Hamish Harding, one of five passengers who are on board the missing Titanic tourist submersible, belongs to an international society of adventurers that includes Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, famed astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and veteran explorer Josh Gates.
Harding, a British millionaire, known for his exploratory escapades across the globe, is a founding member of the Board of Trustees of The Explorers Club. A resident of Dubai, he also chairs the club’s Middle East Chapter.
FILE: In this photo provided by Blue Origin, NS-21 (New Shepard-21), astronaut Hamish Harding receives his Blue Origin astronaut pin after a successful flight to space on June 4, 2022, in Van Horn, Texas. (Felix Kunze/Blue Origin via AP)
According to its website, the Explorers Club “has been supporting scientific expeditions of all disciplines, and uniting our members in the bonds of good fellowship for over a century.”
The club’s president, Richard Garriott de Cayeux, wrote online that he had spoken with Hamish last week at the Global Exploration Summit and his excitement about the upcoming expedition was “palpable.”
Jannicke Mikkelsen and missing Titanic submersible passenger Hamish Harding. (Fox & Friends/Screengrab)
Fellow Explorers Club member Jeff Gates, who hosts a TV series, revealed on Twitter Wednesday that the missing OceanGate sub “did not perform well” when he went on a dive aboard the vessel himself.
Other passengers on board the missing submersible include French explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood, and his son, Suleman.
This image provided by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution shows the bow of the Titanic 12,500 feet (3.8 kilometers) below the surface of the ocean, 400 miles (640 kilometers) off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada in 1986. Rare and in some cases never before publicly seen video of the dive is being released on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2023, by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution via AP)