the company gave passengers seats to get around the rules

Submarine “Titan”

OceanGate

The company OceanGate, which organized tours to the sunken Titanic, whose submarine exploded during the dive, assigned working positions to the passengers.

So she tried to circumvent federal regulations for passenger ships, reported in The Washington Post.

OceanGate charged six-figure sums to dive to the wreck of the Titanic on its experimental vessel, the Titan.

According to the testimony of a former employee of the company, Amber Bay, the passengers received the title of “mission specialists”. But their work was not “specialized” – they held wrenches in their hands and counted the fish that came across their eyes.

“This is clearly an attempt to circumvent US passenger regulations,” – said Carl Stanley, head of the Stanley Submarines tourism business in Honduras, who dived to the Titanic.

According to Bay, the passengers did not receive salaries, company shares or health insurance. On the contrary, they paid for their stay in “Titan”.

OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Zonlein said that submarines were divided into three categories:

• recreational – transported only the owner and his guests, who did not pay for anything;
• passenger – transported customers who paid for diving;
• research – transported the owners together with the crew and researchers.

According to Zonlein, it was the passenger ships that had the most regulations that the company tried to avoid in order to remain profitable.

He stated that OceanGate came up with many options to get people on board without calling them passengers. One was to give customers a stake in the company. Another involved paying passengers a dollar to be considered crew.

The company also considered calling its submarine a research vessel. This definition was broad enough to include people who are training, studying or assisting researchers.

However, she settled on “mission specialists”.

Carl Stanley also reported problems with the ship’s hull. He descended to a depth of 3.6 kilometers during the first dive on the “Titan”. Stanley was part of the second crew after CEO Stockton Rush made the solo dive.

Before diving, Rush warned those on board about the loud noise. According to Stanley, he was then able to identify the source of the sound – a carbon fiber hull that was breaking under the pressure of the water.

In addition, OceanGate did not submit Titan for classification, a voluntary process that is standard in the underwater tourism industry. Classification companies work with submarine manufacturers at the design stage and inspect them during operation.

We will remind, the submarine “Titan” of the company OceanGate set off on a private mission to the wreck of the Titanic in June 2023. On June 18, contact with him disappeared.

On board the “Titan” were five crew members – billionaire businessman and researcher Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, French researcher Paul-Henri Narjolet, and OceanGate executive director Stockton Rush.

During a search operation at the bottom of the ocean discovered wreckage of a submarine. They testify that the “Titan” has undergone a “catastrophic implosion” – that is, an explosion directed inwards. Pressure was probably the cause of the collapse.

July 7, 2023 by OceanGate stopped its activity.

Currently, the causes of the disaster are investigating US Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board.

Yes, recently during the hearing, an ex-employee of the company statedthat 6 days before the dive, the bathyscaphe broke.