The Curse of the Titanic Strikes Back , more than a century later.
A bathyscaphe, used to offer wealthy tourists the thrill of being able to observe the wreck of the luxurious ocean liner, is in fact "missing" hundreds of miles off the American continent , after having cut off all contact with the surface shortly after having immersed itself in depth.
The Boston Coast Guard has raised the alarm and is coordinating searches, a real race against time. Admiral John Mauger, quoted by the BBC, calculates the oxygen reserve left at the disposal of the five people on board at 70-96 hours, who would die horribly from suffocation .
Among the five people on board the former British aeronautical pilot Hamish Harding , explorer and owner of the small company Action Aviation based in the Emirates, already known as a space tourist and pilot in 2022 of the fifth flight of Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin shuttle. Among his fellow adventurers Stockton Rush , CEO of OceanGateExpeditions, the company that organizes the adventure. According to Sky News there would also be French pilot Paul Henry Nargeolet , Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman.
The Titan , this is the "sinister" name of the boat, is capable of descending to a good 4,000 meters below sea level and has a maximum capacity designed precisely for 5 passengers. Visitors willing to pay a very high ticket to be lowered into the abyss for over a week and see with their own eyes the seabed on which the remains of the Titanic, identified in 1985 after decades of feverish explorations, lie at a depth of about 3,800 meters.
The adventure involves an eight-day mission, at a cost of $250,000 per person .
Designed in 1908, launched in 1911 from the Belfast shipyards and registered in the port of Liverpool, the Titanic sank with over 1,500 of her approximately 2,200 passengers - despite the advertising reputation of an "unsinkable" ship - on the night of April 15, 1912 , after hitting an iceberg on her first crossing between Southampton, England, and America.
(Unioneonline/L)
