A French submarine that went missing more than a half-century ago with 52 sailors aboard has been located by a search team using a boat belonging to a US company, according to a report.

“It’s a success, a relief and a technical feat,” Defense Minister Florence Parly said on Twitter after the wreck of the Minerve was discovered some 30 miles off the southern French port of Toulon, according to Agence France-Presse.

“I am thinking of the families who have waited for this moment for so long,” she added.

Previous efforts to find the diesel and electric-powered submersible, which was lost on Jan. 17, 1968, during a training mission in bad weather, were unsuccessful.

Amid renewed demands from the crew’s families to locate the lost sub, Parly announced a new search effort at the start of this year involving naval vessels and marine experts.

The discovery was made Sunday by the Seabed Constructor, which belongs to the private US company Ocean Infinity. It found the wreck at a depth of 7,800 feet, a senior French naval officer told AFP.

The Seabed Constructor also was successful in finding Argentina’s San Juan submarine in November 2018 after it had disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean a year earlier.

“It’s a relief, hugely emotional,” Herve Fauve, the son of the Minerve’s captain, told AFP about the latest discovery. “These 52 sailors had been abandoned in some ways.”

Therese Scheirmann-Descamps, the wife of one of the lost sailors, Jules, told AFP that she couldn’t find the words to describe her emotions.

“It’s extraordinarily soothing, for my children too. It’s such a surprise, such a joy,” she said Monday from her home in Toulon.

Jacques Dannay, who was only 2 two when his dad disappeared on the sub, said earlier this year that he hoped the search mission would give him closure.

“I know it’s stupid, but for me my father isn’t really dead for as long as we haven’t found the wreck,” he told AFP. “If someone told me he was alive, I’d probably believe them.”

The cause of the Minerve’s loss has never been confirmed, but experts have offered a variety of theories, including a problem with the rudder, a collision with another boat, the explosion of a missile or torpedo, or a fault with the sub’s oxygen supply systems.