Titan sub widow: ‘I lost half my family. It was a preventable tragedy’
The Daily T
The Telegraph
4.1 • 705 Ratings
🗓️ 3 May 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In June 2023, the Titan submersible disaster saw a deep-sea sub vanish during a dive to the Titanic wreck, triggering a global search before it was confirmed the vessel had catastrophically imploded.
In this Daily T special, Tim Stanley and Rachel Johnson speak to Christine Dawood, who lost her husband Shahzada and her son Suleman in the disaster.
In her memoir Ninety-Six Hours, she recounts the agonising wait aboard the support vessel as the search unfolded above the wreck of the RMS Titanic sinking, and reveals the heartbreaking decision that led her to give up her own seat on the submersible to her son, who had dreamed of making the dive.
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Producers: Georgia Coan and Lilian Fawcett
Senior Producer: John Cadigan
Executive Producer: Charlotte Seligman
Video Producer: Will Walters
Studio Director: Meghan Searle
Editor: Camilla Tominey
Highlights
- Christine Dawood on the agonising decision to give her Titan Sub seat to her son
- She describes how she learned about the "preventable" disaster
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Telegraph. |
| 0:09.9 | Christine Darwood, who lost her husband, Shazada and her son, Suleiman in the Titan sub-disaster, has released her memoir. |
| 0:17.6 | In this Daily Tea special, we'll look at the agonising decision that led her to step back |
| 0:23.1 | and to give her seat on the Titan sub to her son Suleiman and how her family held on to hope |
| 0:29.8 | for 96 hours whilst aboard the support vessel. Welcome to the Daily Tea with me Tim Stanley |
| 0:36.7 | and me, Rachel Johnson. |
| 0:48.1 | In the summer of 2023, Christine Darwood and her family, including her husband, Shazada, |
| 0:53.9 | and her teenage son, Suleiman, |
| 0:56.1 | traveled to the North Atlantic to take part in a dive to visit the wreck of the Titanic. |
| 1:03.4 | A five-man crew on June the 18th, 2023, dived at 9.04 a.m. local time. This included Shazada and Salaman. Contact was lost with the vessel |
| 1:18.0 | at 1047. They were expected to resurface at 3pm and they never did. And they were officially |
| 1:26.2 | declared to be missing at 7 p.m. We now know that the |
| 1:31.1 | vessel was destroyed by a sudden implosion because of a problem with the structure. |
| 1:38.0 | We are now joined by Christine Darwood, who has kindly come here to talk about her new book and to give her perspective |
| 1:47.0 | on what happened over four agonizing days as the world waited to see if these people were still alive. |
| 1:54.0 | And I'd like to begin by asking you to tell us something about your husband and your son. |
| 1:59.0 | What kind of people were they? |
| 2:10.1 | Solomon was an old soul. He was, I think, very wise for his age. And he was very loving. |
| 2:16.5 | Like, he never was embarrassed if I would hug him, even like in his young teenage years, right, |
| 2:18.8 | if I would go to school. He would never mind me hugging him. I actually ask him once. I was like, dude, are you sure I can hug you? You |
| 2:23.1 | know, like, because if you look at other, till most of the children don't want their parents |
| 2:27.3 | anywhere. No, no, no, no, he wanted that. So he was very loving and we had a very good |
... |
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