Titan sub hearings live: Friend of OceanGate boss who said CEO ‘knew it would end like this’ to testify today
The US Coast Guard will hear testimony today from Stockton Rush’s friend, Karl Stanley
Your support helps us to tell the story
My recent work focusing on Latino voters in Arizona has shown me how crucial independent journalism is in giving voice to underrepresented communities.
Your support is what allows us to tell these stories, bringing attention to the issues that are often overlooked. Without your contributions, these voices might not be heard.
Every dollar you give helps us continue to shine a light on these critical issues in the run up to the election and beyond
Eric Garcia
Washington Bureau Chief
A friend of the late OceanGate boss who said the CEO "definitely knew it was going to end like this" is due to testify at the hearing into the Titan submersible disaster today.
Karl Stanley, the owner of a diving expedition company in Honduras and a close friend of Stockton Rush, went on the doomed submersible with his friend in 2019 and warned afterward how he heard a large cracking sound while on the dive.
The submersible imploded last June, killing all five people on board, including Rush.
Stanley was interviewed by 60 Minutes Australia last year where he said he’d warned Rush about taking customers on Titan.
“He definitely knew it was going to end like this," Stanley told the broadcaster. "He literally and figuratively went out with the biggest bang in human history that you can go out with."
In an email exchange with Rush, Stanley reportedly warned: “I think that hull has a defect near that flange, that will only get worse. The only question in my mind is will it fail catastrophically or not.”
Yesterday Guillermo Sohnlein, the co-founder of OceanGate, told the hearing into the disaster the cause of the accident may never be known.
Amber Bay gives emotional statement as first half of hearing adjourns
Amber Bay, OceanGate’s former director of administration, gave an emotional and tearful statement at the end of her testimony on Tuesday morning.
“I had the privilege of knowing the explorers whose lives were lost: Stockton, P.H., Shahzada, Suleman and Hamish,” Bay said through tears. “There’s not a day that passes that I don’t think of them, their families and their loss. It’s been a difficult year for them, for all of us.”
“I would also like to thank the board for the work they’ve done and continue to do,” she added.
The hearing has adjourned and will resume at 1 p.m. EDT with testimony from Stockton Rush’s close friend, Karl Stanley.
Director of administration says former employee who raised safety concerns was let go because she was ‘erratic'
Amber Bay, former director of administration for OceanGate, said a former employee 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.
OceanGate struggling financially, director of administration says
Amber Bay, former OceanGate director of administration, said CEO Stockton Rush would sometimes increase his own investment to help the company when it was struggling.
“He increased his investment by making a deposit, and we were able to meet payroll,” she said.
At one point, employees were also asked to defer their paychecks while the company struggled to meet payroll.
“We could delay our paychecks and be paid a small amount of interest and recaptured it at a specific time,” she said.
ICYMI: Final messages revealed from the Titan sub before tragic implosion
“All good here.”
Those were some of the final words that the doomed Titan submersible crew communicated before the submersible imploded on its mission to the Titanic wreckage site in June 2023.
Read more on the chilling last messages from the Titan sub ahead of this afternoon’s testimony from Karl Stanley, a close friend of Stockton Rush:
Titan sub’s haunting final messages before tragic implosion revealed
The anticipated two-week-long hearings kicked off with testimony from a former OceanGate engineer, who said he was fired after warning about the ship’s carbon fiber hull years before its catastrophic voyage
Witness is asked to define a ‘mission specialist’
Bay is asked to define “a mission specialist” by the panel and says she would not describe them as “passengers”.
She described a mission specialist as “somebody who was curious about deep sea exploration, who wanted to join, who understood this wasn’t a luxury trip.”
She added: “As Stockton put it, there was no chocolate on the pillow.”
The witness was also quizzed about OceanGate’s finances and how payments from investors were made.
Titan submarine relied on ‘idiotic’ Excel spreadsheet
OceanGate used a hand-typed Excel spreadsheet to track its ill-fated Titan submersible, according to a former contractor for the firm.
The hearing on Friday heard that Titan’s navigation system allegedly relied on team members manually inputting the coordinate data into a spreadsheet in order to track the vessel.
“There were delays because there was this manual process of first writing down the lat-long coordinates and then typing them in,” Antonella Wilby, a former OceanGate contractor, told the hearing held by the US Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation.
“We tried to do that every five minutes, but it was a lot to do.”
She described the system as “absolutely idiotic”, adding that she had raised concerns about the method with OceanGate but was dismissed for not being “solution-oriented”.
Catch up with Anthony Cuthbertson’s report here.
OceanGate’s submarine relied on ‘idiotic’ Excel spreadsheet
Former employees tell hearing into sub’s implosion last year that they raised safety concerns
Proceedings begin and first witness is sworn in
The first witness, Amber Bay, has been sworn in.
Bay is OceanGate’s former director of administration. She joined OceanGate in 2018.
Key witness previously warned CEO of problems with Titan
Karl Stanley, a friend of late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, warned him against taking customers aboard the company’s Titan submersible four years before it tragically imploded in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean.
Stanley is due to give evidence to the hearing this afternoon.
He is the owner of a diving expedition company in Honduras and previously went aboard the Titan off the coast of the Bahamas in 2019, The New York Times first reported.
In emails obtained by Insider of an alleged exchange between the two deep-sea enthusiasts, Stanley told Rush that he had heard a large cracking sound while on the 12,000-foot-deep dive.
“I think that hull has a defect near that flange, that will only get worse. The only question in my mind is will it fail catastrophically or not,” Stanley wrote in a premonitory email, years before the Titan’s catastrophic implosion that killed all five of its passengers.
Catch up on our report from the time.
Friend of late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush warned Titan needed more testing in 2019
‘I think that hull has a defect near that flange, that will only get worse. The only question in my mind is will it fail catastrophically or not,’ Karl Stanley wrote in a 2019 email
A recap of what happened on Monday
The investigative panel heard testimony from Guillermo Sohnlein, Roy Thomas and Phil Brooks.
Sohnlein co-founded OceanGate with Stockton 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 become “deformed” and “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 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.
Friend of OceanGate boss who said CEO ‘knew it would end like this’ to testify today
Karl Stanley, the owner of a diving expedition company in Honduras and a close friend of Stockton Rush, is due to testify later today.
Stanley went on the doomed submersible with his friend in 2019 and is scheduled to speak at 1.30pm. He has previously said he believes Rush “definitely knew it would end like this.”
It’s possible Stanley could speak about his experience on the submersible during a dive and warnings he gave Rush about Titan. He said he doesn’t believe his friend did enough research into his carbon fiber design.
Amber Bay, OceanGate’s former director of administration, will begin testifying at 9am.
Bay might discuss her experiences with Rush. Prior witnesses have described Rush as someone who was difficult to deal with at times.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments