Abbi Jackson on Titan’s mothership filmed moment craft began its doomed descent to Titanic wreck in selfie footage
Video shows the moment the OceanGate Expeditions submersible began its doomed voyage to the Titanic wreck in selfie footage posted to TikTok.
Abbi Jackson, a 22-year-old videographer employed by the company onboard the mothership, Polar Prince, shared the short video before the vessel disappeared.
The post, captioned ‘watching a submarine go down to the Titanic’ pans away from the ship’s deck to show Titan on the surface of the Atlantic some distance away.
Miss Jackson also filmed one of the sub’s passengers, Paul Henri Nargeolet, who has been dubbed ‘Mr Titanic’ for visiting the wreckage 37 times. The 77-year-old is seen sitting on the side of an inflatable boat before waving and smiling at the camera.
Miss Jackson has since shared her thoughts on the missing sub on Instagram, where she thanked well-wishers for their concern and asked them to pray for the five people who remain missing under the Atlantic.
Also on board were British billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, 58, UK-based businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Sulaiman Dawood, 19, and OceanGate chief executive Stockton Rush.
At 9.45am – an hour and 45 minutes into the dive – it lost contact with its mothership, the Polar Prince.
But it wasn’t reported as missing to the US Coast Guard until 5.40pm, eight hours later. Canada‘s Coast Guard wasn’t alerted until even later – 9.13pm on Sunday night.
Last year, the Titan lost communications with the mothership for two hours during a similar dive. It resurfaced, and the mishap was documented jokingly by a CBS reporter who happened to be on board at the time.