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SETI Institute trustee, billionaire explorer, famed French diver among 5 on board the missing sub

June 20, 2023

By Ivana Kottasová, CNN

A billionaire father and son duo, a wealthy explorer and a diver with decades of experience exploring the Titanic are among the five people on board the submersible that has disappeared en route to view the world’s most famous shipwreck.

Authorities said the small vessel – roughly the size of a minivan – was carrying five people when its mothership lost contact with it on Sunday morning, about 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent to explore the Titanic wreckage.

While the names of those on board have not been released by the authorities, British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman Dawood, and French diver Paul-Henry Nargeolet have been confirmed to be on board the craft.

The fifth person on board has been identified only as the vessel’s pilot.

Harding, who has an impressive list of extreme expeditions under his belt, is based in the United Arab Emirates and is a trained jet pilot. He is the chairman of Action Aviation, an aircraft brokerage. The company said in statement posted on social media that Harding was on board the submersible.

He made headlines in 2019 for being part of a flight crew that broke the world record for the fastest circumnavigation of the globe via both poles.

In 2020, Harding became one of the first people to dive to Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean, widely believed to be the deepest point in the world’s oceans. Last year, he paid an undisclosed sum of money for one of the seats on Blue Origin’s space flight.

He has also been part of two record-breaking trips to the South Pole: in 2016, he accompanied the astronaut Buzz Aldrin when he became the oldest person to reach the South Pole. In 2020, he went there with his son Giles, who, at 12 years old, became the youngest person to get to the spot.

Harding is also a founding member of the board of trustees of The Explorers Club, a New York-based group that has been involved in many of the world’s most prestigious discoveries.

The day before the vessel went missing, Harding wrote on social media that he was “proud to finally announce that I joined OceanGate Expeditions for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist on the sub going down to the Titanic.”

Father and son

Shahzada Dawood and his son, Sulaiman Dawood, have also been confirmed to be among the five people aboard the submersible.

A statement from their family said the duo had embarked on the “journey to visit the remnants of the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean.”

“As of now, contact has been lost with their submersible craft and there is limited information available,” the statement added.

The Dawoods are a prominent Pakistani business family. Dawood Hercules Corporation, their business, is among the largest corporations in the country, with a portfolio spanning energy, petrochemicals, fertilizers, IT and food and agriculture.

The business is headed by the family patriarch Hussain Dawood, with his sons Shahzada and Abdul Samad leading various divisions and his daughter Sabrina Dawood in charge of the charitable arm of the business, according to the Dawood Hercules Corporation’s website.

Shahzada Dawood is also trustee of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, a research organization, and a number of other foundations.

Harding said in a social media post on Saturday that diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, was scheduled to be on the dive with him.

“The team on the sub has a couple of legendary explorers, some of which have done over 30 dives to the RMS Titanic since the 1980s including PH Nargeolet,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

Nargeolet’s family confirmed to CNN affiliate BFMTV that he was aboard the vessel.

The diver has decades of experience exploring the Titanic. He serves as the director of underwater research at RMS Titanic Inc., the company that has exclusive rights to salvage artifacts from the ship.

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According to his biography on the company’s website, Nargeolet completed 35 dives to the Titanic wreck and supervised the recovery of 5,000 artifacts. He spent 22 years in the French Navy, where he rose to the rank of a commander, the website says.

David Gallo, senior adviser for strategic initiatives at RMS Titanic Inc. and a colleague of Nargeolet, told CNN the French diver is “the best” at deep-sea searching. He said that “everything that can be done, is being done.”

“Something we always think about as explorers and scientists … we’ve always known something like this could happen and now it’s happened. But we’re still pretty much in shock, the community is. I hope it has a good ending,” he said.

Orange County Register

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SETI Institute trustee, billionaire explorer, famed French diver among 5 on board the missing sub

Father and son

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