In the missing submersible Titan, one of the crew members is Hamish Harding, a British businessman. The submersible was part of an eight-day expedition to the Titanic conducted by OceanGate Expeditions. It lost its contact on Sunday Morning June 18. Since then, a search operation has been initiated which has been focusing on the site of the shipwreck, about 900 miles off the coast of Cape Cod. Who is Hamish Harding and what is his Indian connection?
Harding, a British businessman has an Indian connection after he collaborated with the Indian government to reintroduce eight wild cheetahs from Namibia to India. Earlier, he also worked on another project which to launch a regular business jet service to the Antarctic. At that time he was working with a company called White Desert.
The collaboration between Harding and the Indian government happened in September 2022, under the auspices of the Explorers Club. He had arranged a customised Boeing 747-400 aircraft for the mission. Harding has been known for his exploratory escapades across the globe. He has visited the South Pole multiple times, flown into space in 2022 onboard Blue Origin’s fifth human-crewed flight, and set three world records – including the longest time spent at full ocean depth during a dive to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench.
The last message by Harding was…
Over the weekend, Harding took it to social media and wrote, “The ship had set off from the city of St John’s, in Newfoundland, Canada, for the destination of the Titanic wreck.” Further, he added, ” From there, he and the crew were planning to start diving operations in the submersible down to the wreck at around 04:00 local time on Sunday morning.” While sharing about the expedition, he went on to say, ” I am proud to finally announce that I joined OceanGate Expeditions for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist on the sub going down to the Titanic.”Current update on the missing Titan
Taking to Twitter, USCG Northeast wrote that a Canadian P-3 aircraft detected underwater noises in the search area. As a result, ROV operations were relocated in an attempt to explore the origin of the noises. Those ROV searches have yielded negative results but continue.” Further, in the continued tweet thread, they wrote, “Additionally, the data from the P-3 aircraft has been shared with our U.S. Navy experts for further analysis which will be considered in future search plans.”
