Billionaire Hamish Harding agreed to Titanic dive despite the risks to achieve his dream
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Billionaire Hamish Harding understood that venturing into the depths of the ocean to explore the Titanic was a risky voyage, but he took it anyway. The Action Aviation chairman perished in the catastrophic implosion of the Titan submersible earlier in the week. Also onboard the craft were OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, father and son duo Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, and voyager Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
“I warned Hamish and PH Nargeolet about the dangers of OceanGate, and they nodded and agreed, but that was the only submersible operation that was visiting Titanic,” friend and fellow explorer Victor Vescovo told People in an interview published today (June 24).
Vescovo said his friend Hamish deeply wanted to explore the 1912 shipwreck. He had already ventured into the deepest part of the Pacific Ocean as well as been to space in the Blue Origin NS-21 mission in June 2022. “PH loved diving the Titanic, and Hamish very, very much wanted to see [the] Titanic,” he told the outlet. “He [Hamish] actually asked me in the past if I could take him there, but that’s not what my submersibles were designed for.”
On Friday (June 23), Jay Bloom and his son Sean shared that they were originally part of the voyage that would take them about 12,500 feet below the Atlantic Ocean’s surface to reach the ruins. They backed out and gave their tickets to the Dawood father-son duo after developing reservations about their safety. “I saw a lot of red flags. It was only meant for five people. I just did not think that it can survive going that low into the ocean,” Sean told CNN. His father, Jay, agreed, noting that Rush, who built the vessel from experimental materials, had “a different risk appetite” than him. Debris from the imploded subversive was found days after a multi-nation search effort. On June 22, it was announced that all five passengers were presumed dead.
Trending Stories
