This past Sunday, a while on an expedition to tour the Titanic wreckage. Five people are confirmed to be aboard, and to find them. But the sub, named the Titan, costs $250,000 per head to ride. With that kind of ticket price, who’s really on board?
Thanks to , we now know. A British billionaire, a conglomerate chairman and his son, an “explorer”, and the submersible company’s own CEO. Many of the group have experience with diving or Titanic exploration, but no one — save maybe the CEO — has experience with a submersible quite like this one.
The British (he’s often called one, but Forbes doesn’t seem to list him) is Hamish Harding, chairman of . He as a “mission specialist,” without really describing what that means, but he does have a history of exploration in pressurized containers — travelling from . He’s also been to the South Pole twice, once alongside Buzz Aldrin.
The conglomerate chairman is Shahzada Dawood, who works at Engro Corporation. Engro is — it trades in agriculture, energy, petroleum-based chemicals, telecommunications, and plain old stock trading. Dawood brought his son, Suleman, along for the ride; the two of them seem to be the most standard tourists on the sub’s manifest.
Next is Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French explorer who’s been a longtime enthusiast of the Titanic wreckage. He’s , and is . If the submarine needs to navigate its way back based on landmarks alone, Nargeolet may just be able to pull the feat off.
Last on the list is Stockton Rush, CEO and founder of OceanGate. His history is split between business, serving in plenty of “chairman” roles, as well as exploration — he claims to have been the youngest jet transport pilot in the world when he was 19.
As of this writing, the submarine is still lost at sea, and connection has not yet been reestablished with the five men on board.