The Five Lives Lost in the Titanic Submersible

Photo: Clockwise, from top left, Hamish Harding, Stockton Rush, Suleman Dawood with his father, Shahzada Dawood, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet.Credit...Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse, via Dirty Dozen Productions/Oceangat

By Emma Bubola, Salman Masood and Victoria Kim

On board the submersible were the founder of the company that operates the vessel; a British businessman and explorer; a British father and teenage son from a prominent Pakistani family; and a French maritime expert.

Clockwise, from top left, Hamish Harding, Stockton Rush, Suleman Dawood with his father, Shahzada Dawood, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet.Credit...Joel Saget/Agence France-Presse, via Dirty Dozen Productions/Oceangate

Five people were on board the Titan submersible when it lost contact with its support ship during a dive to the Titanic wreckage site in the North Atlantic on Sunday. On Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard and the company that operated the submersible, OceanGate Expeditions, said that all five people on board were believed to be dead.

Here are the passengers who were aboard

He was the founder and chief executive of the company that operated the submersible.Credit...Bill Sikes/Associated Press

Stockton Rush was the founder and chief executive of OceanGate Expeditions, the company that operated the submersible. He was piloting the vessel.

In an interview that aired on CBS in November, Mr. Rush said he grew up wanting to be an astronaut and, after earning an aerospace engineering degree from Princeton in 1984, a fighter pilot:

“I had this epiphany that I didn’t want — it wasn’t about going to space,” Mr. Rush said. “It was about exploring. It was about finding new life-forms. I wanted to be sort of the Captain Kirk. I didn’t want to be the passenger in the back. And I realized that the ocean is the universe.”

He founded OceanGate, a private company that is based in Everett, Wash., near Seattle, in 2009.

Hamis Harding 

Hamish Harding, a British businessman and explorer, holds several Guinness World Records, including one for the longest time spent traversing the deepest part of the ocean on a single dive. He wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday that he was proud to announce that he had joined OceanGate’s mission “on the sub going down to the Titanic.”

Mr. Harding, 58, was the chairman of Action Aviation, a sales and air operations company based in Dubai. He had previously flown to space on a mission by Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket company.

Mr. Harding also took part in an effort to reintroduce cheetahs to India, and holds a world record for the fastest circumnavigation of Earth via both the geographic poles by plane.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet

Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French maritime expert, had been on more than 35 dives to the Titanic wreck site.

Mr. Nargeolet was the director of underwater research for RMS Titanic, Inc., an American company that owns the salvage rights to the famous wreck and displays many of the artifacts in Titanic exhibitions. The company conducted eight research and recovery expeditions between 1987 and 2010, according to its website.

Shahzada Dawood and Suleman Dawood

Suleman Dawood, 19, and his father, Shahzada Dawood, 48.Credit...via Engro Corporation

The British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son, Suleman, 19, were members of one of Pakistan’s wealthiest families.

Mr. Dawood had a background in textiles and fertilizer manufacturing. His son was a business student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, a spokesman for the school confirmed in a statement on Thursday.

Mr. Dawood and his son had “embarked on a journey to visit the remnants of the Titanic” when contact with the vessel was lost, the statement said, asking for privacy for the family.

Mr. Dawood was also on the board of trustees for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute. The organization said on its website that he was a resident of Britain, and a father of two children.

- Culled from The New York Times