“We had survived,” she recounted. “But I still couldn’t move. I still couldn’t comprehend. We were safely on the ground and yet my throat felt as if a noose was tightly around it. I felt a squeeze of my hand and heard somebody talking to me, but I was frozen still. It’s then that I realised that my life had changed and would never be the same again.”
Disaster, however, would strike Christine’s family on June 18, when Titan—a 21-foot submersible Shahzada and Suleman were on to view the wreckage of the RMS Titanic—went missing an hour and 45 minutes into its expedition. Suleman was initially “terrified” to go, but boarded anyway to accompany his dad on the Father’s Day excursion, his aunt Azmeh Dawood told NBC News.
Four days later, and following an around-the-clock rescue mission, the five-person crew aboard the submersible were presumed dead by authorities, who found debris from the Titan “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber.”
“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” OceanGate, the company behind the Titan expedition, said in a statement on June 22. “Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”
To learn more about the five Titan passengers, keep scrolling.
