Titan sub hearings live: Testimony resumes after friend said OceanGate CEO ‘knew it would end like this’

Today’s hearing has started.

Jason Neubauer, the board chairman, is currently opening proceedings.

The first witness, Dr Don Kramer, is sworn in.

The hearing is due to conclude on Friday after two weeks of evidence. Much of it has so far focused on the troubled nature of the company.

Former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge told the hearing how he frequently clashed with CEO Stockton Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.

“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”

Lochridge and other previous witnesses painted a picture of a company that was impatient to get its unconventionally designed craft into the water.

On Monday the investigative panel heard testimony from Guillermo Sohnlein, Roy Thomas and Phil Brooks.

Sohnlein co-founded OceanGate with Rush in 2009 but left the company in 2013. Despite the panel’s efforts, Sohnlein said the world may never know what led to tragedy.

Thomas, an engineer for the American Bureau of Shipping, one of the main classifying agencies for submersibles, spoke about complications with using carbon fiber materials. After repeated dives, the materials are susceptible to becoming “deformed” and subsequently “fail,” he said, adding OceanGate never tried to seek classification with the agency.

Rush designed the vessel with a carbon fiber hull. The agency would not have classified the sub using that material.

Brooks, a senior hardware engineer, spoke about his role in analyzing data for OceanGate and the company’s lack of funds.

The “company was economically stressed” and asked him to go without paychecks, he said.

Today’s evidence will focus on testimony from engineers.

Don Kramer, an engineer with the National Transportation Safety Board, is up first.

Other witnesses scheduled to testify later today are William Kohnen of Hydrospace Group Inc. and Bart Kemper of Kemper Engineering.

Stanley told the hearing on Tuesday he would not have gone on the 2019 dive on Titan 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.”

Yesterday Karl Stanley testified that there were “a lot of red flags” when he accompanied Stockton Rush on a dive in the Titan sub in 2019.

Stanley was a childhood friend of Rush’s.

“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 told the hearing.

“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.”

Welcome back to our live coverage of the hearings.

Proceedings are due to resume at 8.30am ET, with the first witness scheduled to testify at 9am ET.

The US Coast Guard will hear from Don Kramer, an engineer with the National Transportation Safety Board.

The Titan submersible hearing will begin again on Wednesday, September 25.

Wednesday’s hearing will feature testimony from Don Kramer, National Transportation Safety Board engineer; William Kohnen of Hydrospace Group Inc.; and chairman of the Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee; and Bart Kemper, prinicpal engineer of Kemper Engineering.

This blog will resume on Wednesday morning.

OceanGate used a hand-typed Excel spreadsheet to track its ill-fated Titan submersible, according to a former contractor for the firm.

A hearing into OceanGate’s Titan sub, which imploded during an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic last year, revealed that its navigation system allegedly relied on team members manually inputting the coordinate data into a spreadsheet in order to track the vessel.

The incident last July killed all five people on board, including OceanGate’s CEO and co-founder Stockton Rush.

Read more:

Karl Stanley, a long-time friend to former OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, described his fears and why he was interested in submersibles.

Stanley testified hearing cracking noises on the submersible when he was on board in 2019 and that he could pinpoint where they were coming from.

“It was unnerving and then when it kept happening,” Stanley testified, referring to the noises. “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 Rush was likely scared during that dive.

“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.

He also claimed Stockton kept diving because he wanted to go down in history.

“The entire reason this whole operation started was Stockton had a desire to leave his mark on history,” Stanley testified.

“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,” he continued.