Titan sub co-founder says cause of disaster that killed 5 may never be known

(This story was updated to add new information.)

OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Söhnlein told a Coast Guard hearing Monday that the cause of Titan submersible disaster may never be known.

He also told the panel it “was not supposed to happen.”

Söhnlein spoke on the fifth day of public hearings aimed at finding out what caused the ill-fated submersible to implode, killing its five occupants.

“I don't know what happened,” he said. “I don't know who made what decision when and based on what information. And honestly, I don't know if any of us will ever know this, despite all of your team's investigative efforts.”

The hearings, held in North Charleston, South Carolina, are being broadcast live on the U.S. Coast Guard channel .

The Titanic-visiting vehicle imploded 2 miles below sea level on June 18, 2023. Its wreckage was found on the ocean floor about 330 yards off the bow of the Titanic. All five people on board were killed: OceanGate Expeditions founder Stockton Rush, who was piloting the 22-foot submersible, a British billionaire, a French explorer, a Pakistani-born businessman and his son.

Söhnlein co-founded OceanGate in 2009 together with Rush. He testified the goal of the company he co-founded with Rush was to make the deep ocean accessible to humanity.

A ticket to become a “mission specialist,” the title OceanGate gave its passengers, cost $250,000.

The company hoped to eventually run a fleet of four to five submersibles that could go as far as three and a half miles undersea and carry up to five passengers, he said. The company was founded in Everett, Washington. Söhnlein left in 2013 , according to the Seattle Times, but was still a minority shareholder and kept in close contact with his former business partner.

At the end of his testimony, Söhnlein said the deep ocean was a magical place that he hoped many people would still be able to experience firsthand.

He said he hoped others would be inspired by the mission he and Rush began in 2009 “but it looks like OceanGate is not going to be a part of that effort.”

Those missions and the company's focus were described in less exalted language in testimony given during the first week of the hearing . The four days of hearings so far have featured multiple former employees of the company saying CEO Rush cared more about speed and costs than safety and that he routinely ignored concerns brought to him by engineers.

On Thursday, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge testified that very little about the company’s efforts was related to science or a deeper understanding of the ocean.

“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” he told the hearing panel.

Lochridge said he was pushed out of the company after voicing too many concerns about the safety of the vessel.

OceanGate asked employees to forgo pay

On Monday, former OceanGate engineering director Phil Brooks said that he quit in February 2023, in part because the company was asking staff to conduct important safety work in rough seas and had asked them to forgo pay with the promise that they would eventually be reimbursed.

For the 2023 season, OceanGate decided to use only the support vessel Polar Prince, meaning the almost constant work of maintenance and troubleshooting would take place either on the platform while it was being towed or while it was anchored out in the ocean.

That meant working in ocean swells of 3 to 15 feet on a platform that bobbed up and down.

“It was just not a workable solution. I just did not think I could work on the sub, it was just too dangerous,” Brooks said.

The company was also undergoing significant cash flow problems that Brooks felt compromised employees' safety.

“There were economic issues with the company asking us to forego getting paid for periods of time with the promise that they would get us caught up in paychecks after the first of the year,” he said. “They asked for volunteers but I don’t think anybody did it.”

It was clear the company was economically very stressed, he testified. “As a result, they were making decisions and doing things that I felt resulted in the safety being compromised.”

He suggested that the Titan not go out.

“I was told that it was not possible,” he said. “They had people that had paid and they had to go through with it.”

What happened to the Titan?

The Titan's trip , expected to take eight hours, began at 8 a.m. on June 18, 2023, about 435 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. An hour and 45 minutes later, the submersible's support ship lost contact with the Titan. At 3 p.m., the Titan failed to surface, and the frantic search and rescue operation that ensued transfixed the world for four days.

On board were Rush as pilot; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 73, a French deep-sea explorer; Hamish Harding, 58, a British pilot and adventurer; Shahzada Dawood, 48, a Pakistani-British businessman and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood.

It was not until 11:48 a.m. on June 22 that the U.S. Coast Guard announced the discovery of a debris field . The vessel likely suffered a "catastrophic implosion" and OceanGate announced all occupants of the Titan had been lost.

Questions asked about 'loud bang' in 2022

On Monday, many of the Coast Guard panel’s questions focused on the aftermath of what’s been described as a “loud bang” on Titan’s 80th dive as it was brought to the surface in 2022.

What caused the sound is not known but during Friday’s hearing Steven Ross, former OceanGate scientific director, said a theory was discussed that it might have been due to shifting of the interior pressure hull in its metal cradle.

On Monday, Brooks said that after the bang, the team inspected the hull as best they could but it was difficult.

“You can take a flashlight and there’s a small gap between the insert and the hull,” he testified. “But it’s not a great test. I think you can only do that from the front, I think you can’t do it from the back, that’s blocked.”

Brooks said members of the team talked with Rush at the time about their concerns.

“What we really wanted to do was bring the sub back to Everett and pull out the inserts and see if there were any cracks,” he said. “It was very frustrating that it was left in St. John's [in Canada] and we had no way to look at it. We were told it was a cost issue, the cost of shipping it back was prohibitive, we couldn’t do it.”

Ross left the company in February of 2023. “I’d gotten quite frustrated with these issues,” he said

The implosion occurred five months later, on June 18, 2023. It was the Titan submersible’s 88 ^th dive.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Titan sub co-founder says cause of disaster that killed 5 may never be known