Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman. ARCHIVE

Christine Dawood, mother of Titan victims 19-year-old Suleman Dawood and wife of Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood, has revealed that she was supposed to be in Suleman's place in the doomed submersible. In an interview with the BBC, Christine revealed that the original plan was for her to travel in the Titan with Shahzada. When the trip was cancelled due to the Covid pandemic, she allowed her son to go on the next dive “because he really wanted to go”. The teen even completed a 10,000-piece model of the Titanic in LEGO and wanted to solve a Rubik’s Cube while visiting the shipwreck. Her husband, Shahzada, was also just as excited, Christine said, "We hugged and joked because Shahzada was so excited to go down; he was like a little child. They were both so excited." Christine and her 17-year-old daughter Alina were onboard the Titan support ship when they received news that communications were lost with the vessel on June 18. The Titan was also carrying Dubai-based British billionaire Hamish Harding, French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet and OceanGate CEO and founder Stockton Rush. "I didn't comprehend at that moment what it meant – and then it just went downhill from there," she said. The Titan vanished as it dived towards the Titanic shipwreck in the North Atlantic. It sparked a massive search joined by Coast Guards from US, Canada and France, with teams racing against the clock to find the vessel and rescue the five people onboard before its 96-hour oxygen supply ran out. She said that she and her daughter tried to remain optimistic that the passengers would be rescued somehow. "There were so many actions the people on this sub can do in order to surface," she said. "They would drop the weights, then the assent would be slower... we were constantly looking at the surface. There was that hope." Once the 96-hour mark passed with no sign of the Titan, “That's when I lost hope", Christine told the BBC. "That's when I sent the message to my family onshore. I said: 'I am preparing for the worst'." On June 23, the US Coast Guard confirmed that debris from the missing Titan submersible had been found, with the five people onboard the vessel presumed dead. US Coast Guard’s Rear Admiral John Mauger confirmed that parts of the Titan were found approximately 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic wreck. The debris was located by a remote-controlled underwater search vehicle. Mauger said the debris was consistent with a “catastrophic implosion”. He could not confirm whether the bodies can be recovered, saying it is an “credibly unforgiving environment.” He implied that the tragedy likely occurred before the rescue effort got under way, saying soon monitoring of the area on Monday did not detect any signs of an implosion. ICA/Expat Media
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