On board the “Titan”: Teenager wanted to set a world record on diving

On board the “Titan”
Teenager wanted to set a world record while diving

6/26/2023 3:57 am

Christine Dawood loses her husband and son in the Titan accident. In an interview with the BBC, the native German tells that the teenager had planned a record attempt in the depths of the sea.

According to his mother, the teenager Suleman Dawood, who died in an accident with the submersible “Titan”, wanted to set a world record on the expedition to the wreck of the “Titanic”. Her son was a gifted Rubik’s Cube player and wanted to solve the rotating puzzle, also known as Rubik’s Cube, at a depth of almost 4 kilometers under the sea, Christine Dawood told the British broadcaster BBC. The 19-year-old even applied in advance for an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. In order to capture the moment of success on video, his father Shahzada, who also died, took a camera with him into the small submersible.

Originally she wanted to dive to the “Titanic” together with her husband – a British-Pakistani management consultant – said Christine Dawood, who comes from Rosenheim in Bavaria. in the BBC interview. But the corona pandemic thwarted the plan – and her son showed interest in it himself. “Then I gave up and gave them the opportunity to prepare Suleman because he really wanted to do it.” Before the two men finally boarded the “Titan” with three other adventurers, they hugged and joked, she said. Then the submersible descended to the legendary wreck of the luxury liner at a depth of 3800 meters while Christine Dawood and her 17-year-old daughter Alina persevered on board the mother ship “Polar Prince”.

96 hours of hope

At some point they would have heard that contact with “Titan” had broken off. “The sentence “we lost the connection”…I never want to hear that sentence again in my life,” said the widow in a halting voice. “At that moment I didn’t understand what that meant. It went downhill from there.” The mood during the rescue mission changed after a while, and optimism turned to despair. “I think I lost hope when we passed the 96-hour mark,” Dawood recalled — the oxygen reserves on board the Titan should have been around for that amount of time.

Her daughter clung to the thought for a little longer that the drama would have a happy ending. But then the devastating call from the Coast Guard came: “They basically informed us that they had found debris.” The fragments of the “Titan” were less than 500 meters from the bow of the “Titanic” wreck, which effectively confirmed the death of the five occupants.

Christine and Alina Dawood have set themselves a personal goal to help them come to terms with the tragedy and preserve Suleman’s memory: his mother and sister want to learn how to solve the Rubik’s Cube puzzle themselves.