The Titanic sub search has reached its bleakest milestone yet. Now, OceanGate faces its hardest questions

While the focus firmly remains on finding survivors aboard the Titan submersible, troubling stories of whistleblower warnings, “experimental” building techniques and faulty communication systems on the OceanGate Expeditions vessel continue to emerge. Bevan Hurley writes

Titan is believed to have had 96 hours of oxygen on board when it went missing on Sunday (OceanGate Expeditions/UK) (PA Media)

A 96-hour deadline for when oxygen reserves in the missing submersible Titan were expected to run out passed on Thursday morning, with no sign of the vessel or the five crew.

While the focus firmly remains on finding survivors aboard the missing submersible, troubling stories of whistleblower warnings, “experimental” building techniques and faulty communication systems on the OceanGate Expeditions vessel continue to emerge.

Employee lawsuits, a letter from leaders in the maritime industry, and comments from the company’s CEO Stockton Rush, who is among the missing crewmen, all pointed to potential safety issues with the Titan.

Follow the latest updates on the missing Titanic submarine here

On Thursday morning, the French vessel Atalante deployed their remote operated vehicle (ROV), one of the only devices capable of reaching a depth of 4,000m where the Titanic wreckage is located, the US Coast Guard said.

It joined a massive air, sea and underwater search and rescue operation in the North Atlantic Ocean that is now in its fourth day.

Shortly after the latest ROV’s deployment, officials announced a “debris field” had been discovered in the search area. It is currently being evaluated by the US Navy.

The US Coast Guard is still treating the hunt for the missing Titan submersible as an “active search and rescue”.

However, the expiration of the predicted 96-hour oxygen window has been widely regarded as a grim sign that the passengers are no longer alive. They include British billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, renowned French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, his son Suleman, a student at Glasgow’s Strathclyde University, and Mr Rush.

Now, OceanGate will likely come under heightened pressure to explain several remaining unanswered questions related not only to the Titan’s plight, but also the company’s past.

The Titan

How did it lose contact?

The Titan had to ways to communicate with its support ship. Text messages are sent every 15 minutes back and forth.

Text messages can be sent back and forth, and safety pings are emitted every 15 minutes to indicate the sub’s location and that it is still functioning.

Both systems stopped working about an hour and 45 minutes after the Titan submerged on Sunday morning.

David Pogue, who travelled to the famous wreck site aboard the Titan in 2022, told CBC earlier this week there were only two things that could mean.

“Either they lost all power or the ship developed a hull breach and it imploded instantly. Both of those are devastatingly hopeless,” Mr Pogue said on Tuesday.

Were there escape options?

The Titan has seven ways to resurface in the event of an emergency.

These include thrusters, an inflatable air bladder, and “drop weights” of sandbags and lead pipes that would fall off in the event of an emergency and bring the vessel up to the surface using buoyancy.

The sub can also release its legs.

If the crew passes out, the hooks holding the bags will dissolve in sea water. Also, there are used construction pipes sitting on shelves as ballasts.

“If there was a power failure and/or communication failure, this might have happened, and the submersible would then be bobbing about on the surface waiting to be found,” Alistair Greig, a professor of marine engineering at University College London, told the Associated Press earlier this week.

Another factor counting against the crew is that the Titan can only be opened from the outside.

Why was there a delay in raising the alarm?

After the Titan lost contact with support vessel the Polar Prince on Sunday morning, it reportedly took OceanGate another eight hours to notify the Coast Guard that the vessel was missing.

Hamish Harding’s cousin Kathleen Cosnett has said the delay was “very frightening”.

In an interview with theTelegraph, Ms Cosnett criticised the company for squandering those first few crucial hours.

“[It] took so long for them to get going to rescue [them], it’s far too long. I would have thought three hours would be the bare minimum.”

In a statement released earlier this week, OceanGate said the company’s “entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families”.

Years of safety concerns

Whistleblower complaints

In 2018, OceanGate fired David Lochridge, its director of marine operations, claiming he had breached his contract and shared confidential information about its designs with two individuals and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Mr Lochridge alleged in a wrongful termination suit obtained by The New Republic that he was fired for raising safety concerns.

Mr Lochridge allegedly passed on flaws about the ship’s carbon fibre hull, “prevalent flaws” in a scale model, flammable materials on board, a viewing window not rated for the Titanic’s depth to OceanGate’s senior management.

“Now is the time to properly address items that may pose a safety risk to personnel,” he allegedly said.

He claimed in the lawsuit that he requested further testing and outside evaluators like the American Bureau of Shipping to certify the submersible, and that he was fired when he wouldn’t authorise manned testing of the sub without scans of the craft’s hull.

The lawsuit was settled in 2018. The Independent has contacted OceanGate for comment.

‘Catastrophic’ issues

The same year, the Marine Technology Society wrote to OceanGate warning of “catastrophic” issues with the submarine’s development.

Three dozen industry leaders signed on to the letter expressing “unanimous concern” with the company’s decision not to seek outside testing.

“While this may demand additional time and expense,” the letter, which was obtained by The New York Times, stated.

“It is our unanimous view that this validation process by a third party is a critical component in the safeguards that protect all submersible occupants.”

In 2019, OceanGate said in a blog post that the “vast majority of marine (and aviation) accidents are a result of operator error, not mechanical failure”.

OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush (OceanGate)

Mr Rush told told Smithsonian Magazine in a 2019 interviewthatsubmarine regulations were stifling innovation.

“There hasn’t been an injury in the commercial sub industry in over 35 years. It’s obscenely safe, because they have all these regulations,” he said. “But it also hasn’t innovated or grown – because they have all these regulations.”

In 2020, the CEO told GeekWire the hull of the submarine was showing signs of “cyclic fatigue”, one of the same technical issues Mr Lochridge allegedly warned about, as the company continued to test the craft, including with a 4,000m deep dive in the Bahamas.

As a result, the company temporarily downgraded the Titanic submarine’s hull depth rating to 3,000m, 1,000 less than the Titanic’s depth, according to TechCrunch.

The Titan went on to make its first dive to the Titanic wreck in 2021, and made more than a dozen trips over the 2021-22 summer seasons.

Alarming accounts of past excursions

CBS News journalist describes ‘off the shelf components’ on 2022 dive

David Pogue, who journeyed aboard the sub to the Titanic for a story in 2022, wrote that it “seemed improvised, with off-the-shelf parts”.

Mr Pogue wrote that the sub got lost during the dive, but was able to maintain communications with its support vessel. During an hours-long dive, they were unable to find the Titanic shipwreck.

CBS News journalist David Pogue raised concerns about the Titan after a dive in 2022 (CBS/WBZ News)

“I can give you a long list that really seems janky and improvised,” Mr Pogue said in an interview this week with CBS.

“Yes, you pilot the sub with an Xbox game controller. Why? Because it’s perfect for the task. Up, down, left, right,” he said.

Mr Rush insisted at the time the Titan was safe and that it was built “with Boeing and NASA and the University of Washington”.

NASA has since said it only consulted on materials and manufacturing, but did not conduct testing on the submersible.

‘He’s done a great job with it’

Underwater filmmaker David Waud visited the Titanic wreckage in 2021 with OceanGate, traveling with Mr Rush on the missing submersible Titan.

He told The Independent that the felt safe on the Titan, and had enormous respect for Mr Stockton, his fellow Princeton alum.

“He’s done such a great job with it,” he said. “And obviously, he wouldn't have been down there piloting it almost every single trip, every single dive, if he hadn't had 100 per cent confidence that submersible was okay.”

Mr Waud, however, said he’s been “surprised” by “everything I've been reading about it not being certified.”

It was only with the benefit of hindsight that he realised just how dangerous the journey was.

Mike Reiss

The Simpsons writer and producer dived to the Titanic in 2022, and this week recounted the extensive waiver passengers were forced to sign before going on the expedition.

“Death is always lurking, it’s always in the back of your mind,” the 63-year-old Mr Reiss told the New York Post.

“Before you even get on the boat, there’s a long, long waiver that mentions death three times on page one,” Mr Reiss told the Post.

The Simpsons writer Mike Reiss travelled on the Titan last year (Reuters/BBC)

The only training Mr Reiss received before the trip was how to get into a survival suit.

“It’s like if you took a minivan and took all the seats out, that’s the amount of space you have,” Mr Reiss said of the submersible.

In a separate interview with the BBC, Mr Reiss said he had been on three separate dives with OceanGate and the vessel had “almost always lost communication”.

“This is not to say this is a shoddy ship or anything, it’s just that this is all new technology and they’re learning it as they go along,” he said.

He added that he wasn’t optimistic about finding survivors.

“I know the logistics of it and I know how vast the ocean is and how very tiny this craft is,” he told BBC Breakfast on Monday (19 June).

“If it’s down at the bottom I don’t know how anyone is going to be able to access it, much less bring it back up,” he added.