Titanic submersible: Have they made contact - What are conditions like on board missing vessel - Who is onboard?

The US Coast Guard is leading the search for the small craft, named Titan, which was reported overdue about 435 miles south of St John's in Newfoundland, Canada, on Sunday evening. The Titan's dive on Sunday is one of many that have been made to the wreck, which is about 2.4 miles below the surface, by OceanGate Expeditions since 2021. With temperatures on the ocean floor near-freezing and the vessel's 96 hour oxygen supply running down, occupants are at increasing risk of hyperthermia or suffocation.

Here the PA news agency explores what conditions may be like onboard.

What are the conditions like?

The submersible, a Cyclops-2 model named Titan, is the second Cyclops model built by OceanGate, after the Cyclops-1. As there are no doors on the craft, passengers begin their journey by climbing in through an entry hatch which is then bolted shut from the outside before they descend 13,000ft (2.4 miles) beneath the ocean surface to the Titanic, Mail Online reported.

There are no seats on the 22ft long, 9.5ft wide, and 9.2ft high cylindrical craft, meaning passengers must sit on the hard floor without shoes, which they are required to leave behind. If they need the toilet, they must use a small black box separated by a curtain from the rest of the crew.

Cut off from communication with the outside world, they have no idea of whether they will ever be found. There are no windows except a small bolthole directly next to the toilet at the front of the craft which is also the primary viewpoint to look out at the Titanic. When the craft was still operational, the pilot used a modified Logitech games controller to steer it.

What other dangers await the passengers?

Even if rescuers locate the craft before its remaining 52-hour oxygen supply runs out, the occupants face other dangers. One possibility is that they are stranded at the bottom of the ocean near the site of the Titanic, around 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. If that is the case, those on-board will be faced with rapidly dropping temperatures which puts them at risk of hypothermia.

Rescuers are now in a "race against time" to reach the vessel before the oxygen runs out, which is expected to happen on Thursday. David Gallo, a senior adviser for Strategic Initiatives for RMS Titanic, told CNN that temperatures on the ocean floor are "just above freezing cold".

He said: "It is a race against time - you are fighting oxygen levels, also fighting the cold if the sub is still at the bottom because the deep ocean is just above freezing, so hypothermia is an issue. "The water is very deep - 2 miles plus. It's like a visit to another planet, it's not what people think it is. It is a sunless, cold environment and high pressure."

Could passengers suffer 'the bends'?

According to oceanologist Dr Simon Boxall of the University of Southampton, one common misconception is that people will get decompression sickness, commonly nicknamed "the bends", if the boat moves up to the surface too quickly. He told PA that those on board would not suffer "ill-effects" because the boat is at atmospheric pressure.

He also said it is a mistake to believe passengers could use escape hatches because if they did they would be crushed. He added on GB News that the boat is not above the surface because if this was the case crews would be able to use radios.

What is the latest on their condition?

Dr Boxall said a distress signal from the submarine has been sent out. He told PA: "This is second-hand knowledge but my understanding is that they have received a signal from the submarine. "You can't use radios underwater. "You rely totally on 'pings'. What they have is really limited communication.

"Apparently they have had, and I don't know when... they have had an emergency ping saying the vessel is in distress. "I don't know if that is automatically generated or generated by people on board. "It could be that the vessel is lost already or it could be automatic." He said he did not know when the message was transmitted.

Who is onboard

Five people are on board the submersible tourist vessel which went missing during a voyage to the Titanic shipwreck off the coast of Canada, as a major search and rescue mission works around the clock to locate the Titan submersible.

UK-based businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman have been named as two of the people on board, reportedly together with French submersible pilot Paul-Henry Nargeolet, chief executive of OceanGate Expeditions Stockton Rush, and British billionaire and pilot Hamish Harding.

– Shahzada and Sulaiman Dawood

The father and son belong to one of Pakistan’s most prominent families. Shahzada, 48, is vice-chairman of Pakistani conglomerate Engro Corporation, and an adviser to the King’s charity, Prince’s Trust International, with a focus on its work in Pakistan. It is understood the Dawood family, who live in Surbiton, south-west London, are in Canada for a month. Neighbours of the family told the Telegraph they are “very good neighbours, nice interesting people” and said the son, Sulaiman, is 19.

With an LLB in law from the University of Buckingham and an MSc in textile marketing from Philadelphia University, Mr Dawood has held several trustee and director roles across several companies. He became a director of the Dawood Hercules Corporation in 1996, and served as vice chairman between 2018 and 2021, according to his LinkedIn profile. The company is an investment holding platform, of which Engro Corporation is a subsidiary. Mr Dawood’s father, Hussain Dawood, was a founding patron of Prince’s Trust International, according to the charity.

– Stockton Rush

The chief executive and founder of OceanGate Expeditions, Stockton Rush originally trained as a pilot, becoming the youngest jet transport rated pilot in the world aged 19 in 1981, according to his profile on the OceanGate website. He has been married to Wendy Rush, nee Weil, since 1986, with their wedding announcement published in the New York Times. Ms Weil is listed as the director of communications for OceanGate and a “Comms and Tracking Team Member” for the Titanic expedition on her LinkedIn page.

In a 2017 interview with the alumni magazine for Princeton University, where he studied mechanical aerospace engineering, he said: “I was interested in exploration. I thought it was space exploration. I thought it was Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars… and then I realised, it’s all in the ocean.” Mr Rush co-founded OceanGate in 2009, and has led crewed expeditions to remote ocean locations including the Titanic. He is also the founder and member of the board of trustees of the linked charity organisation OceanGate Foundation, which uses marine technology to develop understanding of marine science, history and archaeology.

Alongside this work, Mr Rush has also overseen development of a number of companies, experimental ventures and inventions, including serving on the board of directors for Seattle’s BlueView Technologies, a manufacturer of small, high-frequency sonar, and as chairman of Remote Control Technology Inc, producing wireless remote-control devices for companies including Boeing. According to his OceanGate biography he built his own aircraft, which he flew himself, and has undertaken more than 30 dives in a modified two-man submersible.

He told Sky News in February that he was struck by how “beautiful” the Titanic was on a previous visit. Mr Rush said: “What really strikes you is how beautiful it is. You don’t normally see that on a shipwreck. “It is an amazingly beautiful wreck.”

– Paul-Henry Nargeolet

A former commander who served in the French navy for 25 years, Mr Nargeolet, reportedly 77, was in the first human expedition to visit the ship in 1987, according to the Telegraph. After his career in the French navy, where he was captain of the deep submergence group, he held a number of roles in deep diving and piloting submersibles, including acting as director of DESM, noted on his LinkedIn profile as a French deep diving equipment company.

Sky News has reported that he joined the French Institute for Research and Exploitation of the Sea, after the navy, according to The Five Deeps Expedition – a company that assembles scientists, engineers and submersible operators for missions. As director of the Underwater Research Programme with RMS Titanic Inc, he led the retrieval of items from the Titanic, across several expeditions. He lives in Connecticut, US, while his adult children live in Cork, Ireland, the Telegraph has reported.

Last year he published a book in France about his experiences with the Titanic, “Dans Les Profondeurs Du Titanic” (In The Depths Of The Titanic”). In an interview with the Irish Examiner in 2019 he said: “If you are 11 metres or 11 kilometres down, if something bad happens, the result is the same. “When you’re in very deep water, you’re dead before you realise that something is wrong, so it’s just not a problem.”

– Hamish Harding

The billionaire pilot and chairman of Action Aviation, a sales and operations company which manages private jet sales among other business aviation services, shared on his Instagram account that he had joined the Ocean Gate expedition as a “mission specialist”. Mr Harding, 58, is based in the UAE where the Action Aviation HQ is located, and presents himself in personal social media biographies as a “world explorer”.

His friend, the marine scientist James Mearn, characterised him as “very charming” and “very adventurous” in an interview with the BBC’s World at One. According to multiple reports, he has two sons, named Rory and Giles, a stepdaughter named Lauren and a stepson, Brian Szasz, and his wife is called Linda.

On the Action Aviation website profile Mr Harding writes the company is the “professional representative of choice” for large aircraft transactions between heads of state, VIPs, Fortune 100 companies and international corporations. Mr Harding holds several Guinness world records, including the fastest circumnavigation of the Earth via the North and South Poles by an aircraft, in 46 hours, 40 minutes and 22 seconds.

In March 2021 he was awarded the record for the longest time traversing the deepest part of the ocean on a single dive, alongside Victor Vescovo, at four hours 15 minutes along the sea floor of Challenger Deep in the western Pacific Ocean. In an interview with the Dubai-based Khaleej Times newspaper, Mr Harding said of this expedition: “I have always wanted to venture into uncharted territories. THat got me interested in embarking on adventures and explorations, in general.”

He said he often took his son Giles with him on these trips, including another world-record beating journey to the South Pole when Giles, aged 12, became the youngest person to have visited. Last year, he also took part in the fifth human space flight by Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company Blue Origin, according to Sky News.