The co-founder of OceanGate has testified that the reasons behind the Titan submersible tragedy may never be known. Guillermo Sohnlein, who founded the excursion company with Stockton Rush, told a US Coast Guard panel that he doesn’t understand what went wrong, adding, “I don’t know who made what decision when and based on what information.”
Sohnlein stated that despite extensive investigative efforts, there might never be a clear and definitive answer, except that “it was not supposed to happen.” The businessman said the company’s purpose was to bring people closer to the “magical” oceans and create new opportunities for their exploration. OceanGate hoped to develop a fleet of vessels capable of carrying five or six people to depths of 6,000 meters below the ocean surface. Sohnlein insisted, however, that this was never intended as a tourist attraction or a money maker.
Former colleague David Lochridge told a different story during his testimony to the panel. He claimed the projects were driven by profit rather than science and that he had significant concerns about Titan’s safety. Lochridge believed that carbon fiber was the wrong material for the outer structure and argued this would deteriorate as the vessel descended.
Mr. Lochridge told the Coast Guard that CEO Mr. Rush, who died when the submarine imploded last June, was “arrogant” and refused to work with outside experts on the craft’s construction, preferring to keep it in-house. Lochridge said he was considered a troublemaker for raising these issues.
Canadian and American authorities are still investigating what when wrong with the Titan submarine during an expedition to the equally ill-fated Titanic, which lies on the floor of the North Atlantic. Mr. Rush and four others died when the vessel imploded almost two hours into the dive. The ship failed to resurface at the scheduled time, prompting a frantic search under the gaze of the world’s media. After four days, a recovery vehicle found the vessel’s debris around 500 meters from the bow of the Titanic.
Subsequent investigations revealed that industry leaders wrote to Stockton Rush in 2018, warning of potentially “catastrophic” safety issues on the Titan submarine. The Marine Technology Society warned that OceanGate had taken “an experimental approach” to construction and safety.
