France dispatches vessel to locate lost bathtub in Atlantic Ocean

Paris, June 20 – The French Minister of State for Sea Affairs, Herve Berville, said that the French Institute for Maritime Exploration sent its ship to the site of the disappearance of the tourist submarine Titan, which disappeared during an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic.

On board there is a reconnaissance robot capable of diving to great depths. Atlante is expected to be on site by 8 p.m. Paris time, Figaro reported.

The Vector 6000 robot will have to descend into the wreckage to a depth of 4,000 metres. The robot is equipped with monitoring equipment and is designed to operate at a depth of up to 6 km.

The search for the tourist submarine Titan, which went missing during an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic, has been underway since Monday, about 900 miles off Cape Cod on the US Atlantic coast.

On Monday, OceanGate Expeditions confirmed the disappearance of the manned deep-sea submersible, designed to deliver tourists to the site of the Titanic’s sinking. There are five people in the bathyscaphe, with whom contact disappeared about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive on Sunday. The bathtub soaks in a four-day (96-hour) volume of air.

A Coast Guard spokesperson previously confirmed to CNN that there were five people in the deep sea. Sky News reports that British billionaire Hamish Harding, French deep-sea veteran Paul-Henri Nargole and founder of US Titanic cruise company Stockton Rush may be aboard the submarine. The Irish Sun wrote that Irish explorer Rory Golden, one of the bathtub crew members, reached out to him and wrote on a social network that he was fine.