A public hearing is set to begin Monday to answer long-awaited questions about the implosion of the Titan submersible that killed all five of its passengers on a doomed deep-sea dive to view the wreckage of the Titanic.
Ten former employees of OceanGate — the Washington-based US submersible company that operated the expedition — will be among the 24 witnesses to give testimony at the two-week US Coast Guard hearing in Charleston, South Carolina.
The hearing aims to “uncover the facts surrounding the incident and develop recommendations to prevent similar tragedies in the future,” the Coast Guard said in a statement earlier this month.
A probe by the Marine Board of Investigation started shortly after the Titan imploded in the North Atlantic in June 2023 while en route to the Titanic wreckage, but has until now been conducted largely outside of the public eye.
All five passengers died in the disaster, with some in the undersea exploration community expressing scrutiny about the Titan’s unconventional design and decisions to bypass safety checks.
Among those killed was Stockton Rush, the co-founder of OceanGate. The company suspended its operations after the implosion.
Witnesses scheduled to testify on Monday include OceanGate’s former engineering director, Tony Nissen; the company’s former finance director, Bonnie Carl; and former contractor Tym Catterson.
Scheduled to appear later in the hearing are OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein; former operations director, David Lochridge; and former scientific director, Steven Ross, according to a list compiled by the Coast Guard. Numerous guard officials, scientists, and government and industry officials are also expected to testify
However, some key OceanGate employees will be notably absent from the hearing. Rush’s widow, Wendy Rush, who was the company’s communications director, is not set to testify.
OceanGate currently has no full-time employees, and will be represented by an attorney during the hearing, the company said in a statement.
The company has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board investigations since they began, the statement said.
The Titan submersible set off on the morning of June 18, 2023, but lost contact with its support vessel roughly two hours later.
The wreckage was later found on the ocean floor about 984 feet from the Titanic.
In addition to Rush, British adventurer Hamish Harding, French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and Pakistani father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood.
The family of French explorer Nargeolet slapped a $50 million wrongful death lawsuit on OceanGate in August, accusing the company of gross negligence given the “doomed” vessel’s “troubled history.”
The hearing is expected to take place over nine days between Monday and Friday, September 27. It will be streamed live on the Coast Guard’s YouTube page.
with Post wires.
