NORTH CHARLESTON – An OceanGate whistleblower tore into the company for prioritizing profits over safety, threatening to deport him for speaking out and allowing the company’s now-dead leader to pilot and crash a different submersible with paying clients aboard, according to the second day of testimony into the Titan submersible disaster.
David Lochridge, former director of OceanGate’s marine operations, took center stage Sept. 17 during the Coast Guard’s investigative hearing of the 2023 implosion near the wreck of the Titanic.
Lochridge was fired in January 2018 after continuously raising concerns about the Titan as it went from concept to finished prototype that would largely remain the same when it imploded two miles below the ocean’s surface.
Stockton Rush, the company’s co-founder, hired Lochridge in 2016 to oversee the project and the company’s marine operations. Rush was among the five people who died on the Titan.
The version of the Titan that imploded in 2023 had been used to dive to the Titanic for two years.
Lochridge and others told Coast Guard investigators the company reused pieces from the submersible that later developed a cracked hull. He noted that Rush on one occasion assembled components of the submersible’s systems from his garage.
Lochridge, who had lived in Scotland, said he had “no confidence whatsoever” in the craft he was supposed to pilot.
One photo presented at the hearings indicated the company jury-rigged carbon-dioxide scrubbers using a computer processor fan and a plastic toolbox from Home Depot. The carbon-dioxide scrubbers are used to turn CO2 into oxygen. Lochridge said he didn’t know if the company ever installed a different air-filtering unit.
His relationship with Rush was strained after he voiced repeated concerns about the company’s engineering director and the plans for the submersible. He said months passed and he felt the company used him to help sell OceanGate’s Titan project and boost its scientific credibility.
“I was, I felt, a show pony,” he said. “I was made by the company to stand up there and do talks. It was difficult.”
Their relationship soured completely after he said he embarrassed Rush in front of paying clients when the company took Titan’s predecessor, Cyclops 1, to the wreck of the Andrea Doria in 2016. The 1950s Italian oceanliner wreck is located 50 miles south of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts.
Rush insisted on piloting the vessel to the ship by himself for four-paying clients. Lochridge lodged several objections about the safety of the craft and water conditions. In the end, Lochridge joined the dive because of safety concerns.
“He was a control freak,” Lochridge said. “It was his way or no way at all.”
The dive was dangerous from the start, he said. Rush ignored Lochridge’s warnings to keep his distance from the disintegrating wreck visited by more than a dozen divers who died. The wreck is located 250 feet below the ocean surface.
Rush did not slow the Titan’s predecessor’s speed in the descent and it “smashed straight down” into the wreck, Lochridge said. The submersible became wedged underneath the wreckage.
Tensions and panic mounted, the latter mostly from Rush, Lochridge said. Rush asked how long the life support would last and when a rescue team would come, he said. He repeatedly said “we’re stuck” as Lochridge, an experienced submersible pilot, asked him to surrender control of the submersible to him.
Lochridge said he grew increasingly nervous because of the dust and debris surrounding them and the Andrea Doria’s reputation for danger.
“Every time I went to take the controller from him, he pushed it farther and farther behind him,” Lochridge said.
One paying passenger shouted with tears in her eye at Rush to give Lochridge the video game controller.
Rush did so by throwing it at Lochridge’s head. The controller hit the submersible deck and broke, but Lochridge repaired it.
He freed the ship and piloted it back to the surface. Lochridge was treated to cheers from the clients and the crew of the submersible’s support vessel, he said.
Lochridge’s testimony added more depth to the portrait of a dysfunctional company that former employees described during the hearings’ opening day Sept. 16. The company’s initial engineering director, Tony Nissen, told the panel he refused to pilot the submersible because of the company’s mission operating crews.
Rush also fired Nissen.
Both Lochridge and Nissen said Rush and other executives put the Titan into service before it was ready. Lochridge said the company wanted to turn a profit as quickly as possible.
“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge said. “There was very little in the way of science.”
In January 2018, Lochridge issued a report outlining how unsafe the vessel was. Rush decided Lochridge was “anti-project” and fired him.
Lochridge took his safety concerns to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which granted him whistleblower protection status for 10 months. The protection was in name only, he told investigators.
Lochridge said his efforts to bring the company’s “abomination of a submersible” to public light became a Sisyphean task with what he described as unresponsive caseworkers from OSHA and OceanGate’s legal team. Lochridge said an OSHA case worker pushed him to settle the complaint with OceanGate. He said he buckled to the company’s legal pressure and signed a non-disclosure agreement as part of a settlement in November 2018.
OSHA dropped the complaint and Rush made his first solo trip to the Titanic in December 2018. The Titan imploded on June 18, 2023.
The hearings will resume Sept. 19.
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