Ohio Billionaire Larry Connor Plans to Take Sub to Titanic Site After OceanGate Implosion

The Titanic wreckage will have visitors once again.

Nearly one year after the OceanGate submersible imploded, billionaire real estate investor Larry Connor and Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey are developing a new vessel to visit the shipwreck.

"I want to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful," Connor told The Wall Street Journal in an interview published May 26, "it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way."

After the harrowing search for the Titan submersible last June captivated the world—which faced a tragic ending when the wreckage indicated none of the five passengers aboard had survived the implosion—the personal-sub industry took a major hit.

"This tragedy had a chilling effect on people's interest in these vehicles," Lahey explained. "It reignited old myths that only a crazy person would dive in one of these things."

So, it surprised Lahey when Connor reached out with a business proposition.

"We had a client, a wonderful man," Lahey recalled of Connor. "He called me up and said, ‘You know, what we need to do is build a sub that can dive to [Titanic-level depths] repeatedly and safely and demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that, and that Titan was a contraption.'"

The pair are planning a journey to the Titanic in a two-person submersible, which they named the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer. The vessel, which is listed on the company's website for $20 million, can dive up to 4,000 meters—200 meters deeper than the Titanic's site.

"Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade," Connor noted. "But we didn't have the materials and technology. You couldn't have built this sub five years ago." 

The OceanGate implosion—which took the lives of Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood, as well as the company's CEO Stockton Rush—rattled the industry. But experts didn't see the company's problems as broader submersible problems.

Instead, Lahey took aim at Rush for his experimental designs and materials, such as carbon fiber, which was used in the Titan. 

"He could even convince someone who knew and understood the risks," he told The Times in June, "it was really quite predatory."

Keep reading to learn more about the five passengers who died on board The Titan.

On June 18, 2023, a deep-sea submersible Titan, operated by the U.S.-based company OceanGate Expeditions and carrying five people on a voyage to the wreck of the Titanic, was declared missing. Following a five-day search, the U.S. Coast Guard announced at a June 22 press conference that the vessel suffered a "catastrophic implosion" that killed all five passengers on board.

Pakistani-born businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood, both British citizens, were also among the victims.

Their family is one of the wealthiest in Pakistan, with Shahzada Dawood serving as the vice chairman of Engro Corporation, per The New York Times. His son was studying at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland.

Shahzada's sister Azmeh Dawood told NBC News that Suleman had expressed reluctance about going on the voyage, informing a relative that he "wasn't very up for it" and felt "terrified" about the trip to explore the wreckage of the Titanic, but ultimately went to please his father, a Titanic fan, for Father's Day.

The Dawood Foundation mourned their deaths in a statement to the website, saying, "It is with profound grief that we announce the passing of Shahzada and Suleman Dawood. Our beloved sons were aboard OceanGagte's Titan submersible that perished underwater. Please continue to keep the departed souls and our family in your prayers during this difficult period of mourning."

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush was the pilot of the Titan. The entrepreneur—who founded the research company in 2009 in Everett, Wash.—had long been interested in exploration. Rush, 61, previously said he dreamed of becoming the first person on Mars and once said that he'd "like to be remembered as an innovator."

In addition to leading voyages to see the remnants of the Titanic, Rush had another surprising connection to the historic 1912 event: His wife Wendy Rush is the great-great-granddaughter of a couple who died on the Titanic, Ida and Isidor Straus.

British billionaire Hamish Harding confirmed he was a part of the mission in a June 17 Instagram post, a day before the submersible went into the water and disappeared.

"I am proud to finally announce that I joined @oceangateexped for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist on the sub going down to the Titanic," he wrote. "Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023. A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow."

Harding—the chairman of aircraft company Action Aviation—said the group had started steaming from St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada and was planning to start dive operations around 4 a.m. on June 18. The 58-year-old added, "Until then we have a lot of preparations and briefings to do."

His past explorations included traveling to the deepest part of the ocean in the Mariana Trench, telling Gulf News in 2021, "It was an incredibly hostile environment. To travel to parts of the Challenger Deep where no human had ever been before was truly remarkable."

The Dubai-based businessman also circumnavigated the Earth by plane with the One More Orbit project and, last year, took a trip to space on Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin New Shepard rocket. Harding shared his love for adventure with his son Giles, described as a "teen explorer" on his Instagram.

As for the fifth member, a representative for French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet told the New York Times that he was a passenger on the Titan, with Harding also referencing him on Instagram as a member of the team. 

The Times described him as a maritime expert who was previously part of the French Navy. The 71-year-old was a bonafide Titanic specialist and has traveled to the wreckage 35 times before. Nargeolet served as the director of RMS Titanic, Inc., a company that researches, salvages and displays artifacts from the famed ship, per the outlet. 

Alongside fellow passenger Hamish Harding, he was a member of The Explorers Club, founded in 1904.

As Harding noted in his post, the submersible—named Titan—was a part of an OceanGate Expeditions tour that explores the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, which infamously sank in 1912.

The company expressed its sympathies to the families of the victims. "These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world's oceans," OceanGate said in a statement. "Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew."