Here’s Everything You Need To Know About The Missing Titanic Submarine

A desperate race against time is currently underway to find a submarine that went missing while trying to tour the wreckage of the Titanic, which sank in the Atlantic Ocean back in 1912.

Submarine Goes Missing

The Associated Press reported that when the submarine, which is known as The Titan, went underwater at 6am on Sunday morning, it had a 96-hour oxygen supply, meaning it would run out early Thursday morning. The submarine contains five passengers: a pilot, a billionaire British adventurer, a Titanic expert, and two members of a renowned Pakistani business family.

CBS News journalist David Pogue, who explored the Titanic on The Titan last year, explained that the submarine uses two communication systems, the first of which is text messages with a ship on the surface. The second method is safety pings that are emitted every 15 minutes, but both of these systems stopped just one hour and 45 minutes after the submarine went under.

“There are only two things that could mean. Either they lost all power or the ship developed a hull breach and it imploded instantly. Both of those are devastatingly hopeless,” Pogue said, going on to recall his own experience on the submarine.

“There’s no GPS underwater, so the surface ship is supposed to guide the sub to the shipwreck by sending text messages,” Pogue explained. “But on this dive, communications somehow broke down. The sub never found the wreck.”

It should be noted that the pilot shockingly uses a PlayStation controller to steer the submarine.

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Chances Of Rescue

The wreckage of the Titanic is located 12,500 feet below the water, and the previous deepest underwater rescue occurred at just 1,575 feet back in 1973, according to ABC 7. Royal Navy commander Ryan Ramsey told Daily Mail that there is “no way” to carry out a rescue of those in the submarine if it is thousands of feet below the surface because modern technology is simply not advanced enough to do this.

However, it’s possible that the submarine is floating on the surface of the ocean. If this is the case, there is still time to rescue the crew before their oxygen runs out. Alistair Greig, a professor of marine engineering at University College London, explained that submarines typically have a drop weight, which is “a mass they can release in the case of an emergency to bring them up to the surface using buoyancy.”

“If there was a power failure and/or communication failure, this might have happened, and the submersible would then be bobbing about on the surface waiting to be found,” Greig said. “If it has gone down to the seabed and can’t get back up under its own power, options are very limited. While the submersible might still be intact, if it is beyond the continental shelf, there are very few vessels that can get that deep, and certainly not divers.”

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Submarine Passengers

One of those onboard is the British businessman Hamish Harding, a billionaire adventurer who holds three Guinness world records, one of which is the longest duration at full ocean depth by a crewed vessel. Also onboard are Shahzada Dawood and his 19 year-old son Suleman, who belong to one of the most prominent families in Pakistan.

French explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet, who has led multiple expeditions to the Titanic, is inside the submarine as well, and the final passenger appears to be Stockton Rush, who is the CEO of OceanGate, the company that launched the submarine.

This is obviously a very serious situation that will continue to develop in the coming hours and days. Please join us in saying a prayer that those in the submarine can somehow be rescued and make it home to their families where they belong.