Titan sub hearings live: OceanGate did not request Coast Guard inspection of Titan vessel, inspector testifies
The final hearing on OceanGate, CEO Stockton Rush and the doomed Titan submersible will begin Friday
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OceanGate never requested the Coast Guard inspect the Titan submersible, according to John Winters, master marine inspector with the Coast Guard Sector Puget Sound.
Winters testified on Thursday before the Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation as part of their inquiry into the doomed Titan submersible, which imploded last summer, killing all five people on board.
Winters also claimed Former OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush complained to him about Coast Guard regulations.
“He did express on multiple occasions that regulations were stifling his innovation process,” Winters testified. The inspector also said OceanGate “never attempted to circumvent any regulations,” despite Rush’s complaints.
Mark Negley, an engineer with Boeing, also testified on Thursday morning.
Negley said Boeing only worked with OceanGate during short periods. The company did a “brief” feasibility study from 2012 to 2013, he said, before doing two acoustic studies in 2016. Their last communication was in March 2020, Negley testified, when Boeing declined to respond to OceanGate’s request for a proposal.
Negley once sent Rush his safety analysis of Titan’s hull, WIRED reports, warning that there would be a “high risk of significant failure” if the contraption went to the depth of the Titanic wreckage.
ICYMI: Former OceanGate director of administration says she was asked to let contractor go over ‘erratic’ behavior
Amber Bay, former director of administration for OceanGate, said a former contractor who raised safety concerns was released from her contract because Stockton Rush said she acted erratically.
“I was asked by Stockton to release her from her contract, as she had acted erratically, unprofessionally, and had disturbed our crew during a challenging situation in the communications pit,” Bay testified on Tuesday morning.
She was referring to Antonella Wilby, who testified last week that she reported a customer’s safety concerns following a dive in 2022, PEOPLE reports.
“I felt the customer’s concerns were not taken particularly seriously at that meeting,” Wilby said. “So, following the debrief, I went to Amber Bay, the director of administration, to raise my concerns about what I had just heard. I told her, ‘I am really concerned about what this customer just said and that there was a bang as loud as an explosion.’ I asked, ‘What’s being done?’”
Wilby claimed Bay responded with: “Yes, many people are concerned about you. You don’t seem to have an explorer mindset.”
“I was kind of taken aback by that because she didn’t acknowledge what I had just said and what was going to be done,” Wilby added.
Tuesday’s hearing ends
Today’s Titan submersible hearing has come to a close after testimony from Stockton Rush’s close friend, Karl Stanley, and OceanGate’s former director of administration Amber Bay.
Titan sub implosion was expected, Stockton Rush’s friend says: ‘There was nothing unexpected about this’
Karl Stanley, the owner of a diving expedition company in Honduras and a close friend of Stockton Rush, said the tragic 2023 Titan sub implosion was expected.
“The definition of an accident is something that happened unexpectedly and by sheer chance,” Stanley testified. “There was nothing unexpected about this. This was expected by everybody that had access to a little bit of information.”
“And I think that if it wasn’t an accident, it then has to be some degree of crime,” he continued. “And if it’s a crime, I think to truly understand it, you need to understand the criminal’s motive. The entire reason this whole operation started was Stockton had a desire to leave his mark on history. “
“I think that’s why he kept diving, and he knew that eventually it was going to end like this and he wasn’t going to be held accountable, but he was going to be the most famous of all his famous relatives.”
Stockton Rush 'transparent’ with how deep sub was going, long-time friend says
Karl Stanley said he was not aware that Stockton Rush had taken his sub more than 3,000 meters below the surface before their April 2019 dive.
Rush took Stanley and the others below 3,000 meters on their dive as well.
“Mr. Stanley, were you made aware that you were one of the first crew other than Mr. Rush to be in the submersible to a depth of over 3,000 meters?” a panelist asked.
“I’m actually surprised...to see all the dives before this,” Stanley responded. “He really wasn’t transparent kind of information.”
Karl Stanley emailed Stockton Rush about concerns
Karl Stanley’s previously reported e-mails describing his concerns about Stockton Rush’s sub were read at today’s hearing.
“I think that hull has a defect near that flange, that will only get worse,” Stanley told Rush via e-mail. “The only question in my mind is will it fail catastrophically or not.”
Stanley also complained to Rush, saying he felt he was indirectly told not to discuss his concerns.
“The fact that you indirectly told me not to speak about the noises I heard on the dive, to me, says a lot,” Stanley wrote in the email. “As you know, my subs have had many issues and incidents over the years, at no point did I find it necessary to tell anyone not to speak of what I saw or heard.”
Karl Stanley says he would not have gone on 2019 dive in retrospect
Karl Stanley, who went on a 2019 test dive with Stockton Rush, said he would not have gone on the dive in retrospect.
The comments came after a member of the panel asked Stanley if he was aware there was a lightning strike in the vicinity of the sub in the Bahamas just before the 2019 dive.
“The first time I heard of a lightning strike was reading about it..There’s a lot of things that, if I had known, I wouldn’t have gone,” Stanley said. “People have told me that I was stupid, naive. But really, what it came down to was, at that point, I had no reason to believe that Stockton was a liar, and I had no evidence of any lies on his part.”
Stanley earlier testified that the sub made noise when it dived in 2019. The sound happened so clearly and frequently, he said, that he could “localize where it was coming from.”
“It was unnerving and then when it kept happening, I remember I was the one that was able to isolate the area where it was coming from and told them, ‘this, this is the area,’ and was listening right there,” Stanley said.
“It’s also a clue to me about Stockton’s psychology...he was scared. Because if he wasn’t scared, he would have already isolated where the noises were coming from him on his first dive,” he continued. “When I isolated the area, that was new information to him, but he was down there by himself, scared, and he kept going.”
Karl Stanley went on dive with Stockton Rush in 2019: ‘There were a lot of red flags'
Karl Stanley testified that he helped build a vehicle with Stockton Rush for free.
Rush then invited him on a dive in April 2019 in the Bahamas. Rush, Rush’s childhood friend, Stanley, and a sonar technician were on board.
“He told us to be prepared for noises. He had recently done the solo dive on his own, and basically just said, ‘this is going to make noise’ and ‘brace yourselves,’” he added.
Stanley said there were “a lot of red flags” during the dive.
“Another clue in retrospect, is he didn’t tow out,” Stanley said, adding that not towing out deeper showed Rush did not have “a lot of faith” in the sub.
Stanley also noted Rush did not drive the sub.
“He didn’t do any of the driving...I believe I was the first one to drive, but he basically insisted it was his idea,” he said. “Nobody asked to drive...I think that was his kind of sick way of if we had imploded, we were a little bit in control of our own destiny.”
Stockton Rush and Karl Stanley knew each other for at least a decade
Karl Stanley, the owner of a diving expedition company in Honduras and a close friend of Stockton Rush, said he met the former OceanGate CEO at least 10 years ago.
“My relationship with Stockton goes back at least 10, possibly up to 15 years,” Stanley testified on Tuesday afternoon.
Stanley said he saw Stockton regularly at underwater intervention meetings.
“When I learned that he was making a carbon fiber sub, I was excited about it,” he added.
Stockton Rush was ‘playing the game,’ friend says
Karl Stanley, a close friend of Stockton Rush, said the former OceanGate CEO was “playing the game” by bringing scientists on his Titan sub.
“It’s only recently that, now that these submersibles are mostly being operated by billionaires on their yachts, that the billionaires are courting scientists,” Stanley testified. “Because when you have a billionaire saying, ‘Hey, come on my yacht, my chef’s going to cook you food, you have a private cabin and a hot tub,’ because they want the tax breaks.”
“You could have a 500-foot yacht, and if you have a scientist on board that published the paper, now, all of a sudden everything was a tax write-off,” he continued.
“So to some extent, Stockton was really just looking around and seeing what other people were doing and playing the game. But I mean, obviously, the way he said ‘mission specialists,’ you know, I don’t agree with the terminology, mission specialist. But by giving scientists dive time, this is something that’s being done across the industry now, which is a relatively new phenomenon, but it’s not something that I do. I charge scientists. “
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