The lead engineer for an experimental submersible that imploded on its way to the wreck of the Titanic has told an inquiry he felt pressured to get the vessel ready to dive and refused to pilot it on a journey several years earlier.
“I’m not getting in it,” Tony Nissen said he told Stockton Rush, co-founder of the OceanGate company that owned the Titan submersible.
British adventurer Hamish Harding and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood died alongside Mr Rush and Frenchman Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Mr Dawood was a London-based businessman and adviser to the King’s charity Prince’s Trust International, with a focus on its work in Pakistan. His 19-year-old son was a student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.
Mr Nissen, OceanGate’s former engineering director, was the first witness to give evidence at what is expected to be a two-week US Coast Guard hearing.
The Titan imploded on June 18 2023, setting off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.
Mr Nissen said Mr Rush could be difficult to work for and was often very concerned with costs and project schedules, among other issues.
He said Mr Rush would fight for what he wanted, which often changed day to day. He added that he tried to keep the clashes between the two of them behind closed doors so that others in the company would not be aware.
“Most people would eventually just back down to Stockton,” he said at the hearing in North Charleston, South Carolina.
Mr Nissen worked on a prototype hull that predated Titan’s expedition to the Titanic wreckage site. He also noted that the prototype was struck by lightning during a test mission in 2018, and that might have compromised its hull.
The prototype’s carbon fibre hull that was hit by the lightning strike was never used on Titanic expeditions, and it was later replaced with a new carbon fibre hull.
OceanGate has not answered questions from The Associated Press about whether components on the testing version of the sub were ultimately used in the final version that imploded, only that the hull was replaced after the lightning strike.
When asked if there was pressure to get the Titan into the water, he responded, “100%”.
He said that he refused to pilot the Titan years ago because he did not trust the operations staff, and that he stopped the submersible from going to the Titanic in 2019, telling Mr Rush that the Titan was “not working like we thought it would”.
He was fired that year. The Titan did undergo additional testing before it made later dives to the Titanic, Mr Nissen added.
Asked if he felt the pressure from Mr Rush compromised safety decisions and testing, Mr Nissen paused, then replied, “No. And that’s a difficult question to answer, because given infinite time and infinite budget, you could do infinite testing.”
The submersible was left exposed to the elements while in storage for seven months in 2022 and 2023, and the hull was also never reviewed by any third parties, as is standard practice, Coast Guard representatives said in their initial remarks on Monday.
The absence of an independent review and the submersible’s unconventional design subjected the Titan to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.
One of the last messages from the Titan’s crew to the support ship Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated “all good here,” according to a visual re-creation the Coast Guard presented earlier in the hearing.
The crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about the submersible’s depth and weight as it descended. The Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.
OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended operations after the implosion.
The company’s former finance and human resources director, Bonnie Carl, gave evidence on Monday that she was aware of safety concerns about the Titan, and that the company’s operations director, David Lochridge, had characterised it as “unsafe.”
Ms Lochridge is scheduled to testify on Tuesday. Tym Catterson, a contractor who worked with the company, told the marine board on Monday that “training and operations at sea could have been better”.
