The wife and mother of two passengers on board the doomed Titan submersible has spoken about her family’s last moments before the vessel imploded while en route to the Titanic wreckage, about 4000m below sea level.
Christine Dawood’s husband Shahzada, and son, Suleman, 19, were instantly killed along with three others on board the OceanGate sub because of extreme water pressure.
They were travelling to the wreck in the Atlantic Ocean along with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, British businessman Hamish Harding and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
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The Dawoods, from a prominent Pakistani business family, travelled together on board the mothership, Polar Prince, to the area of the dive site on the morning of June 18.
Christine Dawood told The New York Times her son and husband were giddy with excitement, having paid about $250,000 ($A379,000) per person to go on what they thought would be an incredible adventure.
“He was like a vibrating toddler,” she said, remembering her son before he set off.
Shahzada and Suleman Dawood were told to prepare by consuming a “low-residue” diet in the lead-up to the trip because there was no toilet on board the minivan-sized submarine.
They were also prepared activities to keep them preoccupied while they travelled to the sea bed.
Notably, it would be pitch black – with the vessel’s headlights turned off to save battery power – and they would likely only see bioluminescent creatures.
Suleman had a Rubik’s Cube while Shahzada took along a Nikon camera to photograph what he could see through the craft’s single porthole.
After wearing their designated equipment, the father and son boarded the submarine and said their final goodbye to Christine and her daughter.
About one hour and 45 minutes into the dive, at 9.45am, contact was lost.
Dawood said she overheard a team member monitoring the descent saying communication had been lost but was told not to worry because they expected communication to be unstable.
They reassured her that if something were to go wrong, the sub would ascend to the surface.
“I was also looking out on the ocean, in case I could maybe see them surfacing,” she said.
Five days later, she and her daughter received news debris from the sub had been found, along with suspected human remains.
An exciting trip turned deadly
Dawood was originally meant to go on the trip with her husband, but decided to hand her ticket to her son because she said he really wanted to go.
She said Shahzada became fascinated with the Titanic after visiting an exhibition in Singapore for the 100th anniversary of the ship’s sinking.
“He was lapping everything up. He had this big glow on his face talking about all this nerdy stuff,” she said about her husband.
The family received a personal brief from OceanGate’s CEO who flew to London to meet them in the lead up to their journey, and Dawood said she was impressed with their professionalism.
But the technical aspect of the descent remained unclear to her.
“That engineering side, we just had no idea,” she said.
“I mean, you sit in a plane without knowing how the engine works.’”
It’s been since revealed the US Navy detected the sound of an implosion short after the vessel disappeared into the ocean.
The US Coast Guard is leading the probe into why Titan imploded, with investigators from the US, Canada, France and the UK working closing together to understand the accident.
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