The last text sent to a friend by the British billionaire aboard the Titan submersible has been revealed. Retired Nasa astronaut Colonel Terry Virts shared an insight into his friendship with entrepreneur and explorer Hamish Harding and also revealed the content of the last message he received from the billionaire before he embarked on the extreme journey.
The message read: “Hey, we’re headed out tomorrow, it looks good, the weather’s been bad so they’ve been waiting for this.”
Mr Harding is chairman of private plane firm Action Aviation and a seasoned explorer.
In 2021, the London-born entrepreneur dived with a submersible into the Mariana Trench and traversed it for four hours and 15 minutes, a journey which earned him one of his three Guinness World Records.
Last June, he successfully completed a space trip with Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin.
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Speaking about the adventurer, Colonel Virts told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “We don’t really talk about risks, it’s known. He understood the risks for sure, there’s no doubt about that.”
After reading out the text sent by his friend, he added: “He went down to the deepest part of the ocean, set a few world records… at the Mariana Trench [deepest part of the ocean] and we talked quite a bit about the risks and the different things that they were going to be able to do. So he was very excited about it.
The journey to the Titanic, Colonel Virts said, wasn’t just meant to be a fun experience but also a chance to do “some serious science” focused on how the Titanic is starting to disintegrate more than a century after it tragically sunk.
Norwegian explorer Jannicke Mikkelsen, another friend of Mr Harding, said he believes the 58-year-old would remain “calm” despite the crisis.
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Speaking with Chris Cuomo on NewsNation, he added: “My fear is that they didn’t make their last ascent window. They didn’t. We are starting to make worst-case scenarios.”
Mr Harding is one of the five people who joined an expedition set to venture hundreds of feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean to explore the wreckage of the Titanic.
This trip is organised by OceanGate Expeditions, a private company charging £195,250 ($250,000) for this journey.
Rescuers are facing a race against time, as there is a limited supply of oxygen on the vessel which could deplete even faster if those aboard panic or move around too much.
The US Coast Guard estimated the vessel had between 70 to 96 hours of emergency oxygen as of 10pm BST on Monday.
