96 hours of hell: Titan sub passenger Shahzada Dawood's wife describes long wait for news of husband and son
LONDON, UK: The grieving wife and mother of Shahzada Dawood and Suleman Dawood has spoken about her desperate wait for good news while the pair’s tourist submersible got lost in the sea. The father-son duo went on an expedition on June 18 after boarding OceanGate’s Titan to explore the Titanic’s wreckage thousands of feet deep inside the Atlantic Ocean.
But within two hours into the journey, the 22ft vessel went missing, leaving families of the explorers devastated. Now, Christine Dawood, wife of Shahzada, has said that she and her 17-year-old daughter Alina were sailing on Titan's mothership, the Polar Prince, when they were informed about the sub’s vanishment.
‘We had loads of hope’
Christine said, as per the Daily Mail, “I didn't comprehend at that moment what it meant - and then it just went downhill from there. I think I lost hope when we passed the 96 hours mark. That's when I sent the message to my family onshore, I said: 'I am preparing for the worst'.” She added, “I miss them. I really, really miss them.”
Describing her and her daughter’s feelings while the search for the Titan was on, she shared, “We had loads of hope, that was the only thing that got us through it because we were hoping.” Shahzada and Suleman were with OceanGate's CEO Stockton Rush, British businessman Hamish Harding, and French researcher Paul Henry Nargeolet inside the sub when it perished.
Christine also said that people above water continued to think positively by telling themselves, “There were so many actions the people on this sub can do in order to surface... they would drop the weights, then the assent would be slower, we were constantly looking at the surface. There was that hope.”
She continued, “We all thought they are just going to come up so that shock was delayed by about 10 hours or so. By the time they were supposed to be up again, there was a time.... when they were supposed to be up on the surface again, and when that time passed the real shock, not shock but the worry and the not-so-good feelings started.”
‘He helped so many people’
Christine, however, mentioned, “My daughter didn't lose hope until the call with the Coastguard when they basically informed us that they had found debris. She is such an incredible young woman, she is so self-aware. She believes in science, and she really believes, just like if you board a plane, that the science, the mechanics, the engineering will work.”
The heartbroken member of the Dawood family also went on to speak lovingly about her late husband. She said, “He would make us all watch David Attenborough, and the children loved it. His enthusiasm brought the best out of me, and so I really learned to love history as well. He was really able to, through his knowledge, inspire and motivate others.”
“He was involved in so many things, he helped so many people and I think Alina and I really want to continue that legacy and give him that platform when his work has continued and it's quite important for my daughter as well,” Christine added.
