In the run-up to last year’s implosion of OceanGate’s Titan submersible, cost concerns played a role in decisions that may have contributed to the catastrophe, a former director of engineering for the Everett, Wash.-based company told investigators today at a Coast Guard hearing.
Phil Brooks, who headed up the engineering team starting in 2021, said OceanGate’s financial woes contributed to his decision to leave the company in early 2023, just months before the sub and its crew were lost during a dive to the wreck of the Titanic, 12,600 feet down in the North Atlantic.
“It was clear that the company was economically very stressed, and as a result, that they were making decisions and doing things … I felt that the safety was just being compromised way too much,” Brooks told the Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation, which is due to wrap up a series of public hearings this week.
The five crew members who died in the implosion were Stockton Rush, OceanGate’s CEO and co-founder, who was piloting the sub; veteran Titanic explorer P.H. Nargeolet; British aviation executive and citizen explorer Hamish Harding; and Pakistani-born business executive Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.
Much of the discussion during Brooks’ testimony focused on a loud bang that was heard at the end of a Titanic dive in the summer of 2022 — a year before Titan’s loss. The signature of the bang showed up clearly on a readout of acoustic emissions that Brooks had a hand in developing.
Brooks said that the sound was discussed by the Titan team, and that Rush thought it was caused by the sudden readjustment of a metal frame that surrounded the sub. “At that point it seemed like a reasonable explanation, and fairly plausible,” Brooks said. But he said he and his team wanted to bring the sub back to Everett at the end of the season so that they could “pull the insert and just look at the inside of the hull, to see if there were any cracks.”
Instead, the sub was left in a parking lot near the dock in St. John’s, Newfoundland, for several months that winter — exposing the carbon-fiber hull to the elements.
“It was very frustrating,” Brooks recalled. “We had no way to work on it, no way to look at it. And we were told it was a cost issue, that the cost of shipping it back was prohibitive. … That was basically around the time that I left.”
The submersible was brought inside in February 2023, but Brooks said he wasn’t aware that any maintenance or testing was done on the hull between the 2022 and 2023 expeditions. One of the leading theories for the cause of the June 2023 implosion suggests that the cumulative effects of Titan’s dives, plus the exposure to the elements, weakened the carbon-fiber hull or the seals between the hull and the sub’s titanium end caps. That could have left the sub vulnerable to the extreme pressures of the deep ocean.
Brooks said Stockton Rush usually made the final decisions on engineering questions. For example, Brooks said he would meet up with Rush to review the hull sensor data that was generated during each dive. “It was primarily Stockton’s call,” Brooks said. “I would make recommendations, but it was really his call if there was a cause for concern, or if we were going to maybe stop diving, that sort of thing. He pretty much had full control over that.”
Bonnie Carl, who was OceanGate’s director of human resources, finance and administration from 2017 to 2018, said during one of last week’s hearings that the company occasionally faced financial straits so dire that Rush would have to write a check to cover payroll. During today’s hearing, Brooks said OceanGate asked employees in 2022 to forgo getting paid for periods of time, with the promise that they’d get caught up with their paychecks after the first of the year.
“They asked for volunteers,” he said. “And you know, I don’t think anybody did it.”
Other highlights from the hearing
The Coast Guard released a 30-minute video documenting efforts to bring up wreckage from the Titan sub, a week after its loss was confirmed. Pelagic Research Services’ remotely operated vehicle used its robotic arms to secure the wreckage for recovery from the ocean floor, and used its camera to capture footage of the operation. The Coast Guard also released a map showing the Titan sub debris field. Debris was spread along a roughly 350-meter-long (1,150-foot-long) track. The iconic bow of the Titanic is about 250 meters (820 feet) from the track of debris.
OceanGate was founded in 2009 to create a new business model for deep-sea exploration, company co-founder Guillermo Söhnlein told the investigative panel. “At the time, we had absolutely no intention of building our own subs,” Söhnlein said. But he and Rush discovered that no submersible manufacturer was able to build an affordable sub that could take five people down to Titanic depths.
“If what we’re trying to do is open up access to the deep oceans, and one of the big limiting factors is money — because not everyone has tens of millions of dollars to do this — then we need to bring the costs down by at least one order of magnitude, if not two,” Söhnlein said.
Part of the business model called for recruiting mission specialists who would be willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to participate in what were cast as research expeditions — an arrangement that was the subject of more than a few questions from the investigative board’s members.
Söhnlein left the company in 2013 but said he offered to accompany Rush on a Titan test dive in the Bahamas in 2019.
“I felt like I was reliving the graduation scene from the original ‘Top Gun,'” Söhnlein said. “I told him the same thing Viper told Maverick. I said, ‘Look, you’re going to go by yourself, but if you get down there and you feel that you need a co-pilot, give me a call and I’ll dive with you.’ And he said, ‘Thanks. I appreciate it, but I think I’m going to have to do this one up by myself.'”
Söhnlein hoped that, going forward, many more people will get opportunities to experience the ocean as a “magical place” — but acknowledged that “OceanGate’s not going to be a part of that effort.”
“I can only hope that others will be inspired by the mission that Stockton and I started back in 2009 and that so many dedicated OceanGate team members, investors, partners and mission specialists contributed to over the years since that founding,” he said.
U.S. and international regulations relating to submersibles need an update, said Roy Thomas, senior principal engineer at the American Bureau of Shipping.
ABS is one of several societies around the world that certify, or “class,” submersibles through a rigorous process of testing and annual follow-up surveys. During a technical presentation, Thomas laid out the challenges of certifying subs with carbon-fiber hulls, which are lighter but not as resilient as metal hulls. OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush decided against having Titan certified because he thought the process was “anathema to rapid innovation.”
Thomas said the safety shortfalls that came to light during this month’s hearings would have raised alarms if OceanGate had followed the rules for certification. “If you see a problem on a submersible, stop. Ask for outside opinion, because this is a dangerous business,” he said. “You should not be taking any risk.”
Thomas called on the Coast Guard to update its 30-year-old regulations on crewed submersibles. He also said the International Maritime Organization should revisit its 23-year-old guidelines on submersibles, and mandate compliance with those guidelines in an update to the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea.
‘I’m not dying. No one dying under my watch, period,’ OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush said in 2018 during a heated exchange with his then-director of marine operations, David Lochridge. That quote came from the transcript of a key meeting that was released by the Coast Guard today.
During the meeting, Lochridge voiced his concerns about the safety of the Titan sub — and after the meeting, Lochridge was fired. The dispute escalated, with Lochridge filing for whistleblower protection from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and OceanGate threatening legal action. In the end, Lochridge agreed to a settlement that forced him to keep mum about his concerns.
Last week, he told the Coast Guard panel that the OceanGate tragedy might have been prevented — and Rush might still be alive — if only OSHA had investigated the issues he tried to bring to light five years earlier.
Previously:
- 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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