OceanGate employee denies suggestion of ‘desperation’ to complete missions

A key employee with the company that owned the experimental submersible that imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic pushed back at a question from a coast guard investigator about whether OceanGate felt a sense of “desperation” to complete the dives because of the high price tag.

“Not a desperation, there definitely was an urgency to delivery on what we had offered and a dedication and perseverance towards that goal,” said Amber Bay, director of administration for the company that owned the doomed Titan submersible.

She insisted the company would not “conduct dives that would be risky just to meet a need”.

Other witnesses have characterised those who paid 250,000 dollars (£187,422) to participate in OceanGate voyages to the Titanic as passengers, but Ms Bay described them more as explorers who were invited to take an active role in the missions.

“These were the people we were looking for. Explorers. Adventurers,” Ms Bay told the hearing on Tuesday.

British adventurer Hamish Harding and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood died alongside OceanGate Expeditions’ chief executive Stockton Rush and Frenchman Paul-Henri Nargeolet when the submersible imploded in June 2023.

Mr Dawood was a London-based businessman and adviser to the King’s charity Prince’s Trust International, with a focus on its work in Pakistan. His 19-year-old son was a student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.

The US coast guard opened a public hearing earlier this month that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. Some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.

The co-founder of the company told the coast guard panel on Monday that he hoped a silver lining of the disaster is that it will inspire a renewed interest in exploration, including the deepest waters of the world’s oceans.

Businessman Guillermo Sohnlein, who helped found OceanGate with Mr Rush, left the company before the Titan disaster.

“This can’t be the end of deep ocean exploration. This can’t be the end of deep-diving submersibles and I don’t believe that it will be,” Mr Sohnlein said.

Earlier in the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Mr Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.

“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Mr Lochridge said. “There was very little in the way of science.”

Mr Sohnlein said on Monday he had the opportunity to dive in Titan “many times” and he declined.

He said his reasons included not wanting to take space away from potential customers. He also said when Mr Rush reached a point when it was “time to put a human in there” he wanted to do it himself. Mr Rush felt it was his design and said “if anything happens, I want it to impact me”, Mr Sohnlein said.

But Mr Lochridge and other previous witnesses painted a picture of a troubled company that was impatient to get its unconventionally designed craft into the water. The accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

The hearing is expected to run through to Friday and include several more witnesses, some of whom were closely connected to the company.

Coast guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by a lawyer during the hearing.

During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

When the submersible was reported overdue, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700km) south of St John’s, Newfoundland.

Wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 metres) off the bow of the Titanic, coast guard officials said. No one on board survived.

OceanGate said it has been fully co-operating with the coast guard and NTSB investigations since they began. Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.