The UK-based Pakistani businessman and his teenage son who are among the five people trapped on a submarine that went missing near the Titanic wreckage have been pictured today.
Shahzada Dawood, 48, a board member of the Prince’s Trust charity, and his son Sulaiman Dawood, 19, were on board the 22ft craft taking paying tourists to view the wreck 12,500ft under water when they lost signal in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Their desperate family, including Shahzada’s wife Christine and daughter Alina, are now enduring an agonising wait for any news of the pair – hoping in vain that they could somehow be found thousands of feet underwater before the oxygen onboard runs out in around 50 hours.
But former Royal Navy Commander Ryan Ramsey, 53, today warned there is ‘no way’ of rescuing the crew, which includes British billionaire Hamish Harding, if the tiny craft is still thousands of feet under the sea because the technology required ‘doesn’t exist’.
However, the vessel could well be floating on the surface of the water, meaning it will be easier for rescue crews to locate the submarine before the air runs out.
Cdr Ramsey, who served in the Navy’s submarine service for 23 years, told MailOnline that those on board – including French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet and OceanGate chief executive Stockton Rush – will now be facing dwindling oxygen levels, while another expert warned the crew members face the risk of hypothermia.
‘There is no way of rescuing them,’ said the naval veteran, who commanded a Royal Navy nuclear submarine. ‘Most rescue systems can get only reach 500m (1,640ft) not 3,000m (9,000ft).
‘The technology, as far as I’m aware, doesn’t exist to carry out a rescue operation that deep. If they are still in a position to be rescued, they’re running out of air and creating more carbon dioxide – that’s a killer.’
But rescue crews from the US and Canada are still trying to find the vessel, which is understood to have last ‘pinged’ whilst directly above the Titanic wreck, before the air onboard runs out. It is believed the submarine has enough oxygen to last under water until 12pm on Thursday UK time (7am EST).
Cdr Ramsey, from Oxford, said he feared that it was unlikely the vessel, if it has suffered a catastrophic failure, would ever be recovered. Indeed, the US Coast Guard today said its crews were searching an area roughly the size Connecticut – which is similar to that of Northern Ireland.
It’s probably imploded by now,’ he added. ‘The pressures at that depth are absolutely huge. If there’s a fault in any part of that submarine or any crack then quickly the pressure takes hold and crushes it.’
Asked what he thought when he heard about the crisis, he said: ‘It made my blood run cold. The people who decided to go down there are adventurers and they push the limits of what humans can do.
‘But if you [look] at the YouTube footage of that submarine, you could question the integrity of it. When I looked at it there was no way I would have done it and I have been under water most of my life.’
It comes as heartbreaking photographs emerged of Shahzada and Sulaiman smiling broadly with Christine.
Further photos emerged today showing the craft they were on leaving the port in St. John’s in Canada. The submersible was seen being towed by the mothership MV Polar Prince out to sea to the wreckage site.
But hours after the final images were taken, the submarine descended to the dark depths of the Atlantic Ocean to view the wreck 12,500ft underwater before losing all communication with the Polar Prince – 350 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
The sub, owned and operated by OceanGate Expeditions, had launched at around 4am on Sunday and was taking the crew 12,500ft under water as part of its £195,000-a-head tour of the 1912 shipwreck.
But the crew lost communication with the sub’s mothership MV Polar Prince an hour and 45 minutes into the two-hour descent and there is now a desperate search to find the vessel and those on board before the air runs out.
While the search had initially focused on the surface of the water, the team of rescuers are now expanding their search into deeper waters, said US Coast Guard First District Commander Rear Adm. John Mauger.
The pipelay vessel, named Deep Energy, has also arrived at the Titanic wreckage site so that its crew can search the seafloor using cameras.
France will also send a ship equipped with a deep-sea diving vessel to help the search-and-rescue operation.
The ship, called the Atalante, is managed by the Ifremer research institute. Ifremer said it had been contacted on Monday by the U.S. Navy with a request for help.
‘It carries the Victor 6000 autonomous robot, capable of descending to a depth of 6,000 metres, beyond the 3,800 metres of the wreck’s position’, Ifremer said, adding the ship was expected to arrive on the site by Wednesday evening local time.
And as the terrifying race against time began yesterday afternoon, rescuers admitted the submersible could have become stuck in the wreckage of the Titanic, which is 370 miles from Newfoundland in Canada but lies in US waters.
Submarine experts also fear the vessel is too deep for a manned rescue sub, such as the US Navy sub which is limited to 2,000ft, and that the only way of reaching it may be using a remote operated vehicle. These can reach a maximum depth of 20,000ft.
David Gallo, an oceanographer and senior adviser at RMS Titanic, said that if the submersible is still intact, the five onboard will be facing dwindling oxygen levels and fighting the cold and facing the risk of hypothermia.
‘One of the biggest things is where is it? Is it on the bottom, is it floating, is it mid-water? That is something that has not been determined yet… We will have to wait and see and hope for the best,’ Gallo added.
He added that if the submersible is located, the rescue crew would find it difficult to rescue those on board the vessel.
‘The water is very deep – two 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,’ he said.
But Stephen McGinty, the author of The Dive: The Untold Story of the World’s Deepest Submarine Rescue, said there is a ‘faint’ hope that rescuers could attach a line to the missing submersible and pull it back to the surface using a remote controlled vehicle.
The desperate families of those on board – Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman, Mr Harding, Mr Nargeolet and Mr Rush – are now desperately waiting for news of their loved ones.
We are very grateful for the concern being shown by our colleagues and friends and would like to request everyone to pray for their safety,’ the Dawood family said in a statement.
The Dawood family are among the richest in Pakistan, but have strong links to the UK and Shahzada lives in a six-bedroom £3.3million house in Surbiton, Surrey, with wife Christine, who works as a life coach, son Sulaiman and daughter Alina.
Their neighbour Ellen Maby, 48, told MailOnline of her shock when she saw the news that Shahzada and Sulaiman were on the submarine.
She said: ‘They are such a lovely, lovely couple and when I saw it on the TV I was shocked. You couldn’t wish for lovelier neighbours.
‘The children are so sweet and polite and Christine is so kind, she was wonderful to me when my mother was ill. They’ve lived her about ten years and we see them every now and then but to be honest they are away a lot as they are a very transient family.
‘We are just hoping and praying that they come out of this alive. It’s so awful to think about.’
Barnaby Sandow, Head of School at the ACS International School Cobham said:’The ACS International School Cobham community is deeply concerned by the news that recent graduate, Suleman Dawood, and his father are on board the submersible which has gone missing during a dive to the Titanic’s wreck. Our thoughts are with the family, friends and loved ones, during this difficult time.’
Shahzada is the Vice Chairman of Engro Corporation, which makes fertilisers, food and energy, as well as the Dawood Hercules Corporation, which makes chemicals. Shahzada’s father Hussain, 79, is chairman of both companies.
Shahzada is also a member of the Global Advisory Board for King Charles’ Charity, Prince’s Trust. He is also in the Founder’s Circle of the British Asian Trust.
The father-of-two is also on the board of trustees for the California-based SETI Institute that searches for extraterrestrial intelligence.
He was born in Pakistan but moved to the UK to study law at the University of Buckingham. He went on to study for Master’s in textile marketing in 2000 at Philadelphia University.
Shahzada had decided to take his son Sulaiman on the ‘Titan’ – the name of the Titanic submersible – for the five-day trip with three others when disaster struck and they lost contact with the surface after appearing to close in on their destination.
It’s understood that Titan communicates by sending a ping to the Polar Prince every 15 minutes – the last of which was received while the submersible floated above the Titanic wreckage at about 10am EST yesterday (3pm UK time).
It was at that moment that chaos ensued. A distress call was sent to the US Coast Guard at 9pm, whose Boston branch is leading an operation to carry out what would be the deepest undersea rescue mission ever.
Credit: Daily Mail
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