Who is Hamish Harding? British adventurer aboard missing Titanic sub

Noted adventurer Hamish Harding is among those aboard a high-tech diving craft carrying five people to document the wreckage of the Titanic that disappeared over the weekend in the North Atlantic, his company confirmed Monday.

Action Aviation, for which the Dubai-based billionaire businessman, aviator, explorer and space tourist serves as chairman, said the submersible set out Friday and had a 96-hour oxygen supply starting at roughly 6 a.m. Sunday.

OceanGate Expeditions via Associated Press

Noted adventurer Hamish Harding is among those aboard a technologically advanced submersible vessel carrying five people to document the wreckage of the Titanic, the iconic ocean liner that sank more than a century earlier.

“There is still plenty of time to facilitate a rescue mission, there is equipment on board for survival in this event,” Action Aviation managing director Mark Butler said. “We’re all hoping and praying he comes back safe and sound.”

Harding holds three Guinness World Records, including longest duration at full ocean depth by a crewed vessel. In March 2021, he and ocean explorer Victor Vescovo dived to the lowest depth of the Mariana Trench. In June 2022, he blasted into space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.

After that flight, he shed light on how space tourism is a reality for private space tourists all over the world, as well as research institutes and startups looking to experiment in space.

Harding was “looking forward to conducting research” at the Titanic site, said Richard Garriott de Cayeux, the president of The Explorers Club, a group to which Harding belonged.

“We all join in the fervent hope that the submersible is located as quickly as possible,” he said in a statement.

The submersible craft was reported overdue Sunday night about 435 miles south of St. John’s, Newfoundland.

Everett, Washington-based OceanGate Expeditions, the owner of the craft, named Titan, said it has been making annual voyages since 2021 to the Titanic debris site. This was the third voyage. OceanGate lost contact with the vessel Sunday morning.

The initial group of tourists in 2021 paid $100,000 to $150,000 apiece to go on the trip.

The Titanic sank in 1912 in 12,500 feet of water in history’s most famous shipwreck. More 1,500 of the 2,200 passengers and crew died in the disaster.

Harding said in an Instagram post over the weekend that the voyage was likely to be the only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023 “Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years.”

“Our entire focus is on the crew members in the submersible and their families,” OceanGate Expeditions, which runs underwater vessels for charter and scientific exploration, said in a statement Monday. “We are working toward the safe return of the crew members.”

The Associated Press and Tribune News Services contributed to this report.