Five people aboard the submersible that went missing during an expedition to locate the wreckage of the Titanic did not survive, according to the company that arranged the trip.
Passengers on the 21-foot sub-sea were British businessman Hamish Harding; Pakistani businessman Prince Dawood and his teenage son, Sulaiman; French explorer Paul-Henri Nargiolet; and Stockton Rush, CEO of Oceangate, the company operating the ship.
“We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Prince Dawood and his son Sulaiman Dawood, Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargiolet have been tragically lost,” Oceangate said in a statement to CBS News. “These men were true explorers with a distinctive spirit of adventure and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans.”
“The sub team has some veteran explorers, some of whom have made more than 30 dives for the RMS Titanic since the 1980s, including PH Nargiolet,” he added.
Hamish Harding, Chairman of Action Aviation
Harding was president of a company called Action Aviation, which sells aircraft to Fortune 100 companies, international corporations, heads of state, and people in the entertainment and sports industries, according to its website.
The British businessman is referred to in the British press as a billionaire, but Forbes magazine notes that he is not included in the list of the world’s richest people.
In addition to his business, Harding was known for his exploits as an adventurer. He holds several records with the Guinness Book of World Records, including the “fastest circumnavigation of Earth through both geographic poles” by airplane, which he and his team accomplished in 2019 in a little over 46 hours completed.
Harding was also one of six people on Blue Origin’s mission last June, owned by Jeff Bezos, when they flew to the edge of space.
Prior to the Titanic expedition, Harding shared on Facebook that the mission was “likely to be the first and only manned mission on the Titanic in 2023” due to weather conditions.
In an interview two years earlier, Harding acknowledged the risks and dangers of underwater expeditions after traveling more than two and a half miles to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, 35,876 feet below sea level, with American explorer Victor Vescovo.
He said of that trip, “The only problem is there’s no other helper out there who’s going to be able to go out there to rescue you.” “[H]oving four days’ supplies doesn’t really matter. If something goes wrong, you won’t be back.”
Mark Butler, managing director of Action Aviation, said in a statement Tuesday that the company and Harding’s family “are deeply grateful for all the messages of concern and support from our friends and colleagues.”
Prince Dawood and his son Sulaiman Dawood
Prince Dawood, who was 48, was the vice-chairman of Dawood Hercules, an investment and holding company based in Karachi, Pakistan.
British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman, two of five people aboard a small submarine that went missing while diving towards the wreckage of the Titanic in the North Atlantic on June 18, 2023.
Paul-Henri Nargiolet, “The Greatest Discoverer of the Titanic”
According to the Oceangate website, Nargiolet was known as a Titanic expert. He led six expeditions to the ship’s wreck site, the company said, and was known as “Titanic’s greatest explorer”.
Nargiolet was also director of underwater research for RMS Titanic, an American company that holds the rights to salvage the ship’s wreck and operates an exhibition of artifacts from the ship. According to the company, about 30 million people have seen its exhibition.
In an interview with CBS News this week, RMS Titanic founder G. Michael Harris said that he had worked with Nargiolet for the past 30 years, and described him as a “nice guy in every way”.
Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate
Rush, CEO of the company that ran the expedition, was also the pilot of the sub.
According to his biography at Oceangate, when Rush was 19, he became the youngest person to become a jet transport-rated pilot, earning a DC-8 Type/Captain rating at the United Airlines Jet Training Institute.
Rush earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering from Princeton University in 1984 and an MBA from the Berkeley Haas School of Business in 1989. In 2009, Rush founded OceanGate, where he oversees the company’s financial and engineering strategies, according to the company.