Was the Titanic submersible safe for diving expeditions?
Was the Titanic submersible safe for diving expeditions?
The international search and rescue mission for the missing Titanic tourist submersible has entered a frantic phase, as it emerged that the oxygen supply on the vessel may be entering its final hours (while publishing this report, it said that there was only four hours of breathing air left).
The OceanGate submersible – called Titan – that carried five individuals including the OceanGate CEO, during an exploration of the Titanic wreckage off the coast of Newfoundland, had begun its descent at 8 am (local time) on Sunday and was due to resurface seven hours later. It has a capacity to hold up to 96 hours of emergency air.
Search for the missing vessel expanded on Wednesday when teams involved in the search operations heard ‘underwater noises’. While some believe that the sounds could be owing to the people on board the missing vessel, the United States Coast Guard, which is involved in the search said that it was still ‘unclear’ if these ‘banging noises’ are a ‘true signal of life.’
While some hold out on the hope of a miracle, there are others such as Chris Parry, a former rear admiral in the British Royal Navy, who has given up hope. Speaking to NBC News, Parry had said on Wednesday, “I’ve got no optimism about that at all. Put your head in the water, you’re going to hear a lot of mechanical noises, particularly in the vicinity of a disintegrating wreck like the Titanic.”
But even as search operations continue and family and friends and the world prays to find the submersible, there are reports emerging that the company, OceanGate, had ignored safety warnings about the vessel and in fact, was fired for raising such concerns.
Also read: Can the missing Titanic tourist sub be rescued? Is there hope for passengers?
We take a deep dive (no pun intended) into the allegations made and how the company reacted to them.
Is the Titan submersible unsafe?
The answer varies, depending on whom you ask. A former employee, industry experts, and former passengers had flagged safety concerns regarding the submersible.
It has emerged that David Lochridge, the company’s former director of marine operations had flagged several concerns about the safety and testing of the Titan, which has now vanished during a trip to view the wreckage of the Titanic.
According to a 2018 claim he had filed in court about being wrongfully fired, Lochridge – a Scottish submarine pilot who began working for OceanGate in Washington State in 2015 – had alleged major safety issues: there had been almost no unmanned testing of the craft; the alarm system would only sound off “milliseconds” before an implosion; and the porthole was only certified to withstand pressure of 1,300 metres, even though OceanGate planned to take the submersible 4,000 metres underwater.
One of his major concerns was that instead of using the standard metallic composition for the hull, OceanGate opted for carbon fibre for the vessel’s hull. He said it was unheard of a submersible going to the depths that Titan wanted with a carbon fibre hull.
He also raised alarms about the fact that no non-destructive testing had been performed on the Titan’s hull to check for “delaminations, porosity and voids of sufficient adhesion of the glue being used due to the thickness of the hull,” according to his 2018 suit. When Lochridge raised the issue, it says, he was told no equipment existed to perform such a test.
Furthermore, according to a report published by Fortune when Lochridge flagged the concern, OceanGate allegedly said it would install an acoustic monitoring system in the submersible to detect the start of any potential hull breakdown. However, the Scottish expert said that this would not be enough, as it would simply flag components that were about to fail.
Lochridge says that when he presented his report to the executives and CEO of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, who is incidentally one of the five on board the missing vessel, they didn’t accept his findings and immediately fired him. “OceanGate gave Lochridge approximately 10 minutes to immediately clear out his desk and exit the premises,” his lawyers alleged, as per the Fortune report.
But it wasn’t only Lochridge who flagged concerns about Titan. Another former employee, told CNN on the grounds of anonymity, that he had similar worries about the hull’s thickness. The hull had only been built to five inches thick, he said, telling CNN company engineers told him they had expected it to be seven inches thick.
He adds that other engineers and employees at OceanGate also raised these matters with the company during his time, but Stockton remained defensive and refused to provide any answers.
The Marine Technology Society, an industry group made up of ocean engineers, technologists, policymakers and educators, had in 2018 also written a letter, expressing “concern regarding the development of Titan and the planned Titanic expeditions” and warned against the “current experimental approach adopted by OceanGate”.
In its letter, it was critical that the company published marketing material that stated the Titan design would “meet or exceed the DNV-GL safety standards” while apparently not intending to have the vessel assessed by that same organisation. The DNV, for the uninitiated, is an independent organisation that certifies vessels such as submersibles and issues regulations for such products.
If these claims weren’t worrying enough, a CBS News reporter last year observed that the submersible allegedly had “off the shelf components” including lights from Camping World, and that the submarine suffered a communications issue with the ship overseeing its voyage and was lost for nearly three hours underwater.
How did OceanGate react?
When it comes the matter of Lochridge, the company claims that he was fired for sharing confidential information, misappropriated trade secrets and used the company immigration assistance. The company even noted that Lochridge was not an engineer, but a submersible pilot and a diver.
The two parties settled their case in November 2018. Around the same time, the company also published a blog post that laid out its reasons for not having Titan certified by the American Bureau of Shipping or a similar organisation. “The vast majority of marine (and aviation) accidents are a result of operator error, not mechanical failure,” it reads. “As a result, simply focusing on classing the vessel does not address the operational risks. Maintaining high-level operational safety requires constant, committed effort and a focused corporate culture – two things that OceanGate takes very seriously and that are not assessed during classification.”
When asked about the dangers of carrying out such expeditions, Rush in a 2019 Smithsonian magazine interview had said, “There hasn’t been an injury in the commercial sub industry in over 35 years. It’s obscenely safe, because they have all these regulations. But it also hasn’t innovated or grown — because they have all these regulations.”
When asked about the letter written by Marine Technology Society, the company, however, refused to comment.
What next?
OceanGate has said that it has “mobilised all options” in the search and rescue operations. The vanishing vessel, as the Associated Press report puts it, underscores the dangers associated with operating in deep water and the recreational exploration of the sea and space.
Retired Navy Vice Admiral Robert Murrett, who is now deputy director of the Institute for Security Policy and Law at Syracuse University, told AP: “I think some people believe that because modern technology is so good, that you can do things like this and not have accidents, but that’s just not the case.”
With inputs from agencies
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