Titan Submersible Was Plagued With Problems, Investigators Say

The company operating the Titan submersible that imploded in the ocean last year, killing five people on board, was plagued with equipment problems in the years before the disaster, and had fired an engineering director who would not approve a deepwater expedition, according to testimony at a Coast Guard hearing on Monday.

The Titan had experienced dozens of problems during previous expeditions, including 70 equipment issues in 2021 and 48 more in 2022, investigators revealed on Monday, the first day of two weeks of hearings on what went wrong during the submersible’s ill-fated June 2023 trip to view the Titanic shipwreck on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.

For part of the winter before the fatal accident, the investigators said, the Titan was stored in bitterly cold temperatures outside a facility in Newfoundland, with no protection from the elements.

Then, less than four weeks before the fatal mission, the craft was tested and then found “partially sunk” two days later, following a night of high seas and fog.

And a few days before it imploded, five people in the Titan were slammed against its wall as it was resurfacing from a mission.

The vessel’s troubled development history was detailed when the U.S. Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation convened in South Carolina on Monday for the board’s first public hearing on the disaster, an attempt to begin answering the question of what went wrong on the vessel’s mission to visit the Titanic shipwreck.

The first witness was Tony Nissen, a former engineering director at OceanGate, the underwater exploration company that operated the submersible. He was visibly shaken after seeing the Coast Guard’s initial presentation on the long series of problems that plagued the Titan in the months and years before the voyage, and called the problems “disturbing.”

Mr. Nissen said he was fired in 2019 after he refused to approve an expedition to the Titanic wreckage that year because he deemed the Titan’s hull to be unsafe. OceanGate, he said, lied about the problems, and instead blamed the cancellation of that mission on problems with a support ship.

“It wasn’t true,” he said. “We didn’t have a hull.”

He described an earlier instance, in April of 2018, when the Titan was apparently struck by lightning while in the Bahamas for testing. He told the chief executive of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, who later died in the implosion, that there was a good chance that the strike had compromised the Titan’s hull. Mr. Nissen said Mr. Rush refused to believe him, insisting, “It’ll be OK.”

When Mr. Nissen was asked at the hearing why the company did not make any effort to comply with certification or regulatory standards for the vessel, he said the company’s founder did not show any interest.

“I wouldn’t say there was no effort,” he said. “There was no desire by Stockton to go do it.”

A transcript of the final communications from the vessel indicated that the crew may have tried, in the moments before the disaster, to abandon the trip and resurface. The crew told the vessel’s support ship in a final message that the Titan had dropped two of the weights that were helping it descend. Still, investigators said, no transmissions “indicated trouble or any emergency.”

When the submersible’s crew sent its last communication, it was more than two miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. The crew was not heard from again.

Exactly what led to the implosion has been the subject of an inquiry by the Coast Guard for more than a year. But much of that work has taken place out of view, with few new disclosures about what went wrong. Monday’s public proceeding began with an overview of the investigation and an animation of the submersible that illustrated what investigators had learned so far.

The investigators noted that the outside of the Titan’s hull was covered in polyurethane, which made it impossible to inspect the hull visually. And they said the hull had never been pressure tested up to industry standards.

In all, two dozen witnesses are expected to testify before the board over the next two weeks. Among them are former employees of OceanGate and safety and marine experts who have insight into what caused the fatal event. The board is also likely to discuss evidence it has already gathered, including details about the Titan’s design and the company’s safety guidelines.

The biggest question for investigators is what caused the Titan to implode, an answer that is crucial to preventing any future accidents. They will specifically try to determine if there were flaws in the design of the submersible or the materials it was built with.

Years before the implosion, Mr. Rush was warned by submersible and ocean experts that his methods were still experimental and could have devastating results.

Since the accident, experts have noted several design decisions that may have saved the company money but meant that the submersible would differ from others that had proved safe. Among those decisions were the pill-like shape of the Titan’s hull — a sphere has been the industry standard — and the use of carbon fiber rather than titanium for the hull.

At a news conference on Sunday, Jason Neubauer, a retired Coast Guard captain who is the chairman of the board investigating the Titan, said his team had been working for 15 months to understand the disaster. He said that the hearing on Monday, in North Charleston, S.C., would be crucial.

“These proceedings are not just a formality,” he said. “They are a critical step in our missions to understand the contributing factors that led to the incident, and, even more important, the actions needed to prevent a similar occurrence.”

Captain Neubauer said the investigation was one of the most complex he had ever participated in, partly because the implosion took place far out in the Atlantic Ocean, making it more difficult to gather the physical remnants of the destroyed craft.

Responding to a reporter’s question, he said that any potential evidence of criminal negligence would be passed on to the U.S. Justice Department.

The Titan submersible disappeared on June 18, 2023, when it lost communication with its support ship after dropping into the water about 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. On board were Mr. Rush; Shahzada Dawood, a British Pakistani businessman; Mr. Dawood’s 19-year-old son, Suleman; Hamish Harding, a British aviation tycoon and explorer; and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French maritime expert and leading authority on the Titanic who had visited the wreckage dozens of times before.

Mr. Nargeolet’s family sued OceanGate last month, saying that the company’s chief executive had misled Mr. Nargeolet about the craft’s safety. OceanGate suspended commercial and exploratory operations in the wake of the accident.

Four days after the submersible vanished, wreckage from the craft was found about a third of a mile from the bow of the Titanic. Months later, divers found human remains among debris.