Amount paid for businessman John Jacob Astor’s watch is highest ever for Titanic memorabilia, auctioneers say
A gold pocket watch that was recovered from the body of the richest man on the Titanic has sold for a record-breaking £1.2m.
The watch was sold on Saturday to a private collector in the US at Henry Aldridge & Son in Devizes, Wiltshire, for the highest amount ever for Titanic memorabilia, the auctioneers said.
Continue reading...Paul-Henri Nargeolet was onboard the ill-fated submersible that was likely crushed by the ocean earlier this year, killing all five crew
The company that owns the salvage rights to the Titanic shipwreck has cancelled plans to retrieve more artefacts from the site because the leader of the upcoming expedition died in the Titan submersible implosion, according to documents filed in a US district court this week.
The decision could affect a looming court battle between the company and the US government, which has been trying to stop the 2024 mission. US attorneys have said the firm’s original plans to enter the ship’s hull would violate a federal law that treats the wreck as a gravesite.
Continue reading...Karl Stanley says Rush ‘definitely knew it was going to end like this’ and that he had warned Rush the craft was dangerous
A one-time passenger of the submersible that imploded over the wreck of the Titanic last month, killing five, has reportedly said he believes OceanGate’s CEO, Stockton Rush, who died in the accident, knew that expeditions of the Titan craft would end in disaster but continued to create a “mousetrap for billionaires”.
Karl Stanley, who was interviewed by 60 Minutes Australia on Sunday, told the broadcast that he’d warned his friend that the carbon fiber and titanium craft was dangerous.
Continue reading...Titanic director and deep-sea expert tweets he is not in talks about OceanGate movie after report published in the Sun
James Cameron has debunked the rumors that he is working on a film about the recent implosion of the OceanGate submersible, an accident that took the lives of all five people on board, and called the claims “offensive”.
The director and noted deep-sea expert tweeted an impassioned note to followers on Saturday after the Sun published a report titled: “DIVE DEEP Titanic director James Cameron in talks with major streaming network to create drama series on doomed Titan sub.” The piece claimed that an “insider” told the publication that Cameron “is first choice for director” of a film about the events on the Titan submersible.
Continue reading...Experts had flagged safety problems with OceanGate’s vessels much before the doomed journey that killed five people
As additional details emerge about the Titan submersible’s deadly implosion in June, raising still more unknowns, concerns surrounding exploration company OceanGate Expeditions’ allegedly cavalier attitude toward safety have come into sharper relief.
The doomed vessel reportedly dropped weights at some point during its descent; however, it is not known whether this was due to a routine part of descent or in an effort to abandon the doomed mission. All five Titan occupants died in the implosion.
Continue reading...Real stories of people in peril, the Titanic submersible trip to the Thai cave disaster, affirm a collective wish for human ingenuity and spirit to triumph
The discovery of wreckage from the Titan submersible last Thursday on the North Atlantic seabed close to the wreck of the Titanic brought to an end a five-day vigil of hope around the globe. The chances of rescuing the five occupants of the missing sub always appeared slight, but it was perhaps the very unlikeliness of that outcome that increased the appetite to see it realised.
In the era of 24-hour news, few events grab the public imagination quite as firmly as a real-time people-in-peril story. And it’s hard to imagine a more extreme or unpleasant peril than being trapped in deep sea in a craft the size of a minivan, as the oxygen supply runs out, and there is nothing to do but attempt to control your breathing in a situation that screams panic.
Continue reading...Film-maker who has dived to Titanic wreckage more than 30 times says it was ‘only a matter of time’ before tragedy occurred
Veteran deep-sea explorer and film-maker James Cameron said on Friday that the design of the Titan submersible was “critically flawed”, and it was “only a matter of time” before the tragedy occurred – as Canada’s transportation safety board said it was launching an investigation.
“People in the deep sea submergence engineering community warned the company that this could lead to catastrophic failure,” Cameron told ABC’s Good Morning America show on Friday morning, referring to the carbon fiber hull of the 22ft (6.7m) vessel.
Continue reading...Families, friends and colleagues remember Stockton Rush, Hamish Harding, Shahzada and Suleman Dawood and Paul-Henri Nargeolet
Tributes have been paid to the five people who are now believed to have been instantly killed in a “catastrophic implosion” of the Titan submersible during its dive to the Titanic.
On Thursday, after days of aerial and underwater searches, a robotic diving vehicle deployed from a Canadian ship discovered a debris field from the submersible Titan on the seabed 1,600 feet (488 metres) from the bow of the Titanic.
Continue reading...Debris field spotted by ROV scouring seabed ‘consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber’, US Coast Guard says
Five crew members onboard the submersible Titan were probably killed instantly in a “catastrophic implosion” as it descended to the wreck of the Titanic two miles below the surface of the Atlantic ocean, US Coast Guard officials announced on Thursday.
A large debris field containing multiple sections of the vessel were spotted earlier in the day by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) scouring the seabed near the Titanic wreck site 400 miles south of St John’s, Newfoundland, officials said at an afternoon press conference in Boston.
Continue reading...Engineer Ron Allum says missing tourist sub unlikely to have suffered a ‘catastrophic implosion’ but partial flooding could be preventing it from resurfacing
The missing Titan submersible is unlikely to have suffered a catastrophic failure of its pressure hull, according to a deep-sea engineer who designed the vessel that film-maker James Cameron used to reach Earth’s deepest point.
Ron Allum, an Australian deep-sea engineer and explorer, co-designed the Deepsea Challenger submersible that Cameron used in 2012 to reach the deepest-known point of Earth’s seabed in the Mariana Trench.
Continue reading...In today’s newsletter: As the search intensifies, we look at the key developments – and controversy – around the lost submersible
Good morning. If it is still intact – and the five men inside are still alive – the missing Titan submersible is now down to its very last few hours of usable oxygen.
Since Sunday, when the tiny carbon fibre and titanium vessel first lost contact with its mothership somewhere close to the wreck of the Titanic, a frantic search has been under way, in the hopes that – somehow – a rescue from the cold extreme depths of the north Atlantic might be possible.
Mortgages | More than a million households across Britain are expected to lose at least 20% of their disposable incomes thanks to the surge in mortgage costs, the UK’s leading economics thinktank, the IFS, has warned. Labour has said if it were in power it would force banks to support borrowers, including letting them move on to interest-only mortgages and extending their repayment period.
Transport | The TransPennine Express train services are “worse rather than better” since transferring to the state-owned operator of last resort, according to the rail minister, Huw Merriman.
LGBTQ+ rights | Conservative MPs and peers are mainstreaming hostility to drag events, which are increasingly being targeted by extremist groups as part of a wider anti-LGBTQ+ narrative, a report says.
Politics | Labour will appoint a diversity tsar in the hope of encouraging more women, ethnic minorities and those from a working-class background to stand for office across all political levels and parties.
UK news | Police searching for Sophie Lambert, a 22-year-old woman who went missing from her home in Harrogate last Friday evening, have found a body in the River Nidd.
Continue reading...Sounds are ‘inconclusive’, says US Coast Guard captain, but focus of search relocated to that area
Search teams in the Atlantic trying to locate the missing Titan submersible said they were still hearing underwater “noises” on Wednesday, but added that the sounds were “inconclusive” and not confirmation the crew was still alive.
A US Coast Guard captain, Jamie Frederick, told a lunchtime briefing “several flights” of Canadian P3 aircraft had heard the noises, reported by several media outlets as “banging”, on Tuesday and Wednesday, and that the focus of the search was relocated to that area.
Continue reading...The more adventurous of the world’s wealthiest take trips to the edge of space and Antarctica in their stride
The disappearance of the submersible en route to the wreck of the Titanic has highlighted the businesses that offer extreme expeditions – and their clienteles.
Among the five people on the missing Titan submersible are two billionaires – Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old businessman who made his fortune selling private jets and holds three Guinness world records for previous extremetrips, and the British-based Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, who is onboard with his 19-year-old son Suleman.
Continue reading...White House says US president is thinking of crew on missing vessel and their families as desperate search continues
No 10 has said the UK Foreign Office is in contact with the family of Hamish Harding, as the rescue operation for the tourist submersible off the coast of Canada continues.
The UK prime minister’s official spokesman said: “The FCDO are in contact with Hamish Harding’s family and the local authorities.
Continue reading...Rescue teams race to find crew of the submersible Titan, which went missing during a dive to the wreck of the Titanic
US Coast Guard officials said on Tuesday afternoon that the crew of the submersible Titan, which went missing in the Atlantic during a dive to the wreck of the Titanic, had about 40 hours of breathable air remaining, if they are still alive.
Capt Jamie Frederick also told reporters at a media briefing that a massive sea and air search that began on Sunday night for the vessel and five men aboard, and which has so far covered 7,600 sq miles of a remote area of the ocean, had “not yielded any results”.
Continue reading...The missing submarine had enough oxygen to sustain those onboard for four days, but limited air is far from the only hazard
For an expedition as hazardous as the Titan’s descent to the Titanic, there is a long list of onboard systems that need to be checked and a host of environmental hazards that must be identified and assessed before the voyage begins.
“When you are putting people in a potentially dangerous position like this you want to be absolutely sure everything’s checked through before getting under way,” said Stefan Williams, a professor of marine robotics at the University of Sydney. “We have an extensive checklist before we put anything in the water.”
Continue reading...Race against time to find craft that went missing on Sunday with five people onboard, including British billionaire
US and Canadian rescue teams are scrambling to search for a tourist submarine that went missing during a voyage to the Titanic shipwreck with a British billionaire among the five people onboard.
Hamish Harding is the chair of the private plane firm Action Aviation, which said he was one of the mission specialists on the OceanGate Expeditions vessel reported overdue on Sunday evening about 435 miles south of St John’s, Newfoundland.
Continue reading...French expert and British explorer believed to be among five onboard submersible missing in north Atlantic since Sunday
Search and rescue teams were racing against time on Monday to find a tourist sub that went missing in the north Atlantic while on a dive to the wreck of the Titanic.
The US Coast Guard said “a small submarine with five persons onboard” had gone missing in the vicinity of the Titanic wreck and that the vessel had the capacity to be submerged for 96 hours, but it was unclear whether it was still underwater or had surfaced and was unable to communicate.
Continue reading...More than 80 minutes of rare and mostly unseen video was taken during pioneering 1986 expedition
Haunting new footage of the wreck of the RMS Titanic was set to be released on Wednesday, taken during the pioneering 1986 expedition that gave the first glimpses of the doomed ocean liner since its notorious sinking on its maiden voyage more than seven decades before.
The cache of more than 80 minutes of the rare and mostly unseen video comes from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) of Massachusetts, which partnered with French explorers in the discovery of the ship’s remains.
Continue reading...Arthur Jones’s film seeks the stories of six Chinese men who survived the 1912 tragedy and finds undisguised western racism
What’s in a name? That evergreen question is complicated even further in Arthur Jones’s fascinating documentary, executive produced by James Cameron and informed by the research of marine historian Steven Schwankert. Following the Titanic sinking in 1912, the identities of the 700-odd survivors have been mostly claimed, except for those of six Chinese men – out of eight who boarded – who remained bizarrely neglected. This film chronicles Schwankert’s quest to unravel the mystery, as his arduous journey across the US, the UK, Canada, and China takes the shape of a detective story, where each revelation exposes the blatant racism of early 20th-century western politics.
Armed with a dock slip listing the names of the Titanic’s eight Chinese passengers, Schwankert and peers’ attempt to trace their origins runs into immediate difficulties, as most of their subjects changed their identities in order to sidestep cruel and discriminatory immigration regulations. These Titanic survivors arrived in the US looking to work as labourers, and under the provisions of the Chinese Exclusion Act they were shipped to other countries immediately after the sinking. Some disappeared without a trace. The only survivor whom the researchers were able to build a coherent narrative around was Fang Lang, who founded a business in the US by changing his name and working as a merchant, shielding himself from the Exclusion Act, which targeted manual labourers.
Continue reading...