British billionaire Hamish Harding on board missing Titanic submersible

A search and rescue mission is underway after a vessel taking people to visit the Titanic went missing in the Atlantic Ocean, ITV News Correspondent Lucy Watson reports

A British man is on a missing underwater vessel that was taking tourists to visit the Titanic shipwreck.

Hamish Harding, the chairman of Action Aviation, a high-end private plane selling and management company, is among the crew on the expedition.

Earlier on Monday, the US Coastguard launched a search and rescue mission off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada to find the missing submersible, which is understood to be owned by company OceanGate Expeditions.

Action Aviation confirmed Mr Harding was one of the tourists on board, on Monday.

The company’s managing director, Mark Butler, said the crew set out on Friday, adding: “Every attempt is being made for a rescue mission. There is still plenty of time to facilitate a rescue mission, there is equipment on board for survival in this event.

“We’re all hoping and praying he comes back safe and sound.”

Rear Admiral John W Mauger of the US Coast Guard said there is 70 to 96 hours of oxygen, giving a window for rescuers to find the occupants alive.Mr Mauger said, at a press conference: “It is a remote area and a challenge but we are deploying all available assets to make sure we can locate the craft and rescue the people onboard.”

On Sunday, the Twitter account for Mr Harding's Action Aviation published a post saying: "4am start this morning on the RMS Titanic Expedition Mission 5 with @oceangateexped. The sub had a successful launch and Hamish is currently diving. Stay tuned for further updates!"

Mr Harding had previously posted on Facebook and Instagram, announcing he had joined the OceanGate Expeditions RMS Titanic Mission as what he described as "a mission specialist on the sub".

He said: "Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023.

"A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow. We started steaming from St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada yesterday and are planning to start dive operations around 4am tomorrow morning.

"Until then we have a lot of preparations and briefings to do.

"The team on the sub has a couple of legendary explorers, some of which have done over 30 dives to the RMS Titanic since the 1980s including PH Nargeolet."

Mr Harding travelled to space with fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin company, on June last year.

He is the holder of three Guinness World Records: longest duration at full ocean depth by a crewed vessel, longest distance traversed at full ocean depth by a crewed vessel and fastest circumnavigation via both Poles by aeroplane.

On March 5, 2021, he and explorer Victor Vescovo dived to the lowest depth of the Mariana Trench, off Micronesia in the Pacific Ocean, in a two-person submersible.

The pair were attempting to break a Guinness World Record for the greatest distance travelled at the deepest part of the ocean - 10,935 metres.

The dive’s scientific objectives were to search areas never before visited for new species and also for signs of human pollution affecting even this most remote area of planet Earth.

He and his then 12-year-old son also hiked to the South Pole alongside Prince Ned Nwoko of Nigeria in 2020.

The aim of the mission was to raise awareness of malaria. It also made his son the youngest ever person to reach the South Pole.

Experts said that rescuers face steep challenges.

Alistair Greig, a professor of marine engineering at University College London, said submersibles typically have a drop weight, which is “a mass they can release in the case of an emergency to bring them up to the surface using buoyancy.”

“If there was a power failure and/or communication failure, this might have happened, and the submersible would then be bobbing about on the surface waiting to be found,” Greig said.

Another scenario is a leak in the pressure hull, in which case the prognosis is not good, he said.

“If it has gone down to the seabed and can’t get back up under its own power, options are very limited," Greig said. “While the submersible might still be intact, if it is beyond the continental shelf, there are very few vessels that can get that deep, and certainly not divers.”

Even if they could go that deep, he doubts they could attach to the hatch of OceanGate's submersible.

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