By Ben Brasch / The Washington Post
The Coast Guard is more than halfway through its hearing on the implosion of the Titan submersible. The week-long search last summer turned tragic when officials found that all five people died trying to view the RMS Titanic wreckage.
Searchers found the Titan submersible June 22, 2023, and determined all five aboard died when the vessel imploded: CEO Stockton Rush, 61; British aviation businessman Hamish Harding, 58; retired French navy commander Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77; British Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48; and his 19-year-old son, Suleman.
The two-week hearing into OceanGate’s experimental submersible is being run by the military branch’s highest level of investigation, the Marine Board of Investigation, reserved for serious maritime accidents, such as the Deepwater Horizon’s ecologically catastrophic oil spill and the cargo ship El Faro’s sinking that killed 33 people in 2015.
Below is a top-line summary of testimony so far and a sense of what the remaining hearing sessions may bring.
What has happened this week?
• Guillermo Sohnlein, co-founder of OceanGate, said he and Rush started the company in October 2009 to have a few deep-sea submersibles for charter. “We wanted to give humanity greater access to the ocean,” he said. He said they had no intention of manufacturing their own submersibles but they couldn’t find anything that met their evolving business model, so they built their own. An entrepreneur, he said he left the company in late 2012 because they needed an engineer at the helm to build their submersible. And that was Rush, who continued to invite Sohnlein to visit the Titanic. “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Sohnlein said. “Five people should not have lost their lives.”
• Roy Thomas is a senior principal engineer at American Bureau of Shipping, which is one of the internationally recognized classification companies that works with submersible manufacturers from the design phase and continues to inspect the crafts. The Titan did not undergo that stringent classification process, as Rush had argued that regulations tended to stifle innovation. Thomas pointed out multiple instances, from the design of the carbon fiber hull to accidents, in which the classification process being classed would have made Titan a safer vessel.
• Phil Brooks, former OceanGate engineering director, said OceanGate tested its designs using one-third scale models that were pressurized at a lab. But the company never had a successful full-scale test to Titanic depth of the design OceanGate used to build Titan, he said. A software engineer without extensive materials experience, Brooks said he left all the material development to Rush, an aerospace engineer. Even when Rush was presented in 2022 with unfavorable test findings following a dive, he said, the CEO had the final say to continue operations.
What happened during Week 1?
• Former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said Rush jammed a submersible into the ocean floor with paying customers aboard while surveying a wreck in 2016. Lochridge recounted Rush’s panic and an exchange of yelling before Lochridge took the controls from Rush and freed the vessel.
• Lochridge’s account was disputed by a passenger, Renata Rojas: “He must have gone on a different dive.” A scuba diver and Titanic obsessive, Rojas was on the support vessel that launched Titan’s final dive. Holding back tears, she testified about why she feels the work is so important: “Without taking that risk and the exploration, the world would still be flat. I hope that innovation continues so we can make the oceans accessible to people like me who got to fulfill their dream.”
• Patrick Lahey, co-founder of Triton Submarines, told the panel he toured a Titan prototype in March 2019 and deemed the “contraption” not “ready for prime time.” He recounted thinking as he left: “Well, that’s a relief. I don’t think that’ll ever take people on any significant dives.” Triton is well-respected in the submersible world; Rojas referred to Triton as the “Ferrari” of submersibles.
• Antonella Wilby, a former OceanGate engineering contractor, said company officials often dismissed concerns from her and other technical experts.
• Dave Dyer, an engineer at the University of Washington’s applied physics lab, said he worked with OceanGate between 2012 and 2017, when he decided to stop providing engineering support because of fundamental disagreements over the submersible’s engineering.
Who will appear next? What might they say?
The following people are scheduled to testify. Each is assigned to a specific day, but scheduling is fluid. The estimated testimony times are available on the Coast Guard’s online hearing schedule.
• Don Kramer, materials engineer with the National Transportation Safety Board, could testify Wednesday on Titan’s hull composition and what led to the implosion. The NTSB has a member on the panel as the agency conducts its own investigation, which officials wrote in June 2023 would last 12 to 24 months.
• William Kohnen, CEO and founder of Hydrospace Group, led a group of experts who drafted a letter to OceanGate in 2018 expressing concerns about Titan’s engineering and safety, according to NPR. Kohnen said he and Rush “agreed to disagree” about regulations stifling innovation. He is on the schedule for Wednesday.
• Bart Kemper of Kemper Engineering, who is scheduled to testify Wednesday, also signed the letter. He told the New York Times that OceanGate avoided U.S. regulations and Coast Guard rules by diving in international waters.
• Justin Jackson, materials engineer at NASA, could on Thursday explain the differences and similarities in diving deep and going to space, as many in the submersible world compare the two operations.
• Mark Negley, also scheduled to testify Thursday, was one of two Boeing engineers who consulted on Titan, according to Wired. In October 2013, the pair submitted a 70-page preliminary design with manufacturing advice and technical analysis. The report included a graph showing levels of strain on the submersible at different depths. At the 13,100-foot mark, the graph showed a skull and crossbones. Titanic sits at 12,500 feet.
• Matthew McCoy, who was identified as a former OceanGate employee, is set to testify Friday after being added to the witness list Monday.
• The Coast Guard and other agencies ran a massive search operation, drawing resources from throughout its fleet, to find Titan. The following Coast Guard members are slated to testify: John Winters (Thursday) of Coast Guard Sector Puget Sound; Lt. Cmdr. Jonathan Duffett (Thursday) of Coast Guard Office of Commercial Vessel Compliance; Capt. Jamie Frederick (Friday), who helped search for the Titan from Coast Guard Sector Boston; and Scott Talbot (Friday), a Coast Guard search and rescue specialist.
What happens after the hearing?
After the Titan hearing ends, probably Friday, the board will publish a public report.
This process could yield a range of outcomes from new regulations on deep-sea diving to criminal charges.
Jonathan Edwards, María Luisa Paúl and Daniel Wu contributed to this report.
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