London/Islamabad: UAE-based British billionaire-explorer Hamish Harding, who collaborated with the Indian government to reintroduce eight wild cheetahs from Namibia to India, and two Pakistani businessmen are among five people who went missing in the Atlantic Ocean aboard a tourist submersible on a mission to view the wreckage of the iconic ocean liner the Titanic.
British-Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood, 48-year-old vice chairman of Engro Corporation, accompanied by his 19-year-old son Suleman, were also on the sub, which remains missing since Sunday.
Contact with the small sub was lost about an hour and 45 minutes into its dive in the mid-Atlantic on Sunday.
OceanGate Expeditions, a company offering eight-day missions to see the Titanic debris for USD 250,000 per person, confirmed that its submarine was lost at sea with crew members on board.
The company’s chief executive, Stockton Rush, previously described the craft as “rock solid”, is also believed to be on board.
The company said in a statement that it is “exploring and mobilising all options to bring the crew back safely.”
French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet is also thought to be on board, according to a Facebook post by Harding before the dive started.
Harding is the chairman of aircraft firm Action Aviation and a renowned adventurer who has flown to space and holds three ‘Guinness World Records’. In September last year, the 58-year-old flew on one of his aircraft from Namibia on a mission to relocate cheetahs to Kuno National Park in Madhya Pradesh.
“This is an amazing project, an amazing aircraft, we can fly direct from southern Africa to India with a Boeing 747-400… we are all very, very excited to get going and get the cheetahs to India,” he said in a video posted on social media just before take-off from Namibia at the time.
The trip to Titanic’s wreckage was the latest in a string of adventures.
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.
Over the weekend, Harding said on social media that a ship had set off from the city of St John’s, in Newfoundland, Canada, for the destination of the Titanic wreck.
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.
He wrote on Facebook that he was “proud to finally announce” that he would be aboard the mission to the wreck of the Titanic.
Due to the “worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years,” he said, “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.”
Action Aviation said on Sunday that the sub had had a successful launch and Harding was “currently diving”.
Later, his stepson Brian Szasz said in a now-deleted post on Facebook: He “has gone missing on (the) submarine.”
Patrick Woodhead, the founder of British tour operator White Desert Antarctica, said Harding was an “incredible” aviation explorer and a great advocate for discovering new pathways to make the world a better place.
Harding had travelled with them to Antarctica a number of times, he said, including with US astronaut Buzz Aldrin.
On an inquiry about Harding, a spokesperson from the UK’s Foreign Office said it was “in contact with the family of a British man following reports of a missing submarine off the coast of North America.”
In a statement released on Tuesday, the Dawood family in Pakistan said: “Our son Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, had embarked on a journey to visit the remnants of the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean.”
The Engro Corporation, one of Pakistan’s largest conglomerates, has investments in fertilisers, vehicle manufacturing, energy and digital technologies.
The Engro in a statement said that all it knew was that contact was lost with the submersible craft. “There is limited information available beyond this that we know, and we humbly request that speculation and theorisation is avoided,” it said.
“We, at Engro, remain in prayer for their swift and safe return, and will share updates we may have as and when they come,” it added.
The Pakistan government has not commented on it so far, while the family and the company are not ready to offer any insight due to the sensitivity of the issues.
Shahzada belongs to a leading business family and his father, Hussain Dawood, 79, is the Chairman of the Dawood Hercules Corporation (DH Corp), a big business entity in Pakistan with Engro Corporation as its subsidiary.
The Dawood family, who live in Surbiton, southwest London, are in Canada for a month.
“The British Asian Trust is devastated by the terrible news that Shahzada Dawood, one of our supporters, is on board the missing submarine that set off to see the wreck of the Titanic. He is with his son Suleman,” said the British Asian Trust, a charity founded by King Charles III when he was the Prince of Wales.
“Shahzada has been a longstanding supporter of the British Asian Trust and our work across South Asia. Our heartfelt thoughts are with family and friends in the UK and Pakistan. This is an extraordinarily difficult time for everyone affected as we hope for the safe return of all,” the statement added.
Shahzada, from one of Pakistan’s richest families, is a trustee of the Seti Institute, a research organisation in California, according to its website.
It says he lives in the UK with his wife, Christine, and his children Suleman and Alina, and is in the Founder’s Circle of the British Asian Trust.
In their statement, his parents said: “We are very grateful for the concern being shown by our colleagues and friends and would like to request everyone to pray for their safety.”
It went on to say the family was well looked after and were praying for the safe return of their family members.
Military planes, a submarine and sonar buoys have so far been used in the search for the vessel.
The wreck of the Titanic, the infamous ship that sank in April 1912, lies around 700km south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, in Canada. The rescue mission for the missing sub is being run from Boston in Massachusetts and the US Coast Guard has said a research ship called the ‘Polar Prince’ had conducted a surface search for the sub on Monday evening. It is used to transport submersibles to the wreckage site and was the support ship on Sunday’s tourist expedition.
PTI