British Asian Trust "deeply saddened" by death of Dawood father and son
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June 23, 2023 - Missing Titanic sub crew killed after 'catastrophic implosion'

By Helen Regan, Adam Renton, Sana Noor Haq, Hannah Strange, Aditi Sangal and Tori B. Powell, CNN

Updated 9:00 p.m. ET, June 23, 2023
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3:36 p.m. ET, June 23, 2023

British Asian Trust "deeply saddened" by death of Dawood father and son

From CNN's Sophia Saifi

Shahzada Dawood, right, is seen with his son Suleman Dawood, in an undated photo.
Shahzada Dawood, right, is seen with his son Suleman Dawood, in an undated photo. Courtesy Engro Corporation Limited/Reuters

The British Asian Trust said Friday it is “deeply saddened” by the death of Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, who were on board a Titanic-bound submersible that imploded over the weekend.

The Pakistan-born British businessman and his son were two of five passengers killed in the disastrous implosion. The submersible's loss of communication with its mother ship triggered an international search effort that concluded Thursday after debris from the vessel was found in the North Atlantic Ocean.

“The British Asian Trust is deeply saddened by the tragic news that our supporter Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman have passed away. They were on board the missing submarine that set off to see the wreck of the Titanic," the trust tweeted on Friday.

"Shahzada was a wonderful and generous man who supported our work in South Asia for many years, while his son was just emerging into adulthood with a promising future ahead.

"Our hearts and prayers are with family and friends at this unimaginable time of grief and loss. Our deepest condolences to them and everyone else who lost loved ones in this terrible incident.”

The Dawood Foundation posted a photo of Shahzada and Suleman on Friday with the statement: “With heavy hearts and great sadness, we grieve the loss of our Trustee, Shahzada Dawood, and his beloved son Suleman Dawood. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Dawood family at this tragic time.”

3:53 a.m. ET, June 23, 2023

Search teams are scouring the sea floor for clues about the Titan's fateful voyage. Here's the latest

From CNN staff

The search for more debris from the Titan submersible continues into Friday as officials try to piece together a timeline of the vessel's final moments.

On Thursday, authorities said the five passengers on the sub that was diving 13,000 feet to view the wreckage of the Titanic on the ocean floor died in a "catastrophic implosion," bookending an extraordinary five-day international search operation.

Here's what we know:

  • Immediate next steps: Remotely operated vehicles will remain on the scene and continue to gather information from the sea floor, US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said. It will take time to determine a specific timeline of events in the "incredibly complex" case of the Titan's failure, Mauger said. The Coast Guard official said the agency will eventually have more information about what went wrong and its assessment of the emergency response.
  • What is a catastrophic explosion? An underwater implosion refers to the sudden inward collapse of the vessel. At those depths there is a tremendous amount of pressure on the submersible and even the tiniest structural defect could be disastrous, experts said. At the depths of the Titanic wreck, the implosion would have happened in a fraction of a millisecond. Former naval officer Aileen Marty said the implosion would have happened before anyone "inside would even realize that there was a problem."
  • Debris: The remotely operated vehicle found "five different major pieces of debris" from the Titan submersible, according to Paul Hankins, the US Navy's director of salvage operations and ocean engineering. The debris was "consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber" and, in turn, a "catastrophic implosion," he said. As of now, there does not appear to be a connection between the banging noises picked up by sonar earlier this week and where the debris was found. So far, they have located the Titan’s nose cone and one end of its pressure hulls in a large debris field, and the other end of the pressure hull in a second, smaller debris field. 
  • Timing: The US Navy detected an acoustic signature consistent with an implosion on Sunday and relayed that information to the commanders leading the search effort, a senior official told CNN. But the sound was determined to be “not definitive,” the official said. Mauger said rescuers had sonar buoys in the water for at least the last 72 hours and had "not detected any catastrophic events." Listening devices set up during the search also did not record any sign of an implosion, he added.

  • Who was on board: Tour organizer OceanGate Expeditions said Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Paul-Henri Nargeolet and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush died in the sub. They "shared a distinct spirit of adventure," the company in a statement.
  • Reaction: Nargeolet, a French diver, was an incredible person and highly respected in his field, said his friend Tom Dettweiler, a fellow ocean explorer. The president of The Explorers Club said the group is heartbroken over the tragic loss. Two passengers, businessman Harding and Nargeolet, were members, it said. Engro Corporation Limited, of which Shahzada Dawood was Vice Chairman, said the company grieves the loss of him and his son. The governments of Pakistan and the United Kingdom also offered condolences.
  • Similarities with famous shipwreck: James Cameron, who directed the hit 1997 movie “Titanic” and has himself made 33 dives to the wreckage, said he's worried the Titan submersible's implosion will have a negative impact on citizen explorers. He also said he saw "a parallel" with the Titanic due to "unheeded warnings about a sub that was not certified."
3:57 a.m. ET, June 23, 2023

Like the Titanic, Titan's legacy may be a rethink of maritime rules

From CNN's Brad Lendon

The RMS Titanic leaves Belfast in April of 1912.
The RMS Titanic leaves Belfast in April of 1912. Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis/Getty Images

After RMS Titanic sank on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic in 1912, governments on both sides of the ocean took a hard look at whether more could have been done to protect the some 2,200 people aboard, including the more than 1,500 who died.

The result was the Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS). Passed in 1914, its framework stands to this day, with many of its rules directly evolving from the Titanic tragedy.

With the implosion of the submersible Titan as it dived down to the wreck of the Titanic this week, killing all five people aboard, experts say there may be a new push for rules governing new high end, big dollar tourism of the kind being practiced by OceanGate Expeditions, the company that ran the Titan.

The unsinkable ship: When the Titanic set sail from Southampton, it was the world’s largest ocean liner, built with state-of-the-art maritime technology that many thought made it unsinkable.

Such was the belief in the Titanic that safety regulations of the day were not updated to keep pace with the technology.

Lessons from Titan: Maritime experts and historians have noted the Titan submersible operated outside of the regulations prompted by the Titanic disaster, and did not need to conform to safety regulations, since it operated in international waters.

While innovators and explorers may push the limits — or even break the rules — for scientific advancement, experts say there should be a higher safety threshold for paying passengers, like three of the dead aboard Titan, and that a rethink of the international rules governing such expeditions may be in order, just as they were re-examined after the Titanic sank.

"It’s quite possible that the Titan might actually be the catalyst for more regulation within the submersibles field,” said Per Wimmer, a Danish philanthropist and adventurer.

Read more here.

2:24 a.m. ET, June 23, 2023

"Majority of the vessel" must be recovered to know what happened to Titan submersible, expert says

Many questions remain as authorities continue searching for debris from the Titan submersible, including when the implosion happened and what exactly went wrong with the sub.

So far, search teams have located the Titan’s nose cone and one end of its pressure hulls in a large debris field, and the other end of the pressure hull in a second, smaller debris field.

Bobby Chacon, retired FBI special agent and former leader of the FBI dive team, told CNN that a debris field like the one search teams discovered could have been created by an almost simultaneous implosion and explosion of the submersible.

"What happens is the implosion ... and then there is simultaneously an explosion because there are things inside, for example oxygen tanks, that were inside this vessel," Chacon said.
"The two things that they found — the cones or the caps of that vessel — they were titanium. So they weren't destroyed ... Then the carbon fiber shell that made up most of that vessel came apart in the implosion-explosion. That's what's scattered about."

Chacon added that it won't be possible to know what happened to the submersible "unless you recover the majority of the vessel."

"The sooner they do that, the better, because the ocean changes things all the time. The tides and currents and ocean pressures moves things around," he said.

Chacon said the best scenario would be to use remotely operated vehicles, which have baskets and arms that can lift the debris.

"The good thing is it sounds like there is no other Titanic debris in that section. Everything they come across there should be collected, put into baskets and brought back to the surface for analysis," he said.

1:33 a.m. ET, June 23, 2023

What's next for the search effort?

From CNN's Jessie Yeung

Experts say it is unlikely any bodies will be recovered but the US Coast Guard said it will continue the search in an effort to recover what it can.

Besides searching for the passengers, authorities will also continue to search the sea floor in hopes of discovering more information about what led to the implosion. 

It will take time to put together a specific timeline of events, the US Coast Guard said Thursday, calling the underwater environment “incredibly complex.”

So far, they have located the Titan’s nose cone and one end of its pressure hulls in a large debris field, and the other end of the pressure hull in a second, smaller debris field. 

“What they would do now is go back to that site and, like cookie crumbs, try to find a trail as to where that would lead,” said Tom Maddox, CEO of Underwater Forensic Investigators, who took part in a Titanic expedition in 2005.

He added that the debris pieces could still be “slightly buoyant” and be carried further away by ocean currents. “So the big project right now is going to be trying to collect those parts,” he said. “They’ll mark them, they’ll indicate where they were, and they’ll lay out a map of where those parts were found.”

Read more here.

3:07 a.m. ET, June 23, 2023

Here's how the Titan submersible tragedy unfolded

From CNN staff

OceanGate/FILE
OceanGate/FILE

Debris from the missing Titan submersible was found near the wreckage of the Titanic Thursday, five days after a massive search operation was launched when the vessel lost contact with its mother ship.

US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said the vessel suffered a "catastrophic implosion," killing all five people on board. 

Here's a timeline of events:

  • Sunday: Titan launches from support vessel Polar Prince around 9 a.m. and begins its 2-hour dive to the Titanic wreck. It loses contact with the ship 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent, with their last communication to the surface at 11:47 a.m, officials say. The US Coast Guard is alerted and search operations begin later that day. The US Navy detects an acoustic signature consistent with an implosion and relays that information to commanders leading the search effort, a senior official tells CNN. But the sound is determined to be “not definitive,” the official says, and the search continues.
  • Monday: The US and Canadian coast guards continue surface and subsurface searches. A Canadian aircraft and two C-130 flights conduct aerial and radar searches and sonar buoys are deployed to listen for sounds in the water column. Officials say if the submersible is still intact, it is estimated to have between 70 and 96 hours of life support. The US Coast Guard says its priority is locating the vessel. British businessman Hamish Harding is identified as one of the passengers.
  • Tuesday: Sonar picks up banging sounds from underneath the water in 30-minute intervals, according to an internal government memo. The US Coast Guard says underwater noises were also detected by a Canadian P-3 aircraft but searches "yielded negative results." The search expands into a massive international operation with underwater capability. More ships and aircraft join the mission. The other crewmembers are identified as Stockton Rush, CEO and founder of OceanGate, Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman Dawood, and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
  • Wednesday: The US Coast Guard expands the search site as estimated oxygen levels on the submersible are thought to have reached critical levels. A fleet of ships and specialized equipment is deployed, including a US Navy salvage system capable of retrieving vessels off the bottom of the ocean floor. More banging sounds are heard and remotely operated vehicle (ROV) equipment is relocated to try to pinpoint the them — but yield no results. Questions are raised over the safety of the submersible, including that operators OceanGate Expeditions declined a safety review of the Titan.
  • Thursday:  A remote operated vehicle reaches the sea floor for the first time as new, high-tech vessels and medical personnel move to the search site with efforts reaching a pivotal moment. Around midday ET, the US Coast Guard says a debris field was discovered in the search area by an ROV and is later assessed to be from the external body of the sub. OceanGate says it believes the passengers have "sadly been lost." In an update, the US Coast Guard says five major pieces of debris from the sub have been found and are "consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber." Around 3 p.m. ET, Rear Adm. John Mauger, says the vessel suffered a “catastrophic implosion," killing all five on board. The location of the submersible was in an area that was approximately 1,600 feet from the wreck of the Titanic, and officials say they are working to piece together a timeline of what happened.
1:33 a.m. ET, June 23, 2023

What is a catastrophic implosion?

From CNN staff

The Titan submersible bound for the Titanic that went missing on Sunday with five people on board suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said Thursday.

The tail cone and other debris from the missing submersible were found by a remotely operated vehicle about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, which rests about 13,000 feet deep in the North Atlantic Ocean.

The Coast Guard said the debris found on the sea floor was "consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber."

  • What is a catastrophic implosion? The opposite of an explosion, an implosion is when an object suddenly and violently collapses in on itself. At those depths there is a tremendous amount of pressure on the submersible and even the tiniest structural defect could be disastrous, experts said. "So at that pressure (there) are probably around four, five thousand pounds per square inch, over 350 times the pressure on Earth. Any small leak could cause an immediate implosion, which would destroy the craft," said Tom Maddox, CEO of Underwater Forensic Investigators, who took part in a Titanic expedition in 2005.
  • Some context: Pressure on the surface is measured as 1 atmosphere, which is about 15 pounds per square inch. As you dive deeper underwater, that pressure builds and builds. At the depths of the Titanic wreck, the pressure is close to 6,000 pounds per square inch.
  • Would the crew have known what was happening? With so much pressure on the submersible, the implosion would have happened in a fraction of a millisecond. A catastrophic implosion happens at 1,500 miles per hour, Aileen Marty, a former naval officer and professor at Florida International University told CNN. "It takes more than that — it takes about 0.25 more than that — for the human brain to even realize it’s happening. So … the entire thing would have collapsed before the individuals inside would even realize that there was a problem," Marty said. "They died in a way that they didn’t even realize that they were about to die. Ultimately, among the many ways in which we can pass, that’s painless."
  • Recovery chances: When asked about the likelihood of recovering crew members of the Titan, Mauger from the US Coast Guard said he doesn’t "have an answer for prospects at this time," but they will continue the search. "This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor," he said Thursday.
12:02 a.m. ET, June 23, 2023

Submersible heading to Titanic wreckage suffered a "catastrophic implosion." Catch up here

From CNN staff

The five passengers on the Titan submersible that was diving 13,000 feet to view the Titanic on the ocean floor died in a "catastrophic implosion," authorities said Thursday, bookending an extraordinary five-day international search operation near the site of the world's most famous shipwreck.

The tail cone and other debris were found by a remotely operated vehicle about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, deep in the North Atlantic and about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

“This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there on the sea floor and the debris is consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” US Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger, the First Coast Guard District commander, told reporters.

Here's what we know:

  • Debris: The remotely operated vehicle found "five different major pieces of debris" from the Titan submersible, according to Paul Hankins, the US Navy's director of salvage operations and ocean engineering. The debris was "consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber" and, in turn, a "catastrophic implosion," he said. As of now, there does not appear to be a connection between the banging noises picked up by sonar earlier this week and where the debris was found.
  • Timing: The US Navy detected an acoustic signature consistent with an implosion on Sunday and relayed that information to the commanders leading the search effort, a senior official told CNN. But the sound was determined to be “not definitive,” the official said. Mauger, for his part, said rescuers had sonar buoys in the water for at least the last 72 hours and had "not detected any catastrophic events." Listening devices set up during the search also did not record any sign of an implosion, Mauger added.
  • What comes next: The remotely operated vehicles will remain on the scene and continue to gather information, Mauger said. It will take time to determine a specific timeline of events in the "incredibly complex" case of the Titan's failure, Mauger said. The Coast Guard official said the agency will eventually have more information about what went wrong and its assessment of the emergency response.
  • Response: Mauger applauded the “huge international” and “interagency” search effort. He said teams had the appropriate gear and worked as quickly as possible. The Coast Guard official also thanked experts and agencies for assisting with the search for the Titan submersible.

  • Who was on board: Tour organizer OceanGate Expeditions said Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Paul-Henri Nargeolet and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush died in the submersible. They "shared a distinct spirit of adventure," the company in a statement.
  • Reaction: Nargeolet, a French diver, was an incredible person and highly respected in his field, said his friend Tom Dettweiler, a fellow ocean explorer. The president of The Explorers Club said the group is heartbroken over the tragic loss. Two passengers, businessman Harding and Nargeolet, were members, it said. Engro Corporation Limited, of which Shahzada Dawood was Vice Chairman, said the company grieves the loss of him and his son. The governments of Pakistan and the United Kingdom also offered condolences.
12:56 a.m. ET, June 23, 2023

"Titanic" director James Cameron sees similarities with submersible tragedy and famous shipwreck

From CNN's Lisa Respers France and Alli Rosenbloom

James Cameron speaks to CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday.
James Cameron speaks to CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday. CNN

James Cameron, who directed the hit 1997 film “Titanic” and has himself made 33 dives to the wreckage, offered his thoughts Thursday after it was announced that a missing Titanic-bound submersible suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” killing all five people on board.

“I think there’s a great, almost surreal irony here, which is Titanic sank because the captain took it full steam into an ice field at night, on a moonless night with very poor visibility after he had been repeatedly warned,” Cameron told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Thursday.

Cameron added he thinks “we’re also seeing a parallel here with unheeded warnings about a sub that was not certified.”

Cameron is an experienced deep sea explorer who in 2012 dove to the Mariana Trench, considered one of the deepest spots in the Earth’s oceans at almost 7 miles below the surface, in a 24-foot submersible vehicle he designed called the Deepsea Challenger.

Speaking of his deep-sea dives to the site of the Titanic, Cameron told Cooper: “You feel the presence of the tragedy and I think that’s the lure. I think that’s why people want to go and experience it for themselves. To feel, to remember history.”

He added that while he thinks it’s important to remember that history, “here’s a case starkly, today, where the collective, we didn’t remember the lesson of Titanic — these guys at OceanGate didn’t.”

“I just think it’s heartbreaking that it was so preventable,” he said.