TITANIC SUBMERSIBLE SEARCHERS DETECT BANGING NOISES

Wed 21 June 2023:

The US Coast Guard stated in a statement on Wednesday that a Canadian military search plane has picked up sounds that could be coming from a submersible that vanished while carrying visitors to the Titanic disaster.

While it is not certain whether the sounds belong to the small underwater craft, the statement said the sounds were heard at 30-minute intervals but that there were no positive results in the search region yet.

The Titan submarine, which is carrying five people, has 28 hours of oxygen left, the statement continued.

On board the Titan submersible are British billionaire Hamish Harding, who owns Action Aviation, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Soleiman Dawood, French submarine pilot Paul Henry Nargeolet, and Stockton Rush, the founder and CEO of OceanGate, which owns the vessel and organized the mission.

The eight-day trip pass, which costs $250,000, includes scuba diving in a submersible to view the Titanic ruins.

Over 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) below the surface of the seas, the Titanic is submerged in the Atlantic Ocean.

"There is an enormous complexity…due to the location being so far offshore"

The surface area of the search for missing Titanic sub has expanded to an area twice the size of Connecticut, Captain Jamie Frederick of the US Coast Guard says#titanicsubmersible #titanicsub pic.twitter.com/YJ4VSuD8sH

— INDEPENDENT PRESS (@IpIndependent) June 21, 2023

Coast Guard describe challenge of huge search area

Capt Jamie Frederick said the surface search was an area equivalent to twice the size of Connecticut and 4km deep as he confirmed more surface vessels and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) will be joining the search.

Although experts estimate the five men on board would have less than twenty hours of oxygen left, Capt Frederick said that it remained very much a rescue operation.

Then over in Newfoundland, Canada, we heard from Horizon Maritime Services and Miawpukek Horizon reps – the groups behind the Polar Prince ship which launched Titan submersible into the sea.

Horizon chairman Sean Leet said the marine industry in this part of the world is no stranger to responding to tough situations.

“I’ve been in the marine industry since a very young age and I’ve never seen equipment of that nature move that quickly,” he said.

‘Very difficult’

Chris Parry, a retired navy rear admiral from the United Kingdom, told Sky News that ocean conditions around where the Titanic shipwreck lies will make the ongoing search “a very difficult operation”.

“The actual nature of the seabed is very undulating. Titanic herself lies in a trench. There’s lots of debris around. So trying to differentiate with sonar in particular and trying to target the area you want to search in with another submersible is going to be very difficult indeed,” Parry said.

The wreck of the Titanic lies about 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. Without any cell towers in the middle of the ocean, we are relying on @Starlink to provide the communications we require throughout this year’s 2023 Titanic Expedition.

More: https://t.co/F7OtKI0En7 pic.twitter.com/wr7HeKlGjj

— OceanGate Expeditions (@OceanGateExped) June 14, 2023

On April 10, 1912, the luxurious cruise ship Titanic, touted as “unsinkable,” left from Southampton, England, with 2,224 passengers and crew on board and was headed for New York.

The ship struck an iceberg on April 15 while still on its debut journey, and it eventually sank into the North Atlantic.

More than 1,500 people lost their lives in the accident, some freezing to death in ice-cold water, and many of whom were poor passengers in the ship’s steerage section. There were only enough lifeboats for 1,178 people on board. Arriving at the crash site a few hours later, the ship Carpathia rescued 710 people.

Oceanographer Robert Ballard made the discovery of the Titanic’s wreckage in 1985, 645 kilometers (401 miles) off the coast of Newfoundland, which has been the focus of countless books and films.

Many objects from the wreck were found during dives from 1987 to 2004.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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