A deep-sea submersible carrying well-heeled revelers on a $250,000 tour of the infamous Titanic shipwreck off of Newfoundland has gone missing, operator OceanGate Expeditions says in a statement via the BBC. “Our entire focus is on the crew members in the submersible and their families,” OceanGate said in a statement, adding they’re receiving “extensive assistance” from “several government agencies and deep sea companies” in efforts to establish contact with the sub.
OceanGate’s website has crashed and they aren’t exactly live-tweeting the search. The sub seats five but it’s not clear yet if it was full and if “crew members” strictly means employees or if that includes paying customers. The US Coast Guard out of Boston is also reportedly assisting with the search but further details were unavailable, like if there was a distress call or the vessel was overdue for return from the eight hour roundtrip dive to the undersea monument to man’s hubris.
Pray they will be rescued if they can be. Pray they’ve already had a quick and merciful death if they can’t. Yeah, there’s the obvious full circle feeling that maybe one-percenters in 2023 were kind of asking for it when they paid $250,000 to gawk at the watery gravesite of the one-percenters (and impoverished Irish immigrants) of 1912. But nobody deserves what could be an absolutely terrifying last few hours of oxygen trapped in a tiny vessel two miles below the surface of the ocean.