Titan submersible malfunctioned just days before fatal Titanic dive
The submersible which imploded at the site of the Titanic’s wreck and killed everyone on board had malfunctioned just days before.
Steven Ross, scientific director of OceanGate who owned the sub, told a hearing into the deadly dive that the Titan had a ‘platform issue’ not long before its final voyage.
The malfunction caused passengers onboard the submersible to ‘tumble about’ and it took an hour to get them out of the water, he said.
The submersible pilot, OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush, crashed into bulkheading during the malfunction.
‘One passenger was hanging upside down. The other two managed to wedge themselves into the bow end cap,’ Steven said, adding that he did not know if an assessment of the Titan hull was performed after the incident.
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 during the fatal dive in June 2023.
Earlier on Thursday, Renata Rojas, a mission specialist for the company, told the coast guard the firm was staffed by competent people who wanted to ‘make dreams come true’.
The panel previously listened to two days of evidence that raised questions about the company’s operations before the doomed mission.
Renata’s evidence struck a different tone from some of the earlier witnesses, who described the company as troubled from the top down and focused more on profit than science or safety.
‘I was learning a lot and working with amazing people,’ she said, adding: ‘Some of those people are very hardworking individuals that were just trying to make dreams come true.’
She also said she felt the company was sufficiently transparent during the run-up to the Titanic dive.
The coast guard opened a public hearing on Monday as part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion.
Some of the testimony has focused on problems the company had prior to the fatal dive.
Investigators also released underwater footage of the submersible wreck, showing the submersible’s tail cone and other debris on the ocean floor.
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.
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