Alexandra Ferguson
(CNN) — David Lochridge, the former head of marine exploration at OceanGate who raised concerns about the safety of the ill-fated Titan submersible, said Tuesday that the company’s culture focused more on “making money” and “very little on science.”
Lochridge shared the testimony on the second day of a U.S. Coast Guard hearing investigating the June 2023 implosion of the ship, which killed all five people on board. Lochridge said his responsibility was to ensure the safety of all crew, customers and trainee pilots, but that he felt more “like an imposter” because no one else was qualified as a pilot.
“It was all a smokescreen,” he said of the way the company operated. “Everything you see on social media about all these past expeditions. They always had problems with their expeditions.”
The Titan submersible sent its last message just six seconds before it lost contact with the surface as it dived toward the Titanic, according to testimony on the first day of a two-week hearing by the Marine Board of Inquiry tasked with investigating the tragedy. The mother ship Polar Prince then lost track of the ship.
A lawsuit by the family of one of the victims claims the message, sent about 90 minutes after the ship went under, was an indication that the crew may have known something was wrong and were trying to abort the mission.
First image of Titan submarine wreckage revealed at hearing into tragedy
CNN has reached out to OceanGate representatives for comment on Tuesday’s testimony.
Lochridge described a 2018 report in which he expressed concerns about the safety of OceanGate’s operations and said there was “no way I was going to sign this.” He said he had “no confidence” in the submersible’s construction.
But Lochridge said management dismissed his concerns, choosing instead to focus on completing Titanic’s mission as quickly as possible.
“Every time I expressed my displeasure with what was going on, my disapproval — that’s probably the best word — … I was dismissed,” he said Tuesday. “Everybody knew about the engineering team, I mean I talked to every single one of them, all these guys fresh out of college, some hadn’t even been to college yet … None of them had any experience as submersible operators. There was no experience in the entire organization.”
His testimony before the Marine Board of Inquiry came a day after testimony from former employees of OceanGate, the Everett, Washington-based company that developed and operated the 23,000-pound submersible, charging about $250,000 per ride. The company has faced increasing scrutiny of its operations amid reports of safety problems.
Former employees painted a picture of a company that cut corners in its rush to embark on missions with a poorly designed submersible.
“They wanted to be able to qualify a pilot in a day, someone who had never sat in a submarine. They wanted people to basically come in, qualify as a pilot and be able to take passengers on the submarine,” said Lochridge, who said he was eventually fired in 2018 after raising the alarm about safety concerns.
He added: “Whenever you go on a submarine, the most important thing is to come home safe and sound to your families, not to keep making money and pushing the limits… Don’t take unnecessary risks with faulty equipment, and I mean faulty, deficient.”
The Marine Board of Inquiry, the Coast Guard’s highest level of inquiry, was convened within days of the submarine’s disappearance and tasked with reviewing the cause of the tragedy and offering recommendations, including on possible civil penalties and criminal prosecution.
The submersible lost contact with its mother ship during its dive with the Titanic on June 18, 2023. When it failed to surface, an international search and rescue mission was deployed to the remote waters several hundred miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada.
One year after the Titan tragedy, a submarine plans to return to the Titanic
Authorities eventually concluded that the ship had suffered a “catastrophic implosion” – a sudden inward sinking caused by immense pressure. Debris from the submarine was found on the seabed several hundred metres from the Titanic, and authorities recovered “presumed human remains” believed to be those of the victims.
Killed were Stockton Rush, founder and CEO of the ship’s operator; businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood; businessman Hamish Harding; and French submariner Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
When the investigation is complete, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board will each conduct independent analyses and produce full reports, said Jason Neubauer, chairman of the Marine Investigation Board.
He cautioned that additional hearings could be held in the future, but declined to provide an estimated timeline for the investigation’s conclusion.
— CNN’s Dakin Andone and Cindy Von Quednow contributed to this report.
