On Thursday, a former employee of the company that operated the ship testified that the Titan submersible had to dive just days before the explosion that killed five of its passengers while they were searching for the Titanic’s wreckage. The testimony by Steven Ross, OceanGate’s former scientific director, came as the U.S. Coast Guard began two weeks of hearings on Monday on the 2023 disaster that will hear evidence about what went wrong and whether physical or design failures contributed to the accident, which drew worldwide attention.
Mr Ross told the hearing an earlier dive had to be aborted because of a valve failure, leaving at least one passenger hanging upside down, and took “considerable time” to fix.
He said when the privately owned and operated submarine surfaced during the dive, it tilted so that its front was turned upward at a 45-degree angle.
Ross, who was inside the ship with four other passengers, reported that “there’s nothing to hold on to inside this submarine.”
The pilot that day — OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who died in the explosion a few days later — “hit the rear bulkhead,” Ross said.
He further said, “The other passengers rolled here and there. I was left standing on the wall at the back.”
“One passenger was hanging upside down, and the other two were somehow trapped in the front section.”
He said no one was injured in the incident, but “it was uncomfortable and unpleasant” inside the tight and confined space, and it took a long time to fix the problem – at least an hour, he said.
He said Rush was “upset” by the incident.
Rush and four passengers will board the submersible to inspect the wreck of the Titanic on June 18, 2023.
But contact was lost less than two hours after they departed. A massive rescue operation was launched in the hope that the passengers had simply lost power and were floating helplessly in the depths of the ocean.
Within a few days, however, it became clear that the submarine had been destroyed in a catastrophic explosion.
The victims are believed to have died instantly in the disaster, which was caused by the destructive pressure of the North Atlantic at a depth of more than two miles (about four kilometres).
Besides Rush, the four others on board the Titan were British explorer Hamish Harding, French submarine expert Paul-Henri Nargolet, Pakistani-British businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman.
Nargeollet’s family has taken OceanGate to court, claiming $50 million for negligence.
A wreck was found 1,600 feet (500 m) from the Titanic’s bow, located 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
The Titanic sank after hitting an iceberg during its maiden voyage from England to New York in 1912. There were 2,224 passengers and crew members on board. More than 1,500 people were killed.
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