The five men who died on the Titan submersible

One year ago, the world followed a frantic search for five men in a small submersible in the North Atlantic Ocean. They had been on their way to see the wreck of the Titanic but lost contact with the control room soon after their descent on June 18, 2023.

After finding several fragments of the Titan at the bottom of the ocean, it became clear that the submersible had a catastrophic implosion, killing the 3 passengers and 2 staff members who were in it.

The fragments were found about 500 meters from the Titanic's bow, the wreckage that these 5 Titan passengers longed to see. They attempted to descend 3,800 meters to the bottom of the ocean on June 18 for this purpose. Who were the passengers on that ill-fated submersible?

The Titan's pilot was Stockton Rush, founder and CEO of the company that owns the submersible, OceanGate Expeditions. Rush was a 61-year-old American, known for aviation and the exploration of the deep sea.

Photo: Oceangate / Instagram

Rush, who graduated from Princeton with an aerospace engineering degree in 1984, began his career as a transport jet pilot but later joined the McDonnell Douglas Corporation as a flight test engineer on the F-15 program.

Photo: oceangate / Instagram

His experience in the aerospace industry and his passion for the depths of the sea led him to found the company OceanGate in 2009.

His mission with OceanGate, he said, was to increase access to the deep ocean through innovation. To do so, he had to break some rules. He considered that it was necessary to take risks if one wanted to innovate.

In 2012, Rush co-founded the OceanGate Foundation, dedicated to driving advances in marine technology, science, history, and archaeology.

Although he loved the ocean, he once commented that his childhood dream was to be an astronaut. However, his eyesight wasn't very good and he had to let go of that dream.

Photo: oceangate / Instagram

Hamish Harding was a 58-year-old British billionaire living in the United Arab Emirates. His great passion was to explore and do what few others could.

Photo: ActionAviation / Twitter

In fact, after traveling into space and descending to the depths of the ocean, Harding decided that he wanted to be part of the "mission" to see the remains of the Titanic with his own eyes.

Photo: ActionAviation / Twitter

The British billionaire was the founder of the Action Group and Chairman of Action Aviation, an aviation sales and operations services company based in Dubai.

Passionate about the sky and space, Harding became a pilot and skydiver. In addition, he graduated in Natural Sciences and Chemical Engineering from the prestigious University of Cambridge.

Photo: ActionAviation / Twitter

He was also an explorer. In fact, he traveled to Antarctica several times, where he accompanied former astronaut Buzz Aldrin in 2016 as the 86-year-old became the oldest person to reach the South Pole.

Photo: ActionAviation / Twitter

As if that weren't enough, Harding also became a space tourist. In June 2022, he traveled aboard the New Shepard on a suborbital flight as part of Blue Origin's NS-21 mission.

The British billionaire held three Guinness records: in 2019, he flew the fastest circumnavigation of the world across the poles, and in 2021, together with the American Víctor Vescovo, he broke two distance and duration records in maximum ocean depth by descending to about 11, 000 meters in the Mariana Trench.

Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman Dawood, also died in the Titan, hoping to see the wreckage of the Titanic.

Photo: officialmetronome / Instagram

Shahzada, 48, was a businessman from one of Pakistan's wealthiest families. He lived with his family in London, England. The tycoon had studied for a law degree at Buckingham University.

Photo: setiinstitute / Facebook

His son Suleman was 19 years old, and although he accompanied his father on this expedition, an aunt of the young man revealed that his nephew was hesitant to make that trip.

In fact, Azmeh Dawood, the billionaire businessman's older sister, told NBC News that her nephew didn't feel quite ready to go down and was terrified. However, Suleman ended up going with his dad because it was Father's Day and he wanted to please him.

Suleman had just finished his first year at the University of Strathclyde, located in Glasgow, Scotland.

Photo: thedawoodfoundation / Instagram

Paul-Henri Nargeolet was a prestigious 77-year-old French explorer and a highly respected person in underwater research.

The deep sea explorer and submersible pilot made more than 35 dives in the area where the Titanic rests.

He served in the French Navy for 22 years, retiring as a Major in 1986. He then joined the French Institute for Marine Research and Exploitation (Ifremer). In 1987, he led the first Titanic recovery expedition.

He knew everything about the Titanic catastrophe that occurred in 1912. Nargeolet was considered an eminence on the subject.

Nargeolet oversaw the recovery of 5,000 artifacts, including a 20-ton section of the Titanic's hull known as the "big piece." it is now on display in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Photo: rmstitanicinc / Instagram

In an ironic twist of fate, these five men would be added to the number of casualties of the Titanic disaster. They, too, had boarded a vessel that seemed to be the culmination of modern design and turned out to have fatal weaknesses.

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