In a detailed account for the Guardian, Christine Dawood speaks at length for the first time about losing her 48-year-old husband, Shahzada, and 19-year-old son, Suleman, when OceanGate’s Titan sub imploded on its way to the Titanic wreck in June 2023. She describes how their path to the submersible began when she spotted an Instagram ad for a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity. She called the family’s luxury travel concierge, who told her the trip was “doable”; CEO Stockton Rush personally flew from Seattle to London in February 2023 to “reassure” them that it would be worth the $500,000 price tag for the two seats. Dawood was on board the Polar Prince when it was determined the sub had gone missing.
She recounts the four days aboard the ship as the world obsessed over oxygen countdowns and the fate of those aboard. “The energy on the ship was complete denial,” she says, with the staff trying to act normally and arranging movie viewings and poker games. Upon learning a “catastrophic” hull failure had occurred, she took solace in knowing Shahzada and Suleman’s deaths were instantaneous. One of the most jarring details comes at the very end of the piece, when Dawood describes finally receiving their remains, which were collected from the seabed, DNA tested, and separated:
“We didn’t get the bodies for nine months. Well, when I say bodies, I mean the slush that was left. They came in two small boxes, like shoeboxes. There wasn’t much they could find. They have a big pile they can’t separate, all mixed DNA, and they asked if I wanted some of that, too. But I said no, just what you know is Suleman and Shahzada.” Dawood’s book on the experience, Ninety-Six Hours, is out next month. The full story at the Guardian has many more details.