The United States Coast Guard began an extensive search operation on Monday with the aim of locating a submarine that has disappeared while transporting a group of tourists to the bottom of the ocean to see the remains of the Titanic.
The US Coast Guard has not officially provided information on the number of missing people but, according to a spokesman for the institution in Boston (Massachusetts), quoted by the British newspaper The Guardian, there are five people on board the submarine.
Rescue efforts are focused on an area located approximately 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) from Cape Cod in Massachusetts, where it is presumed that the submarine could be found, the Coast Guard reported on its Twitter account.
The remains of the Titanic, which sank after colliding with an iceberg in 1912, lie at a depth of around 3,800 meters and at a distance of approximately 640 kilometers from the Canadian island of Newfoundland.
Teams from the United States and Canada are participating in the rescue operation, using some of their most advanced aircraft.
In particular, a Lockheed C-130 Hercules military transport plane from the United States and a Boeing P-8 Poseidon plane from Canada, capable of detecting underwater objects, have joined the operation, the Coast Guard said.
The missing submarine belongs to the company OceanGate Expeditions, which organizes deep-sea submarine expeditions, the company itself confirmed in a statement.
VISITING THE TITANIC
On its website, the company offers trips of eight days and seven nights to visit the remains of the Titanic, with an approximate price of 250,000 dollars.
In its statement, OceanGate Expeditions has said that it is evaluating “all options” available to bring the crew back. “Our full attention is on the submarine crew members and their families,” the company said.
The company has also expressed its appreciation for the “extensive assistance” received from governments and companies to re-establish contact with the submarine.
OceanGate Expeditions is the only company that has a submarine, called “Titan,” that is capable of reaching the bottom of the ocean to see the wreckage of the Titanic up close. The submarine used by that company usually has a crew of five people.
According to the BBC, among the missing people could be the British explorer Hamish Harding.
ONE OF THE MISSIONS
On his Facebook page, Harding announced June 17 that he had joined OceanGate Expeditions to take part in one of the Titanic missions.
In his publication, he mentioned the adverse weather conditions that had prevented the company from carrying out other similar expeditions this year.
“Given that this has been the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, it is likely that this mission will be the first and only crewed mission to the Titanic in 2023,” explained Harding, who indicated that conditions had improved and that now they had the opportunity to start the expedition.
Accompanying his Facebook post, Harding shared a photo of himself signing a sign with the words “Titanic Expedition, Mission V,” as well as images of the submarine and one of the OceanGate Expeditions ships.