Explorer from Bucks County concerned for friends on the missing submarine near Titanic

Peg Quann, Bucks County Courier Times
Updated ·3 min read
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Bucks County explorer and businessman Fred Hagen visited the Titanic wreckage twice aboard the submersible now missing in the North Atlantic.

With two friends aboard the Titan, he's worried about the crew's safety and trying to understand why the sub didn't surface as planned.

Fred Hagen (right) of Bensalem and Buckingham, is pictured with French underwater explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, one of the men aboard the now missing submersible Titan that dove Sunday to view the Titanic wreckage in the North Atlantic.
Fred Hagen (right) of Bensalem and Buckingham, is pictured with French underwater explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, one of the men aboard the now missing submersible Titan that dove Sunday to view the Titanic wreckage in the North Atlantic.

And, he said, it will be very difficult to find the vehicle called the Titan, "because it was difficult to find the Titanic."

Hagen went on two trips aboard the Titan in 2021 and again last summer to view the wreckage of the doomed ocean liner. He said there were times when the sub was out of contact with its mother ship on the ocean's surface but eventually communication was re-established.

He fears that won't be the case here, but doesn't want to give up hope that there "could be an act of God" to save the ship.

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Explorer remembers submarine trip to Titanic

On one of his previous trips, the sub became briefly wedged in the Titanic wreckage but fellow explorer, Frenchman Paul Henri Nargeolet, whom he considers the world's finest underwater wreckage explorer, was able to free it.

Nargeolet is on this mission, with Ocean Gate Expedition CEO Stockton Rush, whom Hagen also considers a friend, and three other identified passengers: British-Pakastani father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, and Hamish Harding, a British billionaire.

Hagen said he imagines the crew knows their prospects for rescue are dim but are carrying on.

"Failure is not an option. We're going to succeed," he said must be their mantra.

They have about 96 hours of oxygen aboard the vessel which left its mother ship and dove toward the Titanic Sunday morning.

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Hagen said the U.S. Navy's sophisticated submarines cannot go as deep as the Titan can because of the great water pressure at that depth, so he's not sure how the crew could be rescued.

There are only a few submersibles in the whole world that can do so, Hagen said, and the Titan is among the largest, being able to hold five people.

Hagen has participated in numerous dives around the world and gone on eight salvage missions to retrieve Navy fliers from World War II. His missions have resulted in the return of the remains of 18 American servicemen to the United States for burial.

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While Hagen was on his dive on the Titan last summer, his father, Alfred D. Hagen Sr., died. His father had been a sailor in his younger years and his son wrote his name on pieces of ballast and left these in his memory at the site of the Titanic wreckage.

Hagen is the CEO of Hagen Construction in Bensalem which has worked on multiple construction projects in the Philadelphia region, and also has a hemp farm in Buckingham.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Bucks County explorer took 2 dives on submarine missing near Titanic