Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Titan sub victim, lived in New York
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Titanic explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet — one of five passengers aboard the doomed Titan submersible — reportedly lived in a small Dutchess County town in New York.
Lovingly nicknamed “Mr. Titanic,” Nargeolet moved from Kent, Conn., to Holmes, a hamlet in Pawling, in January 2022, Mid-Hudson News.com reported.
Holmes, with a population of 3,600, is about 70 miles north of New York City.
The 77-year-old trailblazer was aboard the first-ever vessel to travel to the RMS Titanic wreckage in 1987, which lies some 12,500 feet below the North Atlantic Ocean surface.
The Titanic — hailed as “unsinkable’ before it dropped to the bottom of the ocean in 1912 — lost more than 1,500 passengers after ramming into an iceberg 450 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.
The former French Navy commander had taken more than three dozen trips to the Titanic wreck before boarding the ill-fated OceanGate Expeditions Titan submersible.
He and four others — Sulaiman Dawood, 19; his business tycoon father Shahzada, 48; British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, and OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush, 61 — were on the Titan June 18 en route to the historic site.
The travelers were sealed into the sub by 17 bolts that could only have been opened from the outside, and were estimated to have had 96 hours of oxygen reserves.
Tourist submersible exploring Titanic wreckage disappears in Atlantic Ocean
What we know
A submersible on a pricey tourist expedition to the Titanic shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean has vanished with likely only four days’ worth of oxygen. The US Coast Guard said the small submarine began its journey underwater with five passengers Sunday morning, and the Canadian research vessel that it was working with lost contact with the crew about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive.
It was later found that a top-secret team with the US Navy detected the implosion of the Titan submersible on Sunday, but did not stop search efforts due because the evidence was “not definitive” and a decision was made to “make every effort to save the lives on board.”
Who was on board?
The family of world explorer Hamish Harding confirmed on Facebook that he was among the five traveling in the missing submarine. Harding, a British businessman who previously paid for a space ride aboard the Blue Origin rocket last year, shared a photo of himself on Sunday signing a banner for OceanGate’s latest voyage to the shipwreck.
Also onboard were Pakistani energy and tech mogul Shanzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman, 19; famed French diver and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush.
What’s next?
“We’re doing everything we can do to locate the submersible and rescue those on board,” Rear Adm. John Mauger told reporters. “In terms of the hours, we understood that was 96 hours of emergency capability from the operator.
Coast Guard officials said they are currently focusing all their efforts on locating the sub first before deploying any vessel capable of reaching as far below as 12,500 feet where the Titanic wreck is located.
Mauger, first district commander and leader of the search-and-rescue mission, said the US was coordinating with Canada on the operation.
The debris recovered from the US Coast Guard’s Titan submersible search site early Thursday included “a landing frame and a rear cover from the submersible.”
After search efforts to recover the stranded passengers proved futile, and bits of debris from the submersible were found, it was decided that the sub imploded, which correlated with an anomaly picked up by the US Navy in the same area.
The Coast Guard later reported that all 5 passengers were confirmed dead, and rescue efforts were halted.
Experts figure the sub was just shy of 10,000 feet below the ocean surface — roughly an hour and 45 minutes into its expedition — when communications were lost.
Reports of recurring “underwater noises” characterized as both “banging” and “tapping” sparked hope, but were later deemed unrelated to the missing crew.
The US Coast Guard announced Thursday it found an array of debris on the ocean floor, — about 1,600 feet from the bow of the sunken Titanic — indicating the submersible suffered a “catastrophic implosion in which experts believe the victims died nearly instantly.
Officials have said they plan to examine the sub’s voice recordings and data from its mothership in the hope of learning more about what happened.
Investigators are still probing whether the case warrants a criminal investigation.
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