Missing Titanic Sub: 5 Passengers Presumed Dead
Years before Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman boarded the Titanic submersible, which authorities now presume imploded during a dive, the Pakistani businessman had survived a near-death incident.
Shahzada and his wife, Christine Dawood, experienced a horrifying plane scare, which she said prompted her to rethink her life afterwards, she wrote in a 2019 blog post on her career coaching website.
“The start was uneventful and so was most of the cruising but just as the seatbelt signs came on to alert us to our imminent landing approach, the plane took a deep plunge,” Christine said of the incident. “I later read that a plane doesn’t drop more than three to five metres during turbulence, but my stomach in that moment would beg to differ. The whole cabin let out one simultaneous cry, which turned to a whimper and then silence. Dead silence.”
In those immediate moments, Shahzada reflected on “all the opportunities he’d missed and how much he still wanted to teach our children,” Christine wrote. She recalled making a deal “with God, the universe, whoever was listening,” that if she survived, she would quit smoking cigarettes.
“It went dark,” Christine continued. “Storm clouds amassed around us, immersing the cabin in a strange kind of twilight. It was not quite light and yet not fully dark. It engulfed us, teased us and breathed fear into some and bravery into others.”
People in the plane were praying, while others were nervously talking or crying, according to Christine.
“I was frightened like never before in my life,” she added. “I wasn’t even able to wipe away the tears running down my face or move my head to look around. Plunge! It wasn’t over yet. Shake left, shake right! My head hit the window.”
The captain then informed the passengers that he was going to attempt to land again from a different angle, Christine recalled, and the plane gained height out of the storm clouds for an all-too-brief moment of relief.
Courtesy Dawood family
“As the plane turned, my side lifted forcing me to look down to my left,” she wrote. “My husband faced me, our eyes locked and our hands interlinked. No words were needed. He was as scared as I was and yet we were together. ‘Until death do…’ No, don’t go there!”
As the plane shook “even heavier than before if that was even possible,” Christine felt herself transported “into a form of a trance,” while steadily holding her husband’s hand until the aircraft finally touched down on the runway.
SETI Institute via AP
“We had survived,” she recounted. “But I still couldn’t move. I still couldn’t comprehend. We were safely on the ground and yet my throat felt as if a noose was tightly around it. I felt a squeeze of my hand and heard somebody talking to me, but I was frozen still. It’s then that I realised that my life had changed and would never be the same again.”
Disaster, however, would strike Christine’s family on June 18, when Titan—a 21-foot submersible Shahzada and Suleman were on to view the wreckage of the RMS Titanic—went missing an hour and 45 minutes into its expedition. Suleman was initially “terrified” to go, but boarded anyway to accompany his dad on the Father’s Day excursion, his aunt Azmeh Dawood told NBC News.
Four days later, and following an around-the-clock rescue mission, the five-person crew aboard the submersible were presumed dead by authorities, who found debris from the Titan “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber.”
“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” OceanGate, the company behind the Titan expedition, said in a statement on June 22. “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.”
To learn more about the five Titan passengers, keep scrolling.
AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee
Stockton Rush
OceanGate confirmed June 20 that its CEO Stockton Rush was aboard the submersible as a member of the crew.
The entrepreneur—who founded the research company in 2009 in Everett, Wash.—had long been interested in exploration. Rush, 61, previously said he dreamed of becoming the first person on Mars and once said that he’d “like to be remembered as an innovator.”
In addition to leading voyages to see the remnants of the Titanic, Rush had another surprising connection to the historic 1912 event: His wife Wendy Rush is the great-great-granddaughter of a couple who died on the Titanic, Ida and Isidor Straus.
Courtesy of the Dawood family
Shahzada Dawood & Son Suleman Dawood
Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood were also onboard the submersible.
Their family is one of the wealthiest in Pakistan, with Shahzada Dawood serving as the vice chairman of Engro Corporation, per The New York Times. His son was studying at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.
“I feel like I’ve been caught in a really bad film, with a countdown, but you didn’t know what you’re counting down to,” Shahzada’s sister Azmeh Dawood told NBC News June 22. “I personally have found it kind of difficult to breathe thinking of them.”
She added that it was “crippling” thinking about her 19-year-old nephew on board, because he “wasn’t very up for it” and was “terrified” to do the excursion.
The Dawood Foundation mourned their deaths in a statement to the website, saying, “It is with profound grief that we announce the passing of Shahzada and Suleman Dawood. Our beloved sons were aboard OceanGagte’s Titan submersible that perished underwater. Please continue to keep the departed souls and our family in your prayers during this difficult period of mourning.”
Action Aviation via AP
Hamish Harding
British billionaire Hamish Harding confirmed he was a part of the mission in a June 17 Instagram post, a day before the submersible went into the water and disappeared.
“I am proud to finally announce that I joined @oceangateexped for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist on the sub going down to the Titanic,” he wrote. “Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023. A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow.”
Harding—the chairman of aircraft company Action Aviation—said the group had started steaming from St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada and was planning to start dive operations around 4 a.m. on June 18. The 58-year-old added, “Until then we have a lot of preparations and briefings to do.”
His past explorations included traveling to the deepest part of the ocean in the Mariana Trench, telling Gulf News in 2021, “It was an incredibly hostile environment. To travel to parts of the Challenger Deep where no human had ever been before was truly remarkable.”
The Dubai-based businessman also circumnavigated the Earth by plane with the One More Orbit project and, last year, took a trip to space on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos‘ Blue Origin New Shepard rocket. Harding shared his love for adventure with his son Giles, described as a “teen explorer” on his Instagram.
JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images
Paul-Henri Nargeolet
As for the fifth member, a representative for French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet told the New York Times that he was a passenger on the Titan, with Harding also referencing him on Instagram as a member of the team.
The Times described him as a maritime expert who was previously part of the French Navy. The 71-year-old was a bonafide Titanic specialist and has traveled to the wreckage 35 times before. Nargeolet served as the director of RMS Titanic, Inc., a company that researches, salvages and displays artifacts from the famed ship, per the outlet.
Alongside fellow passenger Hamish Harding, he was a member of The Explorers Club, founded in 1904.
OceanGate Expeditions via AP
The Titan
As Harding noted in his post, the submersible—named Titan—was a part of an OceanGate Expeditions tour that explores the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, which infamously sank in 1912.
The company previously expressed its sympathies to the families of the missing passengers. “Our entire focus is on the crew members in the submersible and their families,” OceanGate said in a June 19 statement, “we are deeply thankful for the extensive assistance we have received from several government agencies and deep sea companies in our efforts to reestablish contact with the submersible.”
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