On Monday, a spokesman for the Coast Guard in Boston, Massachusetts, confirmed to the Guardian that a submarine carrying five tourists to see the wreckage of the Titanic disappeared into the ocean near where the wreckage is.
They had paid $250,000 to "experience a completely strange world that only a few people had the privilege of knowing" — or at least that's what the expedition's tourist brochure promised. But his dream, however, could have turned into a real nightmare.
The crew observes the wreckage of the Titanic.
OceanGate Expeditions, a company that organizes such expeditions, confirmed Monday in a statement that its submarine was the one that had disappeared and explained that they were doing everything possible to bring back the crew.
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All our attention is on the submarine's crew members and their families," OceanGate Expeditions said in its statement.
OceanGate Expeditions is the only company that has a submarine — called a "Titan" — that is capable of reaching the ocean floor to see the remains of the Titanic up close. The submarine used by that company usually has a crew of five.
The remains of the bow of the Titanic, filmed with incredible technical quality.
Are there human remains on the Titanic?
Keep in mind that several companies organize trips to see the remains of the Titanic, which is located about 3,800 meters deep and at a distance of about 640 kilometers from the Canadian island of Newfoundland.
The ocean liner was wrecked on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in 1912. Of the 2,200 passengers and crew on board, more than 1,500 died.
Of those 1,500, about 340 were found floating in their life jackets. The fate of the other 1,160 still remains a mystery.
Now, is it possible that there are still human remains along with what remains of the Titanic?
The disappearance of the submarine reignited eternal debates over whether or not there could be human remains interspersed with the wreckage of the ship. It all depends on the specialist who gives his opinion, but most tend to believe that he does not.
Photo of April 10, 1912. The Titanic departs Southampton, England, on its maiden voyage. Photo: AP
Photographs from 2015, however, suggested that some of the travellers' remains are still mixed in with the wreckage.
Seeing the Titanic costs $250,000. Photo: WHOI Archives
According to a report by The Week, there are those who claim that hundreds of people were trapped inside the ship when it sank and that the state of their bodies would depend on how exposed they were over the years to the currents of hydrogen peroxide and scavengers of the deep sea.
"Decomposition slows if bodies are cut off from the open sea, which reduces oxygen levels and scavengers," William J. Broad told The New York Times. "The interiors of old shipwrecks have produced bones, teeth and sometimes entire bodies."
"I wouldn't be surprised if highly preserved bodies were found in the engine room. That was inside the ship," added Titanic expert Robert Ballard.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet star in James Cameron's shipwreck film "Titanic."
However, those who explored the remains the longest say that the bodies of the victims decomposed long ago.
Skeptics accuse NOAA, a branch of the U.S. Commerce Department, of exaggerating photographic evidence as part of a power grab.
That shoes or clothes appear does not mean that there are still bodies at the bottom of the Atlantic, but for a NOAA representative it all has to do with semantics: since the corpses can be reduced to sediment in the boots and under the coat, he, as an archaeologist, "would say they are human remains."
RMS Titanic INC., a company that organizes expeditions to the Titanic, says the human remains would likely have been noticed after about 200 dives.
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