Five people were onboard the Titan submersible vessel when it went missing during an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean.
Here we take a look at who they are:
Hamish Harding
Harding, 58, is the chair of the private plane firm Action Aviation. His wife is called Linda, and he has two sons named Rory and Giles, as well as a stepdaughter named Lauren and a stepson, Brian Szasz.
He was a student at Cambridge and left with a degree in natural sciences and chemical engineering.
Harding is an aviator, holding an airline transport pilot’s licence and business jet type ratings, including the Gulfstream G650. He is also a skydiver, was inducted into the Living Legends of Aviation in 2022, and is a trustee of the Explorers Club.
He also previously worked with the Antarctic luxury tourism company White Desert to introduce the first regular business jet service to Antarctica.
Harding has made many trips to the south pole and, in 2016, accompanied the former astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who became the oldest person to reach there, aged 86. Harding also went into space last year with Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin company.
Shahzada and Suleman Dawood
Shahzada Dawood, 48, is the UK-based vice-chair of Pakistani chemicals-to-energy conglomerate Engro Corporation.
Engro, best known for its fertiliser and petrochemicals factories, as well as engineering projects, is Pakistan’s largest listed conglomerate.
Shahzada Dawood is a board member of King Charles’s charity Prince’s Trust International.
The charity said Dawood has been an adviser to its international arm in “various capacities”, including the global advisory board, 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.
His son Suleman is reportedly 19 years old.
Paul-Henri Nargeolet
Nargeolet is a 77-year-old former French navy commander known as “Mr Titanic”.
He has been studying the Titanic for 35 years and has been involved in several submarine expeditions to the wreckage and hundreds of hours of observation.
In 1987 he was part of the team that brought up a series of objects from the wreckage. In an interview with Le Parisien last year, he described the first time he saw the wreck, which lies in total darkness, covered with coral.
He said he glimpsed it from inside his submarine, detected with sonar and lit by projectors and said he and the team were left speechless. “For 10 minutes, there was no sound on the submarine.”
Nargeolet, who has been based in Connecticut in the US for many years, has described the wreckage as a “time capsule” where life suddenly stopped, endlessly fascinating to so many people for different reasons. “Some are interested in its construction, others in the history of immigration to the US, others are interested in the millionaires on board, the stars of the era.”
He told Le Monde last year of the vast number of species of marine life living around the wreck, saying: “The Titanic is an oasis in an immense desert.”
Stockton Rush
Rush, aged 61 according to reports, is the chief executive and founder of OceanGate, the company behind the mission to the Titanic.
According to the company website, Rush oversees OceanGate’s financial and engineering strategies and provides a clear vision for development of 4,000-metre- (13,123ft) and 6,000-metre-capable crewed submersibles.
He became the youngest jet transport rated pilot in the world when he obtained his DC-8 type/captain’s rating at the United Airlines jet training institute in 1981 at the age of 19.
Over the past 20 years, he has overseen the development of several ventures, including BlueView Technologies, a manufacturer of small, high-frequency sonar systems, Entomo, a software developer and Remote Control Technology Inc, a manufacturer of wireless remote-control devices.
He has a degree in aerospace engineering from Princeton University and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley Haas School of Business.
This article was amended on 21 June 2023 to correct the spelling of Suleman Dawood’s name.
