Explorers Club criticises Titanic sub rescue mission

Friends and relatives of Dubai-based Hamish Harding said rescuers should have acted quicker

Dubai-based explorer Hamish Harding is among the passengers on board the missing submersible

The team leading the mission to rescue passengers on board the Titan submersible have been criticised for the time it took for the operation to get under way and accept offers of support.

The Explorers Club, which counts Titan passengers Hamish Harding and Paul-Henry Nargeolet among its members, said its offers of assistance should have been accepted much sooner.

The club’s president Richard Garriott de Cayeux confirmed the dispatch of a remotely operated vehicle, Magellan, to support the search for Titan.

The vehicle’s Guernsey-based owner, Magellan Limited, has said it produced a full-sized digital scan of the Titanic last summer, but efforts to get it to the site were reportedly held up by US bureaucracy.

“Thanks for all your support and hard work on the rescue operations for our friends aboard Titan,” Mr Garriott de Cayeux wrote on Twitter.

“I believe we have importantly improved the odds of a positive outcome through our advice, volunteering of services and equipment, and even the political pressure we continue to bring to bear.

“All has been needed. All continues to be needed. Magellan is en route (should have been accepted sooner), we are still trying to get side scan sonar (should have been accepted sooner), and still working on ships to transport equipment and other details.

“We continue to come together for our friends, their families and the ideals of The Explorers Club, and the cause of safe scientific exploration of extreme environments.

“There is good cause for hope and we are making it more hopeful.”

His criticism comes after Mr Harding’s cousin Kathleen Cosnett spoke out against the operating company OceanGate and its delay in raising the alarm with the Coast Guard.

“It’s very frightening,” Ms Cosnett told The Telegraph, adding it “took so long for them to get going to rescue [them], it’s far too long. I would have thought three hours would be the bare minimum.”

It was “worrying” that her cousin and the other four passengers on the submersible “may not have any extra oxygen left”, she added.