceans’ vast resources.

Having trained as a pilot, he became the youngest jet transport rated pilot in the world at the age of 19.

He is also a founder and member of the board of trustees of non-profit organisation OceanGate Foundation, which aims to catalyse emerging marine technology to further discoveries in marine science, history, and archaeology.

In an interview with Sky News back in February, Mr Rush spoke about visiting the Titanic wreck.

“What really strikes you is how beautiful it is,” he said. “You don’t normally see that on a shipwreck.

“It is an amazingly beautiful wreck.”

When asked if they can go inside the wreckage, Mr Rush said: “You can see inside, we dipped down and saw the grand staircase and saw some of the chandeliers still hanging.

“Next year we are hoping to send a small robot inside but for now we stay on the outside.”

• Paul-Henri Nargeolet

Paul-Henri Nargeolet is a former commander who served in the French Navy for 25 years.

During his service, he became the captain of the deep submergence group of the navy.

After leaving the navy he joined the French Institute for Research and Exploitation of the Sea, according to The Five Deeps Expedition – a company that assembles scientists, engineers and submersible operators for missions.

Mr Nargeolet has already led several expeditions to the Titanic site and has been involved in numerous scientific and technical expeditions around the world.

The first British diver to see the Titanic wreck paid tribute to his friend, saying he is an “extraordinary explorer and an incredible individual”.

Dik Barton made 22 dives to the wreck to recover artefacts when he was head of operations with RMS Titanic Inc, a US firm which salvaged the site, and worked with Mr Nargeolet on the dives.

Mr Barton said the group on the missing trip had “good leadership”.

“He is the kind of man who will keep them calm, but it’s not easy in a tube at the bottom of the ocean,” he said.

“It’s tragic. He is an extraordinary explorer and an incredible individual and he knows the wreck better than anybody I know.

“It’s an incredibly hostile environment at the depths we are talking about. The pressure down there is 2,500lbs per square inch, that’s the equivalent of two adult elephants on your thumbnail.

“If something goes wrong, it goes wrong very quickly.”

• Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman

Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, who are both British citizens, are also on board, their family said in a statement.

“We are very grateful for the concern being shown by our colleagues and friends and would like to request everyone to pray for their safety,” they added.

The Dawoods belong to one of Pakistan’s most prominent families, whose eponymous firm invests across the country in agriculture, industries and the health sector.

Mr Dawood, 48, also currently serves as the vice chairman of the board of Engro Corporation – a Pakistan-based conglomerate operating across a number of sectors including fertiliser and chemical production.

The UK-based businessman is also a trustee at the SETI Institute – a Silicon Valley not-for-profit working in space exploration.

Suleman, 19, is currently at university, his family said.

World

CCTV shows men in combat clothing shooting hospital volunteer at point-blank range in Syria

Published

8 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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CCTV shows men in combat clothing shooting hospital volunteer at point-blank range in Syria

Sky News has obtained shocking CCTV from inside the main hospital in the city of Sweida in southern Syria – where our team found more than 90 corpses laid out in the grounds following a week of intense fighting.

Warning this article shows images of a shooting

The CCTV images show men in army fatigues shooting dead a volunteer dressed in medical scrubs at point-blank range while a crowd of other terrified health workers are held at gunpoint with their hands in the air.

The mainly Druze city of Sweida was the scene of nearly a week of violent clashes, looting and executions last month which plunged the new authorities into their worst crisis since the toppling of the country’s former dictator Bashar al Assad.

The new Syrian government troops were accused of partaking in the atrocities they were sent in to quell between the Druze minority and the Arab Bedouin minority groups.

The government troops were forced to withdraw when Israeli jets entered the fray, saying they were protecting the Druze minority and bombed army targets in Sweida and the capital Damascus.

Days of bloodletting ensued, with multiple Arab tribes, Druze militia and armed gangs engaging in pitched battles and looting before a ceasefire was agreed.

The government troops then set up checkpoints and barricades encircling Sweida to prevent the Arab tribes re-entering.

The extrajudicial killing captured on CCTV inside the Sweida hospital is corroborated by eyewitnesses we spoke to who were among the group, as well as other medics in the hospital and a number of survivors and patients.

The CCTV is date- and time-stamped as mid-afternoon on 16 July and the different camera angles show the men (who tell the hospital workers they are government troops) marauding through the hospital; and in at least one case, smashing the CCTV cameras with the butt of a rifle.

One of the nurses present, who requested anonymity, told us: “They told us if we talked about the shooting or showed any film, we’d be killed too. I thought I was going to die.”

Dr Obeida Abu Fakher, a doctor who was in the operating section at the time, told us: “They told us they were the new Syrian army and interior police. We cannot have peace with these people. They are terrorists.”

Multiple patients and survivors told us when we visited the hospital last month that government troops had participated in the horror which swept through Sweida for days but this is the first visual evidence that some took part in atrocities inside the main hospital.

In other images, one of the men can be seen smashing the CCTV camera with the butt of his rifle – and another is wearing a black sweater which appears to be the uniform associated with the country’s interior security.

One survivor calling himself Mustafa Sehnawi, an American citizen from New Jersey, told us: “It’s the government who sent those troops, it’s the government of Syria who killed those people… we need help.”

The government responded with a statement from the interior ministry saying they would be investigating the incident which they “denounced and condemned” in the strongest terms.

The statement went on to promise all those involved would be “held accountable” and punished.

The new Syrian president Ahmed al Sharaa is due to attend the United Nations General Assembly next month in New York – the first time a Syrian leader has attended since 1967 – and what happened in Sweida is certain to be among the urgent topics of discussion.

World

Funeral held for five Al Jazeera journalists killed in Israeli strike in Gaza

Published

8 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Funeral held for five Al Jazeera journalists killed in Israeli strike in Gaza

A funeral was held for five Al Jazeera journalists who were targeted by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza on Sunday night, as the UN said the killings were a “grave breach of international law”.

Correspondents Anas Al-Sharif and Mohammed Qreiqeh, camera operators Ibrahim Zaher and Moamen Aliwa, and their assistant Mohammed Noufal, died after a strike on a tent near Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza.

The Israeli military defended the attack, claiming the most prominent of the group, Sharif, was the head of a Hamas terrorist cell and only “posed as a journalist” – claims consistently denied by Sharif himself, Al Jazeera and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

A sixth journalist – a freelancer called Mohammad al Khaldi – was also killed in the strike, medics at the Al Shifa Hospital told Reuters.

Al Jazeera called the killing of its journalists a “targeted assassination” and described its employees as some of the “last remaining voices within Gaza”.

“Al Jazeera Media Network condemns in the strongest terms the targeted assassination of its correspondents… by the Israeli occupation forces in yet another blatant and premeditated attack on press freedom,” the broadcaster said.

“This attack comes amid the catastrophic consequences of the ongoing Israeli assault on Gaza, which has seen the relentless slaughter of civilians, forced starvation, and the obliteration of entire communities.

“The order to assassinate Anas Al-Sharif, one of Gaza’s bravest journalists, and his colleagues, is a desperate attempt to silence the voices exposing the impending seizure and occupation of Gaza.”

The United Nations (UN) secretary-general condemned the killing of the five journalists and called for it to be investigated.

A spokesperson said in a media briefing: “These latest killings highlight the extreme risks that journalists continue to face when covering this ongoing conflict.

“The secretary-general calls for an independent, impartial investigation into these latest killings.”

He added that “at least” 242 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the war began.

The UN’s human rights office condemned the killings earlier on Monday, labelling the strike by Israel a “grave breach of international humanitarian law”.

The war began on 7 October in 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel and killed 1,200 people, taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli numbers.

Of the 50 hostages still in Gaza, Israeli authorities say 20 are still alive.

Israel’s offensive has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to health officials in Hamas-run Gaza.

It comes as prominent journalists across media organisations continue to join calls for access to Gaza, which Israel has forbidden throughout the war.

On Sunday, Palestinian envoy to the UN Riyad Mansour said Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should let the UN Security Council into Gaza.

“Take journalists with you so that you can verify exactly what is happening in Gaza,” he said.

World

Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

Published

17 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

The targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif and four other colleagues by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) late on Sunday silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza.

The IDF wasted no time in releasing a statement claiming it had “eliminated” Al-Sharif, calling him a “terrorist” who “posed” as a journalist for Al Jazeera.

Gaza latest: Follow live updates

The Committee to Protect Journalists warned in July that Al-Sharif was the victim of an Israeli smear campaign and that they feared for his safety.

The IDF had previously released documents which they say proved his involvement with Hamas.

No word from them on his colleagues – Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa – who they also killed. We are chasing.

Al-Sharif’s death – and that of his four colleagues – is a chilling message to the journalistic community both on the ground and elsewhere ahead of Israel’s impending push into Gaza City.

There will now be fewer journalists left to cover that story, and – if it is even possible – they will be that bit more fearful.

This is how journalists are silenced. Israel knows this full well.

It has also not allowed international journalists independent access to enter Gaza to report on the war.

Al-Sharif’s death has sent shockwaves across the region, where he was a household name. He was prolific on social media and had a huge following.

I was watching horrifying footage of the immediate aftermath of the strike in the taxi on my way into the bureau, and the driver told me how he and his family had all cried for Anas when the news came in.

His little daughter cried because of Al-Sharif’s little daughter, Sham, who she knew from social media.

“They call everyone Hamas,” my taxi driver said. “Men, women, children”.

Last month, Al-Sharif wrote this post: “I haven’t stopped covering [the crisis] for a moment in 21 months, and today I say it outright… and with indescribable pain.

“I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment… Gaza is dying. And we die with it.”

This is what journalists in Gaza are facing, every single day.