From The Times, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ocea ... -jp3xcqd35

A retired US navy submarine commander and veteran submersible pilot said that he considered OceanGate “a little rough around the edges” and that he has previously told people thinking of taking a Titanic trip with them: “Don’t.”

Captain Alfred McLaren’s doubts about the integrity of the sub’s structure and portrayal of a maverick operating culture added to a growing list of concerns emerging around the company, whose founder and chief executive, Stockton Rush, is among the five missing on the Titan submersible.

“I’ve advised people not to do it . . . I wouldn’t do it in a million years,” McLaren, who has dived twice on the Titanic wreck in Russian submersibles, said of OceanGate’s Titan submersible trips.

In 2018, more than three dozen members of the Marine Technology Society, an industry group that includes oceanographers, deep-sea explorers and submersible experts, told Rush of their “unanimous concern” about his Titan sub’s development.

The company also faced several court filings including one from its former director of marine operations, David Lochridge, who claimed in 2018 that he was fired after voicing worries that Titan’s carbon fibre and titanium hull had not been subjected to sufficient testing. A second former employee raised similar concerns to CNN yesterday.

In February, Marc and Sharon Nagle, a Florida couple who in 2016 each put down a $10,000 deposit to reserve spots on an OceanGate expedition to the Titanic set for 2018, filed a lawsuit accusing Rush of “fraudulent inducement” and demanding the return of over $400,000 they ended up paying OceanGate for a trip that never happened.

They accused Rush of “wilful, wanton and egregious conduct”, and “unfair and deceptive acts”, stating in the lawsuit that when they started having doubts about the sub and considered backing out, Rush came to their home and spun them a narrative about the vehicle’s readiness because he did not want to lose their investment. Based on his reassurances, they handed over the full amount in 2018 only for the company to cancel the expedition two months later stating that it had not had sufficient time to conduct tests and dives to certify it for action.

When the expedition was rescheduled to 2019, it was again called off after the operators of a contracted support vessel pulled out and refused to take part.

“Rush knew that if plaintiffs requested a refund of their deposit and withdrew from the expedition, others may follow suit,” the court papers state.

Records have also emerged of Titan having suffered battery issues last year, and it remained unclear as to the extent of repairs that were effected after the hull suffered damage as a result of high seas.

Rush claimed in 2018 that technological innovation has outpaced industry standards, meaning that the Titan sub could not be fully certified to the usual criteria.

McLaren, a veteran of 20 Cold War submarine missions and president emeritus of The Explorers Club, scoffed at the claim yesterday. “Lives are involved. These are the short cuts people can’t take. They haven’t spent their life in the underwater world like I have, or they’d know that you don’t take short cuts — ever — against Mother Nature,” he said.

Titan went missing one hour and 45 minutes into what should have been a two-and-a-half hour descent to view the wreck of the Titanic, which sank in 1912 and lies at a depth of 4,000m (12,500ft). The alert was not raised with the US coastguard until about seven hours later.

“Generally you should report within two hours . . . they didn’t get around to reporting until somewhat later in the day and that’s not good procedure,” said McLaren. “They also didn’t have any back-up system . . . always have a back-up. Have several,” he said.

“What would have been prudent for OceanGate is at least have a deep diving ROV (remotely operated vehicle) that could go down and be in the vicinity, taking pictures, keeping watch.”

Titan’s hull is “untested and uncertified technology . . . you have a titanium dome at either end and carbon fibre in between and they have a different molecular structure, different expansion and response to manoeuvring in depth or hot or cold. Once you get down there and make rapid cycles in the conditions, who knows where that’s going to go,” he said.

McLaren had a distinguished 36-year naval career. He was with USS Seadragon during the first submerged transit of the Northwest Passage in 1960 and commanded USS Queenfish for four years, leading the first survey under ice of the entire Siberian Continental Shelf.

He was part of the first crewed dive to the wreck of the German Second World War battleship Bismarck, 600 miles off the coast of France. After his military career, he piloted private submersibles, including from 2004 to 2015, serving as chief pilot of the Super Aviator, a deep-diving sub designed by the British engineer Graham Hawkes.

He joined five Titanic expeditions and actually dived on the wreck on two of them. “It is magnificent, unbelievable. I spent 13 hours looking at it close up and, like Bismarck, there it was looming out of the dark . . . magnificent, formidable,” he said.

He added: “I’m not saying anything out of arrogance. I’m speaking with experience . . . I don’t mean anything by the criticism but when you’re dealing with the air, space or underwater world you can’t take any short cuts. There’s nothing adventurous to trying to save dollars or time when what’s at stake is the safety of you and whoever else may be with you and the safety and the preservation of the sub . . . to me that’s common sense.”

McLaren is good friends with Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a legendary French undersea explorer and “handsome, colourful fellow” with whom he dived on the Bismarck, who is among those missing. He was nicknamed “Captain Boom Boom” because of his career as a French naval underwater demolition expert. They last met six weeks ago over dinner in New York.

“If he’s gone, he’s a great loss to the underwater world. He would have been the only truly experienced person on board that sub,” said McLaren.

I’m imagining that this is a pretty horrible way to go. At least for a while.

First. Recriminations, intermixed with the normal human sequence of stages of loss.
The fella who probably told everyone it’s ok, that everyone else was just worrying excessively, in a confined space with people who got sold a product that’s being tested to its actual limit. It’s not like a warranty on a car, or a plane ticket that’s been done millions of times. These guys, unwittingly or otherwise, are pioneers.
Denial may be pretty short, followed by anger.

Anger, at the fella who probably told everyone it’s ok. That everyone else is just worrying excessively.

Out of the group- five was it? At best, one may have the discipline to remain as calm as possible, while the others will be wasting the only valuable resource they have. Breathable air. And that person may well be on the receiving end of any frustrations. This is almost certainly not going to be a rational coffin space. Space tourism at least has the background of lessons learned, and copious material printed

That coffin space should probably have been a key point of the experiment. I wonder if it was? Actually, I wonder if anyone has truly appreciated that this is all an experiment. The orbital crews in the early space efforts will have faced much of this, but with a very much more suited background, selected on the basis of physical and mental suitability to accepting risk.
These occupants have largely been selected on the basis of their financial contribution to someone else’s ego.

Well, that showed ‘em.

My guessing, and it really is just that, is that their best hope is to reach depression and acceptance as soon as possible, to slowly slip into a hypoxic state, and slip off.

Human psychology is a curious thing. You can practice and practice at emergencies, and then when faced with the event, freeze, overreact, underreact, improperly act, or get on with it. It’s often little appreciated that safety now is the product of a shit load of hard learned lessons.

This is the previous biggest rescue operatiob for people trapped in a submersible, from 1977. It had a happy ending, just.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of ... er_Chapman

By all accounts and press releases, not such a slow end, after all. Debris reportedly found, and statements to the effect that the submersible suffered a catastrophic failure.