Titan disaster: 'I don't want to reside in anger after husband and son's death'

A woman, who lost her son and husband after a submersible imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic, says she doesn’t want to ‘reside in anger’.

Suleman Dawood, 19, had just completed his first year at Strathclyde University’s business school when he boarded the Titan vessel with his dad Shahzada Dawood.

The pair decided to take the 3,000m journey down to the wreckage of the Titanic after Shahzada came across an advertisement for OceanGate, an operator offering exploration trips to the site.

In June 2023, the family, along with wife and mother Christine Dawood, set off on the launch vessel arriving around 435 miles south of St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada.

The father and son boarded the Titan alongside British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding and OceanGate founder Stockton Rush.

The sub lost contact with the vessel just an hour and 45 minutes into the journey.

At the time, it was believed the Titan had only 96 hours of oxygen onboard.

The Titan submersible imploded during the expedition. OceanGate Enterprises

Christine told Good Morning Britain: “A majority of people on the ship didn’t believe that anything happened.

“We were all under the assumption that they were just stuck somewhere. In hindsight, there might have been people who thought that (the submersible imploded) but it was not apparent to me.

“I just had the feeling that everyone thought ‘we are going to get them up because they are stuck'”.

Following a significant search operation, a debris field was discovered, which suggested there was a “catastrophic loss of pressure”.

Following an enquiry carried out by the National Transportation Safety Board, investigators concluded the Titan’s pressure vessel likely sustained damage after its 80th dive, which worsened during more dives before the fatal implosion, which killed all five onboard.

Christine said she is glad that her son and husband didn’t “suffer” instead of “slowly suffocating”.