Friend of trapped billionaire says 'every minute feels like hours'

2023-06-20

‘Every single minute feels like hours, it would be a miracle if they survive’: Friend of trapped British billionaire Hamish Harding reveals plight of Titan crew has left her unable to sleep

Jannicke Mikkelsen is a friend of Dubai-based British billionaire Hamish Harding
Harding is one of five people on board a submersible operated by OceanGate
READ MORE: Coast Guard says it can’t guarantee rescue of missing Titanic sub

A friend of the British billionaire missing on the Titanic tourist submersible has said that ‘every single minute’ feels like hours and that it would be a ‘miracle’ if the crew survive as their oxygen supply dwindled to less than 40 hours tonight.

Norwegian explorer Jannicke Mikkelsen said she has been left unable to sleep as rescuers scour the remote North Atlantic to find her friend Hamish Harding, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and French Navy veteran PH Nargeolet.

Mikkelsen is hoping for good news despite the US Coast Guard issuing a bleak warning today that it may not be able to rescue the sub – even if they find it.

The Titan submersible, owned and operated by OceanGate Expeditions, vanished on Sunday while it was taking the crew 12,500ft under water as part of its £195,000-a-head tour of the 1912 Titanic shipwreck – which is some 400 miles southeast of St Johns, Newfoundland in Canada.

The crew lost communication with the sub’s mothership MV Polar Prince an hour and 45 minutes into the two-hour descent and there is now a desperate search to find the vessel and those on board before the initial 96 hours of air runs out on Thursday at 12pm. DailyMail.com previously revealed it took OceanGate eight hours to report the submersible as missing.

Norwegian explorer Jannicke Mikkelsen (pictured with Hamish Harding in 2019) said she has been left unable to sleep as rescuers scour thousands of square miles in the remote North Atlantic to find her friend Hamish Harding and four others

Mikkelsen, a Norwegian explorer (pictured with Hamish Harding) is hoping for good news despite the US Coast Guard issuing a bleak warning today that it may not be able to rescue the sub – even if they find it

OceanGate Expeditions offers tours of the famous shipwreck. Tickets cost up to £195,000

Speaking from Svalbard in Norway on Tuesday, Mikkelsen said she last spoke to Harding right before his dive to the Titanic and wished him ‘godspeed.’

‘I didn’t consider that this type of expedition would be as dangerous as it’s turned out to be,’ she said.

READ MORE: Coast Guard says it can’t guarantee rescue of missing Titanic submersible even IF they find it – as oxygen supply dwindles to just 40 hours

‘As explorers, we are pessimistic and objective. And as it stands right now, it would be a miracle if they are recovered alive.’

Mikkelsen, a cinematographer specialising in extreme environments, also said London-born Harding was ‘being branded as a UK billionaire going for a sightseeing trip to the Titanic’ but that the expedition were also for scientific research.

‘These types of expeditions are very expensive and we need people like Hamish who can pay and sponsor such an expedition, but also take the risk of joining such an expedition with his expertise,’ Mikkelsen said.

Mikkelsen said she met the CEO of Dubai-based company Action Aviation in 2017 while working at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Together they took part in 2019’s ‘One More Orbit’ flight mission that set a record for the fastest circumnavigation of Earth by aircraft flying over both geographic poles.

She previously said that she knew Harding would be ‘calm’ amid the crisis, but that her biggest fear was knowing they are trapped ‘without being able to get help’.

‘There is no one who can reach him on the bottom,’ she said.

Among those taking part in the expedition is billionaire Hamish Harding, CEO of Action Aviation in Dubai. He excitedly posted to social media about being there on Sunday

Shahzada Dawood, 48, a UK-based board member of the Prince’s Trust charity, and his son Sulaiman Dawood, 19, are among the five people trapped in the sub

French Navy veteran PH Nargeolet (left) is believed to be taking part in the expedition, along with Stockton Rush (right), CEO of the OceanGate Expedition

Today, at a press conference at the US Coast Guard Station in Boston, US – which is coordinating the search and rescue effort – First District Response Coordinator Capt. Jamie Frederick conceded on Tuesday that rescue was not guaranteed.

‘Even with that amount of time left, if you were to find the submersible at this moment, would that give you enough time to save those five people on board?’ he was asked.

‘I don’t know the answer to that question… all I know is we will do everything within our power to effect a rescue,’ Frederick replied.

The Coast Guard has already searched 7,600 square miles of ocean and the only way to search the ocean floor is by using remotely operated vehicles which are searching the water now.

If they find the sub, getting it to the surface is another feat entirely, requiring specialist equipment that is not yet on-site.

There are multiple civilian ships assisting in the search, along with US Navy, Canadian Navy ships and aircraft.

The US Coast Guard in Boston is now looking for the missing vessel. The wreckage of the iconic ship sits 12,500ft underwater around 370 miles from Newfoundland, Canada

This is the last sighting of the submersible, Titan, which was launched on Sunday. It is seen in a photograph shared by Hamish Harding’s company. He and the four others on board remain unaccounted for

The crew was diving to the ocean floor to survey the Titanic wreckage

Harding excitedly posted to social media about being on the mission before launching the submarine

Mikkelsen said that Harding had acted as a mentor to her, and was well aware of the risks he took.

‘Hamish is an explorer at heart and this is one of the things he wanted to explore, on his checklist,’ she said.

‘Hamish knows the risks before he starts.

‘I know that Hamish will be calm, they will work together through their checklist of options.’

Harding holds the Guinness World Record for the longest duration spent at the bottom of the sea.

The adventurer set it in 2021, after diving to the deepest place on Earth, the Mariana Trench, and traversing it for four hours and 15 minutes. It was one of three Guinness world records he has earned.

He set another one for the longest distance, three miles, covered at the bottom of the ocean.

His first was set in 2019, for the fastest circumnavigation of the earth via North and South Poles in a Gulfstream 650ER business jet – with Mikkelsen filming the adventure.

Last year he went into space.

Images from Ocean Gate, one of the tour companies that operates the expeditions, show the wreckage

The father of two – who is friends with astronaut Buzz Aldrin – said recently: ‘I used to read the book of Guinness World Records regularly as a child. I always wondered how I could get into it. I did not think I could do it.

‘And I didn’t want to do something stupid – like setting a record for the number of ping-pong balls bounced in a day, or something like that.’

The aviator, businessman and explorer is no stranger to perilous expeditions.

He told an interviewer in 2021 how his submarine, Challenger Deep, had sustained a damaged thruster during his journey to the ‘truly spectacular’ Mariana Trench, which lies seven miles below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

‘The sub has many safety features, including four days’ reserve of oxygen, water and emergency rations,’ he said.

‘The only problem is that there is no other sub that is capable of going down there to rescue you. It will take three years to build another one.

‘So, having four days of supply doesn’t make a difference really. If something goes wrong, you are not coming back.’

Hardin, also has the distinction of taking the oldest man – moon landing astronaut Aldrin, at the age of 86 – and the youngest, his 12-year-old son, to the South Pole.

‘Buzz is an old friend of mine,’ he said.

‘We had always talked about going to the South Pole together and we finally did it in 2016.’

An only child, Harding was born in Hammersmith, London, in 1964, and has degrees in natural sciences and chemical engineering from Cambridge University.

Last year, Harding was one of six astronauts to go to space on Blue Origin’s fifth human spaceflight aboard its New Shepard rocket.

And before another trip, to the North Pole two months prior to going into space, he said: ‘People, especially as they grow older, tend to give up on their dreams. When I think of something unusual, I just try to find ways to make it happen.’

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