OceanGate Titan Passengers Dead After Submersible Imploded Deep In The Atlantic Ocean Near The Titanic Wreckage

U.S. Coast Guard's First Coast Guard District commander, Rear Admiral John Mauger confirmed, at a press conference Thursday, in Boston Massachusetts, that five passengers in OceanGate's Titan submersible are dead. The deceased -- OceanGate's CEO Stockton Rush, French mariner Paul-Henry Nargeolet, British businessman and explorer Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman Dawood -- were headed to the wreckage of the sunk historic British passenger liner, the Titanic.

The Titan began its journey to the Titanic on Sunday morning with 96 hours of oxygen on board, according to OceanGate’s website. By the Coast Guard’s estimate, that means oxygen would have run out inside the submersible sometime Thursday morning. The five-person sub weighs 20,000 lbs. and is capable of diving 13,120 feet.

The submersible lost contact with its surface vessel, the Polar Prince, around 1 hour and 45 minutes into its dive Sunday morning, about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and around 400 miles southeast of St John's, in Canada's Newfoundland.

The Coast Guard said a remote operated vehicle(ROV) from the Vessel Horizon Arctic "reached the sea floor and began its search for the missing sub."

Mauger said Horizon Arctic's ROV discovered the tail cone of the Titan submersible approximately 1600 feet from the bow of the Titanic. "The debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," he told reporters. "Upon this determination, we immediately notified the families on behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire unified command."

The U.S. Coast Guard is heading a unified search and rescue command that involved commercial assets, research vehicles and military counterparts from Canada, France and the United Kingdom. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Canadian pilots picked up repeated sounds during their search.

President Joe Biden is facing criticism for a delayed rescue effort, following report that a top secret US Navy detection system designed to spot enemy submarines reportedly first heard the Titan submersible implosion days earlier.

OceanGate Expeditions in a statement said in part: "We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost. These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans. Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew."

According to the company's website, "Rush oversees OceanGate’s financial and engineering strategies and provides a clear vision for development of 4,000 meter (13,123 feet) and 6,000 meter (19,685 feet) capable crewed submersibles and their partner launch and recovery platforms which make OceanGate Inc the leading provider of crewed submersibles for charter and scientific research."

The five deceased tourists in the Titan submersible were headed to the RMS Titanic, a British passenger liner operated by the White Star Line, which sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on 15 April 1912 after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York City, United States.