Mission specialist leads witnesses as Titan submersible inquiry continues
20 September 2024, 06:04
British adventurer Hamish Harding and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood were among the five people who died on the sub.
Another mission specialist who worked with the company that owned the Titan submersible which imploded last year is scheduled to testify before a US Coast Guard investigatory panel on Friday.
The investigatory panel has listened to three days of testimony that raised questions about the company’s operations before the doomed mission.
OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among five people who died when the submersible imploded en route to the site of the Titanic wreck in June 2023.
British adventurer Hamish Harding and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood also died alongside Frenchman Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Mr Dawood was a London-based businessman and adviser to the King’s charity Prince’s Trust International, with a focus on its work in Pakistan. His 19-year-old son was a student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.
Mission specialist Fred Hagen is scheduled to be the first to testify on Friday.
Other witnesses have characterised mission specialists as people who paid a fee to play a role in OceanGate’s underwater exploration.
Earlier this month, the Coast Guard opened a public hearing that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion.
The public hearing began on Monday 16 and some of the testimony has focused on problems the Washington state company had before the fatal 2023 dive.
During Thursday’s testimony, company scientific director Steven Ross told the investigators the sub experienced a malfunction just days before the Titanic dive.
Earlier in the week, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.
Other witnesses scheduled for Friday include engineer Dave Dyer of the University of Washington Applied Physics Lab and Patrick Lahey of Triton Submarines. The hearing is expected to resume next week and run until September 27.
Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.
But Renata Rojas, a mission specialist for the company, told the Coast Guard the firm was staffed by competent people who wanted to “make dreams come true.”
OceanGate suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.
OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. The Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.
