The US Coast Guard this week began a series of hearings to investigate the 2023 loss of the Titan submersible and the five people on board.
The Marine Board of Investigation was convened in June of last year, the week after the incident.
This week’s hearing has already unveiled a lot of previously unreported information, including an expedition to the Titanic wreck site in June 14th-July 25th, 2022 that had seven successful dives to the site out of 13 attempts.
During that expedition, 48 equipment issues were documented, according to Coast Guard briefing slides presented at this week’s hearing, including:
“[B]atteries died on TITAN, extending the time inside TITAN to 27 hours; platform damaged during recovery; TITAN aft fairing torn off; Data Voyage Logger [inoperable] below 500m [1,640ft]; TITAN damaged during recovery; drop weights malfunction; thrusters mapped in reverse.”
Additionally, former OceanGate Engineering Director Tony Nissen told investigators during the hearing that in 2018, he refused to get into the submersible when CEO Stockton Rush allegedly asked him to serve as a pilot:
“It’s the operations crew, I don’t trust them. I didn’t trust Stockton either. You can take a look at where we started when I was hired. Nothing I got was the truth.”
You can check out the video of the first full day of the hearing below.
(Featured Image credit: US Coast Guard)
