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OceanGate whistleblower traces roots of tragedy

David Lochridge at Everett dock with Cyclops 1 submersible
In a 2017 image, David Lochridge shows off OceanGate's Cyclops 1 submersible. (GeekWire Video / Kevin Lisota)

Whistleblower David Lochridge said today that his concerns about OceanGate and its approach to undersea exploration began long before the company built the submersible that imploded last year during a dive to the Titanic shipwreck.

Lochridge referred back to 2016, when OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush crashed a different submersible called Cyclops 1 into the wreck of the Andrea Doria while Lochridge watched.

“He basically drove it full speed into the port side of the bow, and we could hear the cracking of the fairing as he got us jammed in underneath,” Lochridge recalled. “I’m not going to say how foul my language was, but it wasn’t good.”

At the time, the Andrea Doria expedition was hailed as a momentous achievement for OceanGate. But for Lochridge, a veteran submersible pilot who had joined the company months earlier, it was the start of a sour relationship with Rush.

During the second day of Coast Guard hearings into last year’s loss of OceanGate’s Titan submersible and its five-person crew, Lochridge traced how he tried to sound the alarm about what he saw as lapses in Titan’s design and construction — and how he ran into resistance at the Everett, Wash.-based company.

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Hearing reveals last words from OceanGate sub’s crew

Tail cone of Titan submersible on ocean floor
An image from a remotely operated vehicle shows the tail cone of OceanGate’s Titan sub on June 22, 2023. (Photo: Pelagic Research Services)

The last words transmitted by the crew on OceanGate’s Titan submersible before they perished in last year’s catastrophic implosion in the North Atlantic came to light today during the opening day of public hearings held by the U.S. Coast Guard.

“This is PH,” veteran explorer P.H. Nargeolet tapped out in a message that sent out during the fatal dive to the Titanic shipwreck on June 18, 2023, and shown at the hearing. “All good here.”

The very last message reported that the crew had dropped two weights from the sub. The sub’s mothership, the Polar Prince, received the final ping from Titan just seconds later. And then, nothing. Investigators say that Nargeolet and Titan’s four other crew members perished when the sub’s hull yielded to the crushing pressure in the ocean’s depths.

The other victims were Stockton Rush, who was the CEO and co-founder of Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate and served as Titan’s pilot; Hamish Harding, a British aviation executive and adventurer; and Pakistani-born businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.

Jason Neubauer, chair of the Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation, began today’s hearing in North Charleston, S.C., with a moment of silence for the crew — and then he introduced a presentation that traced the development and operation of the Titan submersible.

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Hearings open a new act in OceanGate sub tragedy

Coast Guard engineers examine Titan sub debris
Coast Guard engineers examine the aft titanium endcap from OceanGate's Titan submersible in October 2023. (NTSB Photo)

The U.S. Coast Guard is beginning two weeks of public hearings into last year’s loss of OceanGate’s Titan submersible and its crew during a dive to the Titanic shipwreck — but even before the start of the hearings, the official in charge of the hearings made clear that there’s lots more investigation to be done.

“The hearing is the first step in publicly showing the proceedings,” Jason Neubauer, chair of the Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation, told reporters today. “We may hold additional proceedings. There could be additional witnesses interviewed. So, I would say it’s hard to give a projection on the end date for the investigation.”

Public hearings are due to run Sept. 16 through 27 in North Charleston, S.C., with the proceedings livestreamed via YouTube. They’ll delve into the causes of Titan’s implosion, which killed the five people on board — including Stockton Rush, the CEO and co-founder of Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate.

The other crew members were veteran Titanic explorer P.H. Nargeolet and three mission specialists who paid OceanGate to participate in the dive: Hamish Harding, a British aviation executive and adventurer, plus Pakistani-born business executive Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleiman.

Soon after Titan’s disappearance on June 18, 2023, OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations, and its website literally went dark. These hearings will mark one of the rare occasions when people who were associated with the company will be speaking publicly about OceanGate’s activities.

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RMS Titanic reveals wreck’s decay and makes a new find

View of Titanic's ruined bow
A picture taken by an underwater drone shows the Titanic shipwreck’s iconic bow with a section of its railing missing. (RMS Titanic Photo)

RMS Titanic, the company holding the salvage rights to the wreck of the Titanic, says its latest robotic survey of the shipwreck site revealed the deterioration of the Titanic’s iconic bow, as well as the location of a long-sought statuette.

The 20-day expedition, conducted in July and August, provided the first look at the 112-year-old wreck since last year’s OceanGate tragedy. That dive ended in the catastrophic loss of Everett, Wash.-based Oceangate’s Titan submersible and its five-person crew, including company CEO and co-founder Stockton Rush.

In a news release, RMS Titanic said the findings from this summer’s expedition “showcase a bittersweet mix of preservation and loss.”

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Titanic explorer’s family sues OceanGate, seeking $50M

OceanGate Titan submersible underwater
OceanGate’s Titan submersible and its crew were lost during an expedition to the Titanic. (OceanGate Photo)

The family of Titanic explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet is seeking more than $50 million in damages in a lawsuit targeting Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate and other companies. The suit, filed in King County Superior Court, marks the beginning of what’s likely to be a complicated and drawn-out legal battle in the aftermath of last year’s loss of OceanGate’s Titan submersible and its crew.

Nargeolet, a veteran of more than 35 Titanic dives, was one of the five people aboard Titan who died in June 2023 when the sub underwent a catastrophic implosion during its final descent to the Titanic wreck in the North Atlantic. The other victims were British aviation executive Hamish Harding; Pakistani-born business executive Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman; and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was piloting the sub.

In addition to OceanGate, defendants in the suit include Rush’s estate, former OceanGate director of engineering Tony Nissen and three companies said to have participated in Titan’s construction: Mukilteo, Wash.-based Electroimpact, Sedro-Woolley, Wash.-based Janicki Industries and California-based Hydrospace Group.

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Investigator debunks fake news about OceanGate

Titan submersible
OceanGate’s Titan submersible was lost during a dive to the Titanic in June 2023. (OceanGate Photo)

The chairman of the Coast Guard investigation panel for last year’s loss of OceanGate’s Titan submersible says his team has “found no evidence” that crew members knew about their peril.

In the wake of the tragedy, a purported transcript of communications during Titan’s final dive included increasingly desperate references to an alarm aboard the sub. But Jason Neubauer, the chairman of the Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation, told The New York Times that the document “was made up.”

That conclusion is based on a review of the actual messages between Titan and its mothership as the sub descended toward the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic on June 18, 2023. Although that true transcript has not yet been released, Neubauer’s comments support the view that the five crew members died virtually instantaneously in the violent implosion of Titan’s carbon composite hull.

Neubauer told the Times that he hoped the truth would console relatives of the crew who may have worried that their loved ones suffered in their last moments.

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After OceanGate tragedy, billionaire plans Titanic trip

Illustration: Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer submersible
An artist’s conception shows the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer submersible. (Triton Submarines Illustration)

Less than a year after the loss of Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate’s submersible and its five-person crew during a dive to the Titanic, Triton Submarines is planning a trip to the shipwreck in a completely different kind of vessel with backing from a billionaire real-estate investor, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal quoted Triton’s co-founder and CEO, Patrick Lahey, as saying that the trip was conceived as a way to “demonstrate to the world” that his company was capable of making the 12,500-foot-deep dive safely and repeatedly — and that OceanGate’s Titan sub was a “contraption.”

Lahey reportedly plans to make the journey with Larry Connor, a billionaire who has made his mark as an adventurer as well as an Ohio-based investor and tech entrepreneur. Connor, 74, served as the pilot for Axiom Space’s first privately funded mission to the International Space Station two years ago. In 2021, Connor made three submersible dives with Lahey in the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench, descending to depths in excess of 35,000 feet.

“I want to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way,” Connor told the Journal.

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Coast Guard delivers more debris from Titan sub wreck

Coast Guard engineers examine Titan sub debris
Coast Guard engineers examine the aft titanium endcap from OceanGate's Titan submersible in October 2023. (NTSB Photo)

The U.S. Coast Guard says it has recovered and transferred the remaining evidence and debris from OceanGate’s Titan submersible to a U.S. port for cataloging and analysis — more than three months after the deep-sea implosion that killed the sub’s five crew members in the North Atlantic.

In an update issued today, the Coast Guard said the transfer was made on Oct. 4. “Additional presumed human remains were carefully recovered from within Titan’s debris and transported for analysis by U.S. medical professionals,” it said.

OceanGate was a startup headquartered in Everett, Wash. — and the company’s founder and CEO, Stockton Rush, was among the casualties. In August, OceanGate said a new CEO with tech industry experience, Gordon Gardiner, would lead the company through the investigation and the closure of operations.

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Tech executive faces tough job as OceanGate’s new CEO

OceanGate platform
OceanGate employees work on an air tank during the Titan submersible's development in 2017. (OceanGate File Photo)

A veteran of Seattle’s startup and investment scene, Gordon Gardiner, has been given the task of leading Oceangate through the aftermath of June’s controversial loss of the Titan submersible and its crew during a dive to the Titanic shipwreck — and eventually to the closure of operations.

Gardiner has been appointed as CEO and director of the privately held Everett-based company, which suspended commercial and exploration operations after Titan’s implosion in the depths of the North Atlantic Ocean. OceanGate’s previous CEO and co-founder, Stockton Rush, was among the five crew members who died.

The new CEO’s primary task is to lead OceanGate through the ongoing investigations and closure of the company’s operations, OceanGate said in a statement. The company already has shut down its Facebook page and X / Twitter accounts, and its website has been reduced to a single black-and-white page announcing the suspension of operations.

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Coast Guard begins investigation of Titan sub tragedy

Satellite image of ships involved in Titan sub search on June 22
Satellite imagery from June 22 shows some of the ships that were involved in the search for OceanGate’s Titan sub. (Maxar Photo)

The U.S. Coast Guard says it plans to recover debris from OceanGate’s Titan submersible, which was lost along with its crew during a dive to the Titanic shipwreck, as part of its investigation into the catastrophe.

“At this time, the priority of the investigation is to recover items from the seafloor,” Capt. Jason Neubauer, who is leading the marine board of investigation, said today during a Boston news briefing.

Debris from the submersible lies about 12,500 feet beneath the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean, about 400 miles from the Newfoundland coast and only about 1,600 feet from the Titanic’s bow. The sub, built by Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate, was on its way to the world’s best-known shipwreck when it lost contact with its support ship a week ago.

An international search-and-rescue operation made use of remotely operated vehicles to find debris from the Titan sub on June 22. ROVs also will be used to recover wreckage from Titan. “I’m not going to give the details of what the recovery has been to date, but the resources are on site and capable of recovering the debris,” Neubauer told reporters.

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