On Monday, September 16, the US Coast Guard is convening a Marine Board of Investigation hearing into the loss of OceanGate’s Titan submersible in June 2023 and the deaths of the five people on board, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush. It intends to use the two-week livestreamed hearing in Charleston, South Carolina, to help it determine the cause of sub’s implosion, if incompetence or negligence was involved, and whether any laws were broken. It could then refer the matter to criminal prosecutors and make recommendations to improve marine safety.
It hopes to do all that without publicly hearing from most of OceanGate’s remaining executives or Rush’s wife Wendy, who sometimes took a leading role during Stockton’s dives. Nor will the investigation include public testimony from any of the companies that designed and built the Titan’s innovative carbon fiber hulls, or any of the senior operations staff who prepared, maintained, or supported the Titan on its 2023 expedition.
In fact, it seems few of the 24 witnesses subpoenaed were even on board the Titan’s support vessel, the Polar Prince, for the final mission: Renata Rojas, an unpaid volunteer, and Tym Catterson, a contractor with experience of piloting submersibles.
Anonymous sources close to the investigation but not authorized to talk with the media told WIRED that the Coast Guard had approached some contemporary OceanGate staff and executives, and third-party suppliers, but was told that if compelled to appear they would assert their Fifth Amendment rights. That means that they could refuse to testify on the grounds that their responses might incriminate them or expose them to legal risk.
WIRED approached OceanGate and the hull manufacturers for comment. A lawyer for Janicki Industries, which cured and machined a portion of the hull, wrote that it was not participating in the hearings. WIRED did not receive replies from the others before publication.
There was speculation that former US Coast Guard rear admiral John Lockwood, who joined OceanGate’s board in 2013, would testify, but he is also missing from the list.
The absence of people who would appear to have relevant knowledge has caused consternation among former OceanGate employees and marine experts, who are skeptical that the full story of the Titan’s demise can be told without them.
“Personally, if I was in the Coast Guard, I’d bring them in and make them take the Fifth,” says Alton J. Hall Jr., a maritime lawyer. “They do have subpoena power, so I’m not really sure why they’re not.”
Melissa Leake, a Coast Guard public information officer and its deputy public affairs officer for the Atlantic area, noted that the Coast Guard does not comment on reasons for not calling specific witnesses. However, she denied that the Coast Guard did not subpoena certain individuals or organizations because they would plead the Fifth.
What the board has is a wealth of digital and physical evidence, such as data from previous dives and wreckage of the Titan recovered from the Atlantic seafloor, including some of its carbon fiber hull. One of the expert witnesses being called is a materials engineer from the National Transportation Safety Board’s Materials Laboratory.
The board will open on Monday morning by hearing from Tony Nissen, OceanGate’s engineering director from 2016 to 2019. Nissen was responsible for taking the concept of a carbon fiber submersible and delivering finished blueprints for the Titan. His testimony should shed light on the building and testing of the vessel’s first carbon fiber hull. WIRED reported that a crack appeared in that hull in 2019, during testing in the Bahamas. The crack led the company to scrap the hull and replace it with a new carbon fiber hull of the same shape but created by different manufacturers using a different process. In the meantime, Nissen left OceanGate.
The next day is devoted entirely to former director of operations David Lochridge. Lochridge was fired by Rush in early 2018 after raising safety concerns about the hull and other aspects of the Titan’s design and manufacture. He made a whistleblower complaint to the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration but later withdrew it after being sued by OceanGate. As part of the settlement for that lawsuit, Lochridge paid OceanGate nearly $10,000 and was subject to a nondisclosure agreement.
Following witnesses will then spin the clock forward to when the Titan—now with its new hull—began diving to the Titanic in 2021. These include a paying passenger and OceanGate’s former science director, Steven Ross, a fisheries biologist.
The second week of the board will start with testimony from OceanGate cofounder Guillermo Söhnlein, and then from Phil Brooks, who was the company’s engineering director from late 2021 to early 2023. Brooks’ testimony could clear up uncertainty about how and where the Titan was rebuilt with its new hull, and address questions about new lifting points that were added to the vessel for getting it in and out of the water, as well as how the Titan was stored during the winter off-seasons. All have been suggested as potential risks to the integrity of the submersible by former members of OceanGate’s engineering team.
The sole contemporary OceanGate executive to give testimony will then be Amber Bay, who led administration at the startup from 2019 until after the accident. She will be followed by a variety of submersible industry and carbon fiber experts, including Mark Negley of Boeing, who once sent Rush a safety analysis of the Titan’s hull, illustrated with a skull and crossbones at around the depth of the Titanic to indicate what he believed was a “high risk of significant failure” at that depth. The final few witnesses will be from the US Coast Guard, including some involved in the search-and-rescue mission.
Whatever the Coast Guard’s technical analysis of the wreckage reveals, the absence of public testimony from the hull’s manufacturers, OceanGate’s leadership, and some staff who worked on the Titan’s final voyage will doubtless leave many questions unanswered. But there is a possibility that more hearings will follow.
Leake of the Coast Guard told WIRED: “It is important to note that it is common practice for Marine Boards of Investigation to hold multiple hearing sessions or conduct additional witness depositions for complex cases.”
At some point, the Coast Guard will compile a detailed report that may include information from witnesses who were not part of the public hearings. Such reports can take a year or more to produce. Meanwhile, the family of Paul-Henri Nargeolet, one of the people who died in the Titan, has filed a $50 million wrongful death and negligence lawsuit against OceanGate, Nissen, and suppliers of Titan’s second carbon fiber hull.
A spokesperson from PR agency TrailRunner International, which claims to represent OceanGate, said in an emailed statement: “OceanGate, which ceased all operations shortly after the tragedy and has no full-time employees, is a party in interest in the Coast Guard proceeding. The company has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began, including at the upcoming public hearing convened by the Coast Guard.” The spokesperson declined to answer any specific questions from WIRED on the involvement of former OceanGate employees in the hearings.
WIRED will be reporting regularly from the hearings over the next two weeks.
