A submarine that takes tourists to visit the wreckage of the Titanic has gone missing in the Atlantic Ocean. OceanGate Expeditions, the company that sends the vessels on deep-sea expeditions, confirmed the incident and said it was looking into how it might be able to locate the submersible and bring the people inside it home safely. Tourists pay $250,000 for the 8-day expedition to visit Titanic.
It hasn’t been confirmed how many people were on board, though there is capacity for five people including the pilot. Coastguards have begun a wide-scale search and the Ministry of Defense says it will “monitor the incident” as details become available.
“As the host nation for NATO’s multinational submarine rescue capability, we continue to monitor the incident in the North Atlantic and will guide and assist in any response activity as appropriate,” it said in a statement.
If you’re wondering how something like this might have happened and why it can’t just navigate home, it’s because the vehicle that went into the water wasn’t a submarine, which has its own power to travel, but a submersible, which needs a “mother ship” to send it out and pick it back. That means if the link between the two were to break, it would be impossible to know where the vessel is.
The Polar Prince tugboat, which transports submersibles, is said to be on the water roughly 700 meters away from the Titanic wreckage, per Sky News. It’s been reported that the pings the mother ship usually receives from the submersible every 15 minutes transmitting its status and location stopped earlier today and haven’t been received in more than eight hours.
Oceangate said in a statement, per ABC 7: “Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families. We are working toward the safe return of the crewmembers.” The company added that it is “deeply thankful for the extensive assistance we have received from several government agencies and deep sea companies in our efforts to establish contact with the submersible.”
