This sounds truly, truly terrifying!
The US Coast Guard is currently holding what is expected to be a two-week hearing into the Titan implosion that killed five people last summer during a voyage to the Titanic shipwreck. On Tuesday, David Lochridge, who worked as operations director at OceanGate, the company that owned the submersible, opened up about why he left the company after a very harrowing trip taken just years prior that highlighted all the red flags of the business.
Related: OceanGate Sub Passengers Honored At Two Titanic Museums
First off, he didn’t hold back when claiming OceanGate and its co-founder and CEO Stockton Rush, who was one of those killed, were solely focused on profit. He said:
“The whole idea behind the company was to make money. That’s it.”
Oof. That’s never great when combined with such a dangerous activity!
David went on to recall a 2016 voyage in which Stockton insisted on piloting the trip in a submersible called the Cyclops 1 down to the Andrea Doria ocean liner wreck. David was the “most experienced” pilot on the team, so he had expected to be in charge. That wasn’t the case, though, as he explained:
“Unfortunately, the CEO decided that he wanted to take it down. I objected because I knew sometimes he could do things to please himself.”
Stockton’s response? He reportedly said:
“Just remember I’m the CEO. You’re just an employee.”
Damn.
Mind you, there were PAYING passengers going with them, and he still allegedly didn’t prioritize everyone’s safety. Jeez. After lots of urging, David was ultimately allowed to join the trip with three other paying passengers — and it’s a good thing he did. If not, we don’t even want to think about what could have happened…
According to David, the voyage was off to a rocky start due to weather concerns, which were affecting the currents in the Atlantic off the coast of Massachusetts near Nantucket. That caused the dive platform to jerk around. But Stockton carried on anyway, although he struggled to begin the dive. David shared:
“He attempted to take it off. He didn’t do it very well.”
As they descended, David reminded his boss that they planned to keep some distance away from the wreck because of the danger it poses to divers. However, Rush allegedly snapped, “Don’t tell me what to do.” Yikes…
For one, the shipwreck of the Andrea Doria is only about 250 feet deep compared to the Titanic, which is more than 2 miles down there. The Cyclops crew also had a “clear sonar image,” so everything should have been smoother. Unfortunately, at the hands of the CEO, it sounds like it was a nightmare! Stockton reportedly “smashed straight down on the bottom,” limiting the visibility. It was so bad that two passengers even remarked:
“Oh my god, we are right on the wreck.”
Yikes! David urged Stockton to take a beat, assess their surroundings, and wait for better visibility before carrying on, “which is standard practice for any competent submersible pilot.” He recalled:
“He just kept arguing with me in the sub, very unbecoming of a submersible pilot. I’m trying to give the best course of action to get him out of it, [but Rush responded with], ‘No matter what, I’m doing this.’”
Stockton then decided to turn the sub about 180 degrees while moving — sending them “full speed into the port side of the bow and we could hear the cracking … as he got us jammed in underneath.”
OMG!!!
Stressing how terrifying the situation was, Lochridge testified:
“I’m not going to say how foul my language was, but it wasn’t good.”
If he was freaking out, imagine what the passengers were thinking? Awful. The whole thing sent Stockton into a panic, making it more challenging for them to get out of the pickle, David continued:
“At that point, it was unprofessional behavior of him, he started to panic and the first thing was [asking], ‘Do we have enough life support on board?’ … I was like, ‘Stockton of course we have enough life support. We need to get out of here.’“
Rush then allegedly kept repeating, “We’re stuck, we’re stuck, we’re stuck.” But he also wasn’t helping them get unstuck:
“Every time I went to take the controller from him, he pushed it further and further behind him.”
David also noted that while he had gone to look out into the ocean from inside the sub throughout the dive to assess the situation, Stockton “never once got out of the seat in the back of the sub.” He furthered:
“Eventually it took one of the paying clients … she shouted at Stockton to ‘give me the f**king controller.’ She had tears in her eyes.”
The poor woman!
Finally, the CEO gave in and threw the controller at David. The poor man complained about the fact that OceanGate used PlayStation controllers and said that it “clattered it off the right side of my head,” hit the ground, and “one of the buttons came off.” WTF! To be so careless with the ONE THING THAT COULD GET THEM TO SAFETY is nuts!!
Thankfully, the experienced pilot was able to fix the controller and “had us out” within 15 minutes. Wow! Incredible! Blaming Rush for getting them all in that predicament, he told the US Coast Guard:
“It shouldn’t have gotten to the stage it got to. If he [Rush] had in any way behaved like any other submersible pilot I know and looked at your surroundings, talked on the radio, on the communications, let the top-side know … he didn’t do it.”
Thank goodness David was on that vessel! Everyone was so grateful for his work, too. Well, almost everyone. Here’s where things took a turn for the worse, at least for him…
Once the sub was back to about 160 feet, he told the top brass, “This is what we’re supposed to do.” Rush was apologetic, saying, “I owe you one, anything I can do for you.” However, that quickly changed. Back on the surface, the passengers rightfully celebrated David’s efforts to return them safely — which quickly bothered the founder! David shared:
“Because people were cheering and the passengers were obviously very grateful for what I did, which to me is just my job, at that point he stopped talking to me, and it went on from there.”
David was then “phased out of the project completely” because, as he believed, he had “embarrassed” his boss even if “I didn’t mean to.” And despite this nearly life-threatening incident, Stockton went on to call the Andrea Doria voyage a success. Seriously!! He told Ocean News & Technology at the time:
“Given the conditions, we got as much time on the wreck as we could. We have great respect for harsh ocean conditions, and for the history of this infamous wreck, so ensuring the safety of our crew is always our top priority.”
Meanwhile, according to the New York Times, David was fired from OceanGate in 2018 after a fallout with the company when he expressed concerns about the approaches to diving and the development of the Titan sub. He also filed a complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, per ABC News. He and the company were then tangled up in dueling lawsuits that have been settled, the Times reported. All this for trying to stick up for clients’ safety…
After witnessing this incident and more, he told the hearing committee:
“It was inevitable something was going to happen, and it was just when.”
Just so terrible. As mentioned, the CEO and four others died when the Titan imploded during a trip to the Titanic last summer. As part of the hearing earlier this week, the final messages between the Titan and an accompanying ship, the Polar Prince, were revealed. Those messages showed that they were struggling with apparent communication issues during the journey. That said, the passengers said they were “all good” about a half hour before losing total contact and eventually dying. Heartbreaking.
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[Image via MEGA/WENN & KING 5 Seattle/YouTube]
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