A key employee who stamped A destructive test is drowning Insecure testified Tuesday before its last, risky trip that he frequently clashed with the company’s co-founder and felt the company was only committed to making money.
David Lockridge, former operations director of OceanGate, is one of the most anticipated witnesses to appear before a commission to determine what caused the Titanic to explode on its way to the wreckage of the Titanic last year, killing all five aboard. His testimony echoed that of other former employees Monday, one of whom described OceanGate President Stockton Rush as volatile and difficult to work with.
“The whole idea behind the company is to make money,” Lockridge said. “There was very little in the way of science.”
Rush was one of five people killed in the blast. Oceangate owned the Titan and brought it on several dives to Titanic in 2021.
Lockridge’s testimony began a day after other witnesses painted a picture of a troubled company that was impatient to get the unusually designed craft into the water. The accident sparked a global debate about the future Private undersea exploration.
Lockridge joined the company in the mid-2010s as a senior engineer and submarine pilot, and said he quickly realized he was being tapped to give the company scientific credibility. He said he felt the company was selling him as part of a scheme to “get people to come and pay” and he didn’t like that.
“I felt like a show pony,” she said. “I was made by the company to stand up there and give a speech. It was difficult. I had to go ahead and do presentations. That’s all.”
Lockridge referred to a 2018 report in which he raised security concerns about OceanGate operations. “There’s no way I’m going to sign this,” he said, with all the safety issues he’s seen.
Asked if he had any confidence in the way Titan would be built, he said, “No confidence.”
Lockridge said staff turnover was high at the time, and management dismissed his concerns because they were too focused on “poor engineering decisions” and to get Titanic on board and start making money as quickly as possible. He was eventually fired after raising safety concerns, he said.
“I didn’t want to lose my job. I wanted to do Titanic. But to dive it safely. That was also on my bucket list,” he said.
OceanGate in Washington state shut down operations after the explosion.
OceanGate’s former director of engineering, Tony Nissen, began testifying Monday, saying he pressured investigators to prepare the ship for a dive and refused to operate it on a trip several years before Titan’s last voyage. Nissen created a prototype for the Titanic voyages.
“‘I’m not into it,'” he told Rush.
When asked if there was pressure to bring Titan into the water, Nissen replied, “100%.”
But when asked if he thought the pressure compromised safety decisions and testing, Nissen paused and said, “No. And that’s a difficult question to answer, because given infinite time and an infinite budget, you can do infinite tests.
OceanGate’s former director of finance and human resources, Bonnie Carl, testified Monday that Lockridge characterized Titan as “unsafe.”
Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the investigation that the submarine was not independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and the Titan’s unusual design put it under scrutiny in the undersea 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. The support ship, the Polar Prince, sent repeated messages to see if the Titan could still see the ship in its interior view.
One of the last messages the Titan’s crew sent to the Polar Prince before the submarine exploded was, according to a scene re-enactment presented earlier in the trial, that “everything is fine here.”
When the submarine was reported delayed, rescuers rushed ships, aircraft and other equipment to the area 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. The wreckage of the Titanic was found on the sea floor about 330 yards (300 meters) from the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said.
Oceangate co-founder Guillermo Sonlein and former science director Steven Rose are scheduled to appear later in the hearing, according to a list compiled by the Coast Guard. A number of police officers, scientists and government and industry officials are also set to testify. Coast Guard spokeswoman Melissa Leake said the U.S. Coast Guard subpoenaed witnesses who were not government employees.
Among those not on the trial witness list was Rush’s widow, Wendy Rush, the company’s director of communications. Asked about his absence, Leake said the Coast Guard does not comment on reasons for not subpoenaing specific individuals for a specific investigation during ongoing investigations. He said the Marine Board of Investigation would “hold multiple hearings or put on additional witnesses for complex cases.”
OceanGate has no full-time employees at this time, but will be represented by an attorney during the hearing, the company said in a statement. The agency said the Coast Guard and NTSB have been fully cooperating with the investigations since they began.
The time frame for the trial was initially one year, but the trial took longer. The ongoing Marine Board of Investigation is the highest level of marine casualty investigation conducted by the Coast Guard. Once the investigation is complete, recommendations will be submitted to the Coast Guard Commandant. The National Transportation Safety Board is also investigating.
