A hearing into the implosion of OceanGate’s Titan submersible is continuing for a second day as Coast Guard officials investigate what led to the disaster that killed all five passengers on board.
Giving evidence at today’s session in South Carolina, David Lochridge, the former OceanGate director of marine operations, told how CEO Stockton Rush, one of those who died in the incident, once threw a “PlayStation controller” at his head during a heated dispute under the sea after crashing a test submersible into a wreck.
Passengers paid around £197,00 ($250,000) each to embark on the Titan sub in June 2023 to visit the wreck of the Titanic and never returned. Communication with the submersible was lost one hour and 45 minutes after its descent. It was later discovered that it had imploded after entering the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Read below for the key takeaways of the public hearing so far
David Lochridge told the hearing that, during a journey in OceanGate’s Cyclops 1 submersible in the summer of June 2016, he “embarrassed” Stockton Rush by telling him he shouldn’t pilot the vessel.
He said Rush refused and later went on to “smash” into a wreck while Lochridge and three paying customers were on board.
“It was an absolute mess,” Lochridge added, who said Rush turned the submersible by 180 degrees and drove “full speed into the port side of the bow”.
Lochridge said he tried to get the PlayStation controller from Rush, who still refused to comply until a customer shouted at him, at which point, the CEO threw the controller at the right side of Rush’s head.
Lochridge also told the hearing of an occasion when he was working offshore in the North Sea and sent OceanGate his CV in 2015, thinking the company would be a “good fit”.
However, when the company told him its plan “from the outset” that its plan was to reach the Titanic and that it “wanted to be able to qualify a pilot in a day”, Lochridge said: “That is a huge red flag.”
Lochridge, who was made OceanGate marine operations director in January 2016, was responsible for training pilots and ensuring the safety of those on board its vehicles. He said he was the “only qualified submersible pilot” to pilot the company’s vessels and the “only one with experience in new-build submersibles”.
“The intention for OceanGate, unbeknownst to me when I came across, they wanted to qualify a pilot in a day. Somebody who had never sat in a submersible,” Lochridge said.
“That is a huge red flag. That is a no-no. You don’t do that. It is a long process.”
Lochridge added that the “whole idea behind the company was to make money,” adding: “There was very little in the way of science.”
On the first day of the inquiry, a haunting image was shown of the remains of the Titan sitting on the ocean floor.
The submersible’s broken tail cone is pictured in the North Atlantic Ocean, severed from the rest of the vessel with a ripped fragment sitting next to it.
Officials said the photograph, taken by a remotely operated vehicle, provided “conclusive evidence of a catastrophic loss” of the Titan and the five passengers on board.
They told the hearing how the Pelagic Research Services 6000 found the tail cone and other bits of debris on June 22, 2023, four days after the Titan set off on its voyage, People reports.
The Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation presented an animation on Monday showing a re-enactment of the Titan’s journey.
It included final communications, shown in speech bubbles, between the crew on the sub and its supporter vessel, the Polar Prince.
The Polar Prince sent a number of messages, most of which went answered, while one of the Titan’s final responses before losing contact was, “All good here.”
