The submarine that vanished during a tourist trip to the wreckage of the Titanic had gotten lost for about two and a half hours during a similar trip last year.

The OceanGate Expeditions’ five-man Titan submarine was featured in a CBS Sunday Morning segment late last year, with correspondent David Pogue following a trip to the shipwreck site about 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

Reacting to the news that Titan and its crew had gone missing Monday morning, Pogue tweeted that he was on board the same sub when he was filming his story last summer.

“You may remember that the @OceanGateExped sub to the #Titanic got lost for a few hours LAST summer, too, when I was aboard,” Pogue said.

During the segment, Pogue narrated that the submarine had lost communication with the ship guiding its movement underwater, ruining the trip some tourists paid $250,000 to join.

“There’s no GPS underwater, so the surface ship is supposed to guide the sub to the ship wreck by sending text messages,” Pogue said in the story. “But on this dive, communications somehow broke down. The sub never found the wreck.”

Despite the hiccup, the company was able to later launch a successful dive, with the crew taking in the site of the world’s most infamous shipwreck.

Monday’s disappearance occurred about one hour and 45 minutes into Titan’s dive, the US Coast Guard said in a tweet. The research vessel Polar Prince had lost contact with Titan at that time.

Tourist submersible exploring Titanic wreckage disappears in Atlantic Ocean

What we know

A submersible on a pricey tourist expedition to the Titanic shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean has vanished with likely only four days’ worth of oxygen. The US Coast Guard said the small submarine began its journey underwater with five passengers Sunday morning, and the Canadian research vessel that it was working with lost contact with the crew about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive.

It was later found that a top-secret team with the US Navy detected the implosion of the Titan submersible on Sunday, but did not stop search efforts due because the evidence was “not definitive” and a decision was made to “make every effort to save the lives on board.” 

Who was on board?

The family of world explorer Hamish Harding confirmed on Facebook that he was among the five traveling in the missing submarine. Harding, a British businessman who previously paid for a space ride aboard the Blue Origin rocket last year, shared a photo of himself on Sunday signing a banner for OceanGate’s latest voyage to the shipwreck. 

Also onboard were Pakistani energy and tech mogul Shanzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman, 19; famed French diver and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush.

7

• Missing Titanic sub live updates
• Debris discovered near Titanic site during frantic search for missing crew on OceanGate sub
• Daughter of missing Titanic diver remains hopeful: ‘I think we have to trust’ search crews
• Titanic tourist Hamish Harding’s family slams OceanGate for delay in reporting missing sub
• Coast Guard knew Titan sub imploded Sunday, but continued search anyway — here’s why

What’s next?

“We’re doing everything we can do to locate the submersible and rescue those on board,” Rear Adm. John Mauger told reporters. “In terms of the hours, we understood that was 96 hours of emergency capability from the operator.

Coast Guard officials said they are currently focusing all their efforts on locating the sub first before deploying any vessel capable of reaching as far below as 12,500 feet where the Titanic wreck is located.

Mauger, first district commander and leader of the search-and-rescue mission, said the US was coordinating with Canada on the operation.

The debris recovered from the US Coast Guard’s Titan submersible search site early Thursday included “a landing frame and a rear cover from the submersible.”

After search efforts to recover the stranded passengers proved futile, and bits of debris from the submersible were found, it was decided that the sub imploded, which correlated with an anomaly picked up by the US Navy in the same area.

The Coast Guard later reported that all 5 passengers were confirmed dead, and rescue efforts were halted.

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OceanGate says that while the entire trip to the wreckage site takes eight days, the dive itself can last up to 10 hours.

The company noted that because of its location in the middle of the Atlantic, they rely on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites for its communications at sea. 

World-renowned explorer Hamish Harding was confirmed to be among those inside the sub when it disappeared, with the 58-year-old British millionaire boasting about the opportunity to see the Titanic in the days leading up to the voyage.

“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,” Harding wrote on Instagram alongside a picture of himself signing a banner celebrating the expedition.

Harding also said that among those joining him on the mission was veteran Frenchy Navy diver P.H. Nargeolet, who has led previous expeditions to the Titanic. It remains unclear if Nargeolet is among those missing.

OceanGate posted on Twitter last week that only one expedition to the Titanic was ongoing due to weather in Newfoundland, with two more planned for June 2024.

Harding’s post prior to his disappearance echoed that the submarine had a short window of opportunity to visit the Titanic amid the poor weather.