The U.S. Coast Guard took a deep dive into the regulations governing submersibles today at public hearing into the causes of last year’s loss of OceanGate’s Titan sub and its crew. And the issues raised sometimes got as murky as the depths of Puget Sound, where Titan underwent its first tests.
Among the witnesses who testified at the hearing in South Carolina was John Winters, the master marine inspector for Coast Guard Sector Puget Sound. For more than a decade, Winters worked with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush on the regulatory requirements for two of the Everett, Wash.-based company’s subs, known as the Antipodes and Cyclops 1. But today he told the Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation that he had nothing to do with Titan.
Winters recalled a time, about two years ago, when he was at OceanGate’s headquarters on the Everett Marina to check on one of the two submersibles in the Coast Guard’s records. He said he saw the three subs on a barge, and someone told him, “We finally got our submarine to go to the Titanic.”
“But that was the only thing in passing,” Winters said. “Nothing about what it was constructed to, who witnessed it. None of that stuff. Just, ‘Here it is, look at the outside.’ … That’s as far as it went.”
In the wake of the Titan tragedy, the Coast Guard is likely to go further. One of the objectives of this month’s hearings is to lay the groundwork for regulatory changes that would help head off future fatal incidents involving submersibles.
Five people died when Titan underwent a catastrophic implosion during its descent to the Titanic in June 2023. In addition to Rush, who was piloting the sub, the victims included veteran Titanic explorer P.H. Nargeolet, British aviation executive Hamish Harding, Pakistani-born billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.
The investigative board has already heard witnesses recount their concerns about OceanGate’s use of carbon-fiber composite for its hull. Two witnesses — from NASA and Boeing — added context to those concerns today. But most of the hearing was devoted to the regulatory gaps that the Titan tragedy brought to light.
Winters said Rush made no effort to get Titan inspected by the Coast Guard. And although OceanGate worked with the Coast Guard to get its other two subs received designations as oceanographic research vessels, or ORVs, Winters said Rush often complained that “regulations were stifling his innovation process.”
Small submersibles that are used exclusively as research vessels are exempt from some Coast Guard regulations — including one that requires inspections for subs that take on paying customers. OceanGate’s business model relied on having “mission specialists” pay a fee to participate in what were portrayed as research missions.
“Is it an ORV? Then, are they scientific personnel? If both of those answers are yes, the payment matter is moot,” said Lt. Cmdr. Jonathan Duffett of the Coast Guard Office of Commercial Vessel Compliance.
It’s typically up to the officer in charge of marine inspection in each Coast Guard sector to determine whether a sub and its crew are involved in a research mission. Winters said communication between sectors can sometimes get spotty. He said he would receive notices about Antipodes’ missions in other jurisdictions, but didn’t get notified about OceanGate’s Cyclops 1 dive into New York’s Hudson Canyon in 2020.
The Cyclops 1 dive to the wreck of the Andrea Doria in 2016 raised even more questions: Investigators said Cyclops didn’t have its ORV designation for that voyage, but took on a mission specialist who paid $35,000 for the trip.
Duffett ran through all the requirements for small submersibles, and then said that “if all those boxes are checked, then, yes, it would fall under the definition of a small passenger vessel and have to have a certificate of inspection.”
And then there’s Titan. The fact that Titan went out to sea from a Canadian port and operated in international waters for its Titanic dives, the Coast Guard didn’t exercise any oversight over those dives. But could the Coast Guard have played more of a role when Rush was testing Titan in Puget Sound? That was the question on the mind of Jason Neubauer, chair of the Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation.
“If OceanGate were testing a pressure submersible with just the owner on board, or a crew member, before the vessel was certified or registered, could they legally do that?” he asked Duffett.
Duffett hemmed and hawed a bit. “As far as Coast Guard requirements go, as long as they’re in compliance with Subchapter C, and there are other generally applicable requirements, environmental requirements and 33 CFR rules of the road, that sort of thing … but it’s feasible to do that legally. Yes.”
The Coast Guard is due to wrap up its hearings on Friday with testimony from former OceanGate employee Matthew McCoy; Capt. Jamie Frederick of Coast Guard Sector Boston, who helped lead the search effort for the Titan sub; and Scott Talbot, a search-and-rescue specialist at the Coast Guard.
Other highlights from the hearing
Boeing provided engineering advice to OceanGate at the very start of the design process for the Titan sub, Boeing engineer Mark Negley told the investigative board. He said OceanGate got in touch with Boeing in the 2013 time frame because of the supporting role that Boeing played in the development of an autonomous underwater vehicle known as Deepglider for the University of Washington.
Negley said Boeing engineers looked at the feasibility of using carbon-fiber composite for the submersible’s hull, and noted the challenges that would be involved in building up a cylindrical shell thick enough to meet OceanGate’s specifications. Boeing also helped OceanGate record acoustic readings during tests of subscale hull models. But the relationship fizzled out in the 2016-2020 time frame — and Negley was asked why.
“We had a number of different requests from OceanGate to respond to different requests for proposals,” Negley said. “I don’t know exactly. I think maybe we were too expensive.”
In June, Wired magazine reported that Negley sent an email to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush in 2018, warning him that Titan’s carbon-fiber hull had “a high risk of significant failure at or before you reach 4,000 meters.” Negley reportedly included a graph showing how the strain would increase at lower depths, with a skull and crossbones marking the region below 4,000 meters. That email didn’t come up during today’s hearing.
NASA had an agreement with OceanGate in 2020 to help the company manufacture the carbon-fiber hull that the Titan sub used for Titanic trips. NASA engineer Justin Jackson confirmed that the contract called on OceanGate to pay $148,874 for engineering advice as well as production, testing and analysis of scale models of the hull. Jackson said NASA was interested in the project because the technology could be used to build space habitats and radiation shields.
The partnership didn’t last long. “The COVID pandemic occurred, and we weren’t able to accomplish any of the fabrication. We provided remote consultation throughout the build of their one-third-scale article, but we did not do any manufacturing or testing of their cylinders,” Jackson said. “We received roughly $40,000 for the remote consulting effort during the one-third-scale build. We returned close to $124,000 of that $148,000.”
Jackson said OceanGate tried to maintain its connections with NASA. “They wanted to do another press release that we ultimately couldn’t come to a resolution on the details of, and then conversations ended shortly thereafter,” he said.
He was asked why NASA nixed the news release. “It was the language they were using,” Jackson said. “It was getting too close to us endorsing. Our folks had some heartburn with the endorsement level of it.”
Previously:
- NTSB spots flaws in Titan sub’s hull and focuses on a bang
- Submarine expert recounts how a Titan trip unnerved him
- Former top engineer says cost concerns shortchanged safety
- OceanGate client recalls a tricky Titanic tangle
- Titanic traveler makes a tearful plea for citizen science
- Videos show the shattered remains of Titan sub
- OceanGate whistleblower traces the roots of his concerns
- Hearing reveals the last words sent by Titan’s crew
- A new chapter in the OceanGate probe, but not the end
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