Where is the Titanic wreck? How far the ship sank and what remains on board

Rescue teams are in a race against time to find a submersible tourist vessel which went missing during a voyage to the Titanic shipwreck off the coast of Canada, with a British billionaire among five people aboard.

There may be little over 50 hours of emergency oxygen left aboard the vessel, which lost communication with tour operators on Sunday while about 435 miles south of St John’s, Newfoundland.

Private plane firm Action Aviation said its British chairman, Hamish Harding, is one of the mission specialists on the five-person OceanGate Expeditions vessel, which is 6.7 metres long (22 feet).

UK-based businessman Shahzada Dawood and his teenage son Sulemanhave also been named in a family statement as two of the other people on board the “very tiny” craft.

OceanGate’s website described the “mission support fee” for the 2023 expedition as $250,000 a person, promising passengers the chance to explore the “opulence” of the famous shipwreck.

Here’s everything we know about the expedition and where the sub may have gone missing.

What were the passengers told?

An OceanGate brochure describes the “Titanic Survey Expedition” as an opportunity to “explore the vessel that was once the height of opulence but whose journey would tragically end with the loss of more than 1,500 lives”.

Participants, who are labelled “mission specialists”, sign up for a ten-day experience, involving training to help them support the aims of the mission and the team aboard.

They first travel 370 miles on a larger ship southeast of Newfoundland to the area above the shipwreck, before undertaking an eight-hour dive on a vessel named Titan nearly 13,000 feet below the surface.

The 6.7-metre (22 feet) craft weighs 10,432kg (23,000lbs) and is capable of diving to depths of 4,000 metres (13,120 feet) “with a comfortable safety margin”, according to OceanGate.

It is designed to carry five people and has “life support” for 96 hours for the crew.

During the expedition, participants have the opportunity to “support the submersible operations and science teams in roles such as sonar operation, laser scanning, navigation, communications, camera operation and data logging during the dive”.

The crew are accompanied by “content experts”, who share their knowledge of the shipwreck, its history, the science of its deterioration and the marine life inhabiting it.

When not submerged, mission specialists can follow the progress of other divers through a CCTV feed, help with the maintenance of the submersible and review video, photos or other data.

Where is the missing sub?

The submersible was taking part in OceanGate’s third annual voyage to monitor the decay of the ship’s wreckage, following expeditions in 2021 and 2022.

Over a series of missions, OceanGate aims to fully document and model the Titanic, collecting images and video, as well as laser and sonar data to provide an account of its progression over time.

Each annual trip involves creating a 3D model, capturing data and images missing from the scientific record, taking up-to-date photographs and video and documenting marine life inhabiting the wreck.

Titan lost communication with tour operators on Sunday while about 435 miles south of St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.

The search and rescue operation for the vessel, involving military aircraft 900 miles east of Cape Cod, continues.

The US Coast Guard said on Tuesday that it was expanding the search area into deeper waters, adding that a Canadian aircraft has joined the search for the missing submersible by using sonar.

The Canadian research vessel Polar Prince and 106 Rescue wing will continue to conduct surface searches alongside two US C-130 flights.