OceanGate Founder Crashed a Submersible Years Before Titan Disaster
Posted on 09/17/2024
The chief executive who was piloting the Titan submersible when it imploded underwater last year, killing him and his four passengers, once crashed another submersible into a shipwreck and then angrily threw the controls when a tearful passenger begged him to let another pilot take over, according to new testimony on Tuesday.
David Lochridge, who was in charge of marine operations at the underwater exploration company OceanGate until being fired in 2018, described the harrowing earlier trip to a U.S. Coast Guard panel that is investigating last year?s deadly implosion. He said that Stockton Rush, the chief executive and founder of OceanGate, had insisted on piloting that earlier vessel down to the Andrea Doria shipwreck in 2016, off the Massachusetts coast, over his strenuous objections.
Mr. Lochridge said he watched warily as Mr. Rush haphazardly deployed the submersible, a precursor to the Titan known as the Cyclops 1, and ignored Mr. Lochridge?s warnings to keep his distance from the deteriorating shipwreck about 250 feet under the Atlantic Ocean.
Mr. Rush ?smashed straight down? when he landed the vessel, Mr. Lochridge said, and then turned it around and ?basically drove it full speed? into the wreckage, jamming the submersible underneath. Then, in full view of the three additional passengers on board, Mr. Rush flew into a panic, Mr. Lochridge said, asking whether there was enough life support on board and asking how quickly a dive team could arrive.
Mr. Lochridge, an experienced submersible pilot from Scotland, said he tried to calm his boss down and asked him to hand over the PlayStation controller that was used to pilot the vessel. But Mr. Rush refused.
?Every time I went to take the controller from him, he pushed it farther and farther behind him,? Mr. Lochridge said, and described his nervousness at seeing debris from the shipwreck that was floating in the water nearby.
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David Lochridge, who was in charge of marine operations at the underwater exploration company OceanGate until being fired in 2018, described the harrowing earlier trip to a U.S. Coast Guard panel that is investigating last year?s deadly implosion. He said that Stockton Rush, the chief executive and founder of OceanGate, had insisted on piloting that earlier vessel down to the Andrea Doria shipwreck in 2016, off the Massachusetts coast, over his strenuous objections.
Mr. Lochridge said he watched warily as Mr. Rush haphazardly deployed the submersible, a precursor to the Titan known as the Cyclops 1, and ignored Mr. Lochridge?s warnings to keep his distance from the deteriorating shipwreck about 250 feet under the Atlantic Ocean.
Mr. Rush ?smashed straight down? when he landed the vessel, Mr. Lochridge said, and then turned it around and ?basically drove it full speed? into the wreckage, jamming the submersible underneath. Then, in full view of the three additional passengers on board, Mr. Rush flew into a panic, Mr. Lochridge said, asking whether there was enough life support on board and asking how quickly a dive team could arrive.
Mr. Lochridge, an experienced submersible pilot from Scotland, said he tried to calm his boss down and asked him to hand over the PlayStation controller that was used to pilot the vessel. But Mr. Rush refused.
?Every time I went to take the controller from him, he pushed it farther and farther behind him,? Mr. Lochridge said, and described his nervousness at seeing debris from the shipwreck that was floating in the water nearby.
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