A key employee who called the Titan unsafe will testify before the Coast Guard

A key employee who has the label an experimental submarine that his final, fatal voyage was unsafe, was scheduled to testify before U.S. Coast Guard investigators on Tuesday.

David Lochridge is one of the most anticipated witnesses to appear before a commission investigating what caused the Titan to implode on its way to the wreck of the Titanic last year, killing all five aboard.

Lochridge is the former chief operating officer of OceanGate, the company that owned the Titan and has taken the ship on several dives to the Titanic since 2021.

His testimony will come a day after other witnesses painted a picture of a struggling company impatient to get its unconventionally designed vessel into the water. The accident has sparked a global debate over the future of private submarine exploration.

Among the dead was Stockton Rush, co-founder of OceanGate. The Washington state-based company ceased operations after the implosion.

Former OceanGate technical director Tony Nissen opened his testimony Monday, telling investigators he felt pressured to prepare the ship for the dive and refused to pilot the ship during a voyage several years before Titan’s final voyage.

“I’m not going to go along with it,” Nissen told Rush.

When asked if there was pressure to get Titan into the water, Nissen replied, “100%.”

But when asked if he thought the pressure was compromising safety decisions and testing, Nissen paused, then replied, “No. And that’s a difficult question to answer, because with infinite time and infinite budget, you can do infinite testing.”

Former OceanGate finance and human resources director Bonnie Carl testified Monday that Lochridge had described the Titan as “unsafe.” Lochridge is expected to provide more perspective on what caused the implosion.

Coast Guard officials noted early in the hearing that the submarine had not been independently reviewed, as is customary. That and Titan’s unusual design drew scrutiny from the underwater exploration community.

During the submarine’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after exchanging texts about Titan’s depth and weight during the descent. The support ship Polar Prince then repeatedly sent messages asking if Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submarine imploded was “all good here,” according to a visual reconstruction presented earlier in the hearing.

When the submarine was reported too late, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Wreckage from the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) from the Titanic’s bow, Coast Guard officials said.

According to a list compiled by the Coast Guard, OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein and former chief scientific officer Steven Ross are scheduled to appear later in the hearing. Numerous Coast Guard officers, scientists, and government and industry officials are also expected to testify. The U.S. Coast Guard has subpoenaed witnesses who were not government employees, said Melissa Leake, a Coast Guard spokeswoman.

Among those not on the witness list is Rush’s widow, Wendy Rush, the company’s communications director. Asked about her absence, Leake said the Coast Guard does not comment on the reasons for not calling specific individuals to a particular hearing during ongoing investigations. She said it is common for a Marine Board of Investigation “to hold multiple hearings or take additional depositions for complex cases.”

OceanGate currently has no full-time employees, but will be represented by counsel at the hearing, the company said in a statement. The company said it has cooperated fully with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began.

The time frame for the investigation was initially set to be one year, but the investigation has taken longer. The ongoing Marine Board of Investigation is the highest level of marine casualty investigation conducted by the Coast Guard. Once the hearing is complete, recommendations are submitted to the Commandant of the Coast Guard. The National Transportation Safety Board also conducts an investigation.