Titan submarine’s lead engineer tells inquiry he ‘felt pressure’ to get vessel ready for doomed Titanic dive

17 September 2024, 10:13

The lead engineer for the Titan sub that imploded en route to the wreck of the Titanic has spoken of the pressure he was under to get the vessel ready to dive and how he refused to pilot it for a journey several years earlier.

“‘I’m not getting in it,’” Tony Nissen said he told Stockton Rush, co-founder of the OceanGate company that owned the Titan submersible.

Nissen, OceanGate’s former engineering director, was the first witness to testify at what is expected to be a two-week US Coast Guard hearing.

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Tony Nissen, OceanGate’s former engineering director, said he ‘100 per cent’ felt pressure to get the submarine into the water at the hearing in South Carolina. 

He also said he refused to pilot the Titan years ago because he didn’t trust the operations staff, and that he stopped the submersible from going to the Titanic in 2019.

 Mr Nissen told how he was actually fired from OceanGate five years ago after he would not sign off on a damaged hull for the 2019 Titanic expedition.

The Titan imploded on June 18 last year killing all five people onboard, including Mr Rush, British adventurer Hamish Harding, businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, and ‘Mr Titanic’ Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

The submersible’s unconventional design subjected the Titan to scrutiny and the tragedy set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

Mr Nissen said at the hearing Mr Rush could be difficult to work for and was often very concerned with costs and project schedules.

He said Mr Rush would fight for what he wanted, which often changed day to day.

Mr Nissen also noted that the Titan was struck by lightning during a test mission in 2018, and that might have compromised its hull.

When asked if there was pressure to get the Titan into the water, he responded, “100%.”

He said that he refused to pilot the Titan years ago because he didn’t trust the operations staff, and that he stopped the submersible from going to the Titanic in 2019, telling Rush that the Titan was “not working like we thought it would.” He was fired that year.

The Titan did undergo additional testing before it made later dives to the Titanic, Mr Nissen added.

Asked if he felt the pressure from Rush compromised safety decisions and testing, Nissen paused, then replied, “No. And that’s a difficult question to answer, because given infinite time and infinite budget, you could do infinite testing.”

Earlier in yesterday’s hearing, one of the last messages from the Titan’s crew to the support ship Polar Prince before the submersible imploded was revealed.

The crew lost contact after a message saying ‘all good here,’ from the sub as it descended. 

The Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended operations after the implosion.

The company’s former finance and human resources director, Bonnie Carl, also testified on Monday that she was aware of safety concerns about the Titan, and that the company’s operations director, David Lochridge, had characterized it as ‘unsafe.’

Mr Lochridge is scheduled to testify at the hearing today.