2024-09-21 02:07:32
(CNN) – Four days of hearings into the 2023 sinking of the Titanic, which killed all five on board, concluded this week with more damning evidence recounting numerous safety incidents over the years.
Patrick Lahey, CEO of Triton Submarines, testified at Friday’s hearing that he was concerned about the submersible’s lack of certification.
Lahey said he saw the Titan in March 2019 while in the Bahamas and “wasn’t impressed,” and told OceanGate staff.
“It didn’t seem like it was very well thought out or executed. “I saw evidence that they were crimping cables to hold weights, it seemed amateurish in execution,” he said. “I came away from that visit thinking, well, that’s a relief, I don’t think he calls people divers seriously and I obviously underestimated his tenacity.”
OceanGate purchased several submarines from Triton Submarines.
Lahey said he believes manned vehicles should be accredited and was concerned that Stockton Rush, founder and CEO of OceanGate, did not objectively assess the sinking and seek outside opinions to ensure the craft was safe.
Lahey added that he was aware that Rush considered the certification process a “waste of time” and a “block to innovation.”
“The certification process works, we know it works. Our safety record proves it,” Lahey continued. “We need to demand continuous human exploration of the deep sea on certified and accredited machines, not experimental ones, experimental machines have no place in the deep sea.”
Diving on Titan was “never supposed to be safe,” OceanGate mission specialist Fred Hagen said during his testimony Friday.
“Anyone who felt safe going down to depth on the Titan was delusional or delusional, it was an experimental ship, it was obviously dangerous,” Hagen said. “You don’t do it because it’s safe, you do it for the adrenaline rush.”
Hagen said that “there was an incident” in 2021, just days before a dive he took part in, where, as the Titan was being lifted up the ramp, rocking back and forth, the crane operator suddenly released it and the drowned crashing into the deck.
The force of the impact caused several bolts to “shoot out like bullets” and the titanium dome fell off. Only four of the 18 bolts on the 3,500-pound (1,587.5 kilogram) titanium dome were installed.
During that dive, they realized that the Titan was unbalanced and spiraling down, free-falling for about two and a half hours.
Communication was erroneous and veered off course, and when they activated the thrusters to return to course, the starboard thrusters failed and spun in circles, he said.
On another dive during the Titanic’s 2022 voyage, they got stuck in the wreckage for a minute or two, he said.
Antonella Wilby, a former OceanGate engineering contractor, said Friday that she raised concerns several times and was repeatedly ignored.
During Jump 79 of the Titanic 2022 voyage in July, Wilby was working on navigation when parts of the Titanic’s acoustic communication and navigation systems broke.
When Wilby raised her concerns about the breakdown, she was told she did not have a “probing idea”. He was concerned that taking his concerns to the board would violate his confidentiality agreement.
She was also told that she was not a “resolved” person and was eventually removed from the communications and navigation teams. At some point, Wilby told them, “This is a foolish way to do your shipping.”
“No aspect of the operation seemed safe to me,” he said. “When you answer specific questions with what the founder of the company wants, instead of the actual design decisions and data and analysis, that was a red flag to me.”
Steven Ross, a marine scientist and former scientific director of OceanGate, said during his testimony on Thursday that the Titanic had failed six days before it was buried in June 2023.
A deck failure during Dive 87’s fourth mission on Titan in 2023 caused all five people aboard to end up submerged for at least an hour, Ross said.
Ross also mentioned two incidents during the dives of the 2022 Titanic voyage, including a loud bang heard while ascending on Jump 80. On Jump 81, Ross claimed there was a thruster failure.
Triton Submarines and other members of the Marine Technology Society (MTS) wrote a letter to OceanGate expressing concern about the development of the Titan. An MTS member shared a draft of the letter with OceanGate. Rush and the president of MTS spoke and agreed to disagree on the draft. The full, finished version of the letter was never formally sent to OceanGate.
David Lochridge, the former director of the OceanGate marine probe who raised safety concerns about the sinking of the Titan, said during testimony earlier this week that the Titan tragedy could have been prevented if US safety authorities had investigated his complaints. He also criticized OceanGate’s business culture for being focused on “making money” and for “offering little in terms of science.”
“I believe that if the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had attempted to investigate the seriousness of the concerns I have raised many times, this tragedy could have been prevented,” Lochridge said.
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