OceanGate
OceanGate's doomed Titan submersible had a lengthy history of malfunctioning during dives even before it imploded at the bottom of the ocean last month, former passengers say.
For years industry experts and even staff had warned OceanGate's CEO Stockton Rush that the sub may be dangerous due to its design.
But despite the concerns, Rush believed in his product and kept taking the sub out on treacherous dives, until its last.
The sub imploded underwater on a trip to the Titanic wreck site on June 18 after it lost communications with its support ship, killing all five passengers on board, including Rush.
From getting lost for two-and-a-half hours to spinning in circles, here are the times something went wrong on previous Titan submersible dives.
Karl Stanley, a submersible expert and friend of Rush, was inside the sub during a dive in the Bahamas in 2019.
In an email sent to Rush, which was obtained by Insider, Stanley warned the CEO that passengers could "panic" if they heard the same "breaking sounds 2 miles underwater" that he did during his dive.
Stanley also expressed concern to Rush about the integrity of the sub's hull, urging the CEO to conduct more testing before taking on paying passengers.
Though not technically a malfunction, the Titan submersible was struck by lightning during a test dive in the Bahamas in 2018, according to CEO Stockton Rush.
Rush told Teledyne Marine, an undersea technology company, in a now-deleted interview that if the lightning had directly struck the vessel's carbon-fiber hull, it "probably would have taken us totally out."
OceanGate posted about the incident on Instagram in 2018, revealing that the sub "sustained lightning damage that affected over 70% of its internal systems."
Mike Reiss, a writer and producer for "The Simpsons," told CNN that he went on four separate dives in the sub, and it lost communication with its support ship every single time.
"There was one dive we took — as soon as communication went out, we went right back to the surface," Reiss told CNN. "We had gone to see a U-boat just off the shore of New York. We saw it for one second, and they said, 'We're going back up. We shouldn't be down here.'"
Weiss added that the sub losing communication just seemed like it was "baked into the system," and that each time, the sub did eventually restore its connection to the support ship.
Brian Weed, a documentary cameraman for the Discovery Channel series "Expedition Unknown," told Insider the vessel's propulsion system failed and it lost communications with the mother ship while he was on a test dive in the sub in 2021.
The sub was only about 100 feet underwater at the time, according to Weed.
Weed said the sub was stuck underwater for more than two hours.
"We sort of became sitting ducks in water without the ability to go anywhere," Weed said.
Weed told Insider that of all the dangerous expeditions he's been on, the trip on board the Titan sub was the only time he felt like something was "wrong."
Weed and the TV crew ultimately decided not to take the sub on a complete dive and canceled the episode.
Bill Price, an adventurer from California and former passenger, told the Los Angeles Times that during a dive two years ago, the mechanism that releases the sub's weights did not work.
Because the sub needs to release its external weights to rise back up to the surface, passengers inside the sub had to physically rock it side-to-side to dislodge the weights.
"There was some apprehension of how are we going to get back up," Price told the Times. "When we heard our first clunk, that was such a relief."
David Pogue, a CBS reporter, was in the control room on the Titan's mother ship during a dive in 2022 that was being filmed for a segment on the network.
Pogue said that the ship lost the submersible for several hours after its descent into the depths of the ocean.
The only way the Titan sub could communicate with the surface ship was through text messages, and the sub could not reliably navigate itself on its own.
Pogue wrote on Twitter that the ship's crew "could still send short texts to the sub, but did not know where it was," adding, "It was quiet and very tense, and they shut off the ship's internet to prevent us from tweeting."
The sub was eventually able to resurface during that trip, but its passengers never got to explore the Titanic wreckage.
The sub's pilot lost control of the vessel during a 2022 dive when its thrusters malfunctioned, sending the sub spinning in 360-degree circles, an ordeal that aired on an episode of the BBC's "The Travel Show."
The sub was just 1,000 feet from the Titanic wreckage when the crew realized the thruster had been installed backwards, forcing the sub to spin around, according to the BBC show.
During that dive, Rush had to troubleshoot the issue and sub was eventually able to make it to the site of the Titanic.
The Titan sub's last malfunction was fatal.
The OceanGate sub first went missing on June 18 during a trip down to the Titanic when it lost contact with its support ship, sparking an international search effort.
Rescuers feared that the passengers were alive in the sub and running out of oxygen.
Four days later, the US Coast Guard announced that it had found a field of debris belonging to the submersible about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic.
The Coast Guard has said it believes the sub suffered a "catastrophic implosion" during its initial descent to the Titanic, presumably killing all 5 passengers near-instantly, including Rush.
Advisors to OceanGate and deep-sea explorer James Cameron have since said that it appears the crew of the sub knew something was wrong and were trying to surface before the vessel was destroyed.
