New York - Titan submersible pilot Stockton Rush was “extremely” serious about safety, his former business partner said on Friday after mounting criticism over the implosion which killed five.
However, Oscar-winning “Titanic” movie director and submersible maker James Cameron said on Thursday he wished he had sounded the alarm earlier about the Titan, saying he had found the hull design risky.
Rush, the US founder and chief executive of OceanGate Expeditions, which operated the submersible and charged $250 000 (about R4.6 million) per person to make the Titanic trip, died with British billionaire and explorer Hamish Harding, 58; Pakistani-born businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son, Suleman, both British citizens; and French oceanographer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77.
Liability waivers possibly signed by passengers may not shield the vessel’s owner from potential lawsuits by the victims’ families, legal experts said.
Families could also seek damages from any outside parties that designed, helped build or made components for the Titan if they were found to be negligent and a cause of the implosion.
The submersible was found in pieces on the ocean floor after what the US Coast Guard said was a “catastrophic implosion” of its pressure chamber.
A CBS reporter who made the trip with OceanGate Expeditions in July 2022 reported that the waiver he signed mentioned the possibility of death three times on the first page alone.
All five men, including Rush, aboard the vessel died.
Cameron became a deep-sea explorer in the 1990s while researching and making “Titanic”, and is part owner of Triton Submarines, which makes submersibles for research and tourism.
Cameron said he had been sceptical about OceanGate’s use of a composite carbon fibre and titanium hull.
“I thought it was a horrible idea. I wish I’d spoken up, but I assumed somebody was smarter than me, you know, because I never experimented with that technology, but it just sounded bad on its face,” Cameron said in a Zoom interview.
The cause of the implosion has not been determined.
Other experts in the manned underwater vehicle (MUV) industry and a whistle-blowing employee raised alarms in 2018, criticising OceanGate for opting against seeking certification and operating as an experimental vessel. OceanGate has not addressed queries about its decision to forego certification from industry third parties.
Cameron said he knew the submersible was lost from the start of the four-day ordeal, suspecting it imploded at the time the Titan’s mother ship lost communications with and tracking of the submersible one hour and 45 minutes into the trip.
“We got confirmation within an hour that there had been a loud bang at the same time that the sub comms were lost. Loss of transponder. Loss of comms. I knew what happened. The sub imploded,” Cameron said. He added that he told colleagues in an email on Monday: “We’ve lost some friends,” and, “It’s on the bottom in pieces right now.”
The five who died mark the first deep-sea fatalities for the industry, Cameron said.
“We celebrate innovation, right? But you shouldn’t be using an experimental vehicle for paying passengers that aren’t themselves deep ocean engineers," Cameron said.
Cameron said both the Titanic and the Titan tragedies were preceded by unheeded warnings. In the Titanic’s case, the captain sped across the Atlantic on a moonless night despite being told about icebergs.
“Here were are again,” Cameron said. “And at the same place. Now there’s one wreck lying next to the other wreck for the same damn reason.”
Guillermo Söhnlein, who started OceanGate with Rush in 2009 before leaving the company in 2013, denied his late friend was reckless.
“He was extremely committed to safety,” Söhnlein told Britain's Times Radio, while stressing he was not involved in Titan’s experimental design.
“He was also extremely diligent about managing risks, and was very keenly aware of the dangers of operating in a deep ocean environment,” he said.
Söhnlein stressed deep-sea exploration should continue despite the tragedy.
“Just like with space exploration, the best way to preserve the memories and the legacies of these five explorers is to conduct an investigation, find out what went wrong, take lessons learned and then move forward.”
The Independent on Saturday