A mother who lost her son and husband in the Titan submersible disaster has opened up on the heartbreaking reason she walked into ocean after they died.
On 22 June 2023, OceanGate, a company which offered the chance to visit the wreck of the Titanic, confirmed that the five men on board the missing Titan submersible had died.
CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet had tragically lost their lives when the sub 'catastrophically imploded' - with debris being found near the wreck site.
Advert
The group of five embarked on an expedition which set off from St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada on 16 June.
Ninety minutes into its descent to the Titanic wreck on 18 June, the company lost contact with the submersible.
Christine Dawood - the wife of Shahzada, 48, and mother to Suleman, 19 - has spoke about that tragic day in June of last year.
"The moment we knew they'd found debris and there were no survivors, Alina [her daughter who was 17 at the time] and I went on deck," she told the Daily Mail.
"Until that moment we'd had hope. We took some cushions with us and just sat there looking out at the ocean. We were both crying.
"I turned to her and said, 'I'm a widow now'. She said, 'Yes, and I'm a single child'. Then we cried even more."
"Apart from a few business trips when Shahzada would go back to [his native] Pakistan, we did everything together," she added.
"My son was an emergency C-section. I almost lost him. I just thought he was this angel who was gifted to me.
"Without modern medicine I would not have had him. He was an old soul - a people's person who made everyone feel special."
Because the father and son don't have graves, Dawood says that she once went into the ocean to connect with them.
"We don't have graves for them," she explained.
"There were no bodies, but recently we [she, Alina and Shahzada's younger sister, Sabrina] went to Singapore. The sea was warm enough for us to walk in and I truly felt them around me.
"I thought, 'This is such a gift. I don't need a grave because every time I am in the ocean I will be able to connect with them because they are part of it'.
"We stood there with our skirts draped over our arms and cried for ten minutes straight. It was very, very cathartic.
When I think of them now, they are just asleep down there [in the ocean]."
Anish Vij