A passenger on an expedition to the Titanic with the company that owned the Titan submersible has told a US Coast Guard investigatory panel that the mission was aborted due to apparent mechanical failure.
The submersible imploded in June last year while on another trip to the Titanic wreckage site.
British adventurer Hamish Harding and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood died alongside OceanGate Expeditions’ chief executive Stockton Rush and Frenchman Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Fred Hagen was the first to give evidence on Friday and was identified as a “mission specialist” which he and other witnesses have characterised as people who paid a fee to play a role in OceanGate’s underwater exploration.
He said his 2021 mission to the Titanic was aborted underwater when the Titan began malfunctioning and it was clear they were not going to reach the wreck site.
“We realised that all it could do was spin around in circles, making right turns,” Mr Hagen said. “At this juncture, we obviously weren’t going to be able to navigate to the Titanic.”
He said the Titan resurfaced and the mission was scrapped. He said he was aware of the potentially unsafe nature of getting in the experimental submersible.
“Anyone that wanted to go was either delusional if they didn’t think that it was dangerous, or they were embracing the risk,” he said.
Earlier this month, the Coast Guard opened a public hearing that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. The public hearing began on September 16 and some of the testimony has focused on problems the Washington state company had prior to the fatal 2023 dive.
During Thursday’s testimony, company scientific director Steven Ross told the investigators the sub experienced a malfunction just days before the Titanic dive.
Earlier in the week, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Mr Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.
Other witnesses scheduled for Friday include engineer Dave Dyer of the University of Washington Applied Physics Lab and Patrick Lahey of Triton Submarines. The hearing is expected to resume next week and run until September 27.
Lochridge and other witnesses have painted a picture of a company led by people who were impatient to get the unconventionally designed craft into the water.
Mr Lochridge said he filed a complaint with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration about the company. The OSHA “promptly referred his safety allegations regarding the Titan submersible to the Coast Guard”, a spokesperson for the agency said on Thursday.
During the submersible’s final dive on June 18 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about the Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.
One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here”, according to a visual recreation presented earlier in the hearing.
When the submersible was reported missing, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles south of St John’s, Newfoundland.
Four days later, wreckage of the Titan was found on the ocean floor about 330 yards off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said.
OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard investigation since it began.
