Weak Finances Were Driving OceanGate's Safety Decisions, Ex-Engineer Says

On Monday, a former director of engineering at sub excursion operator OceanGate testified that the company was running out of money in the months prior to the fatal implosion of its submersible, the novel carbon-fiber sub Titan. 

OceanGate engineering director Phil Brooks - who quit in February 2023, five months before the disaster - said that there were "economic issues" at the company, and that the managers asked him to continue working without pay for a period. "They asked for volunteers but I don’t think anybody did it," he told the Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation on the loss of the Titan. 

Brooks said that the company was making decisions based on its financial condition and "doing things that I felt resulted in the safety being compromised." At one point, he suggested that the firm postpone a trip, but he was overruled. "I was told that it was not possible," Brooks said. "They had people that had paid and they had to go through with it."

Among other issues, he said that the semisubmersible launch platform concept that the company used to lower away and recover the Titan was too dangerous to work on given the surface conditions off Newfoundland. The vessel chartered for the voyage was not big enough to pull the platform up on deck, so it towed it astern like a barge. All maintenance work on the sub had to be performed on this small platform in heavy swells of up to 15 feet. After attempting to work in these conditions, Brooks eventually refused. 

"It was just not a workable solution. I just did not think I could work on the sub, it was just too dangerous," he said. 

Brooks also suspected that the pressure hull might have issues with cracking, and he wanted to bring it back from Newfoundland to the firm's facility in Everett, "pull out the inserts and see if there were any cracks." He was overruled again because of cost. "It was very frustrating that it was left in St. John's and we had no way to look at it. We were told it was a cost issue, the cost of shipping it back was prohibitive," he said. 

Unlisted hull material 

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush opted not to get his one-of-a-kind submersible design classed, multiple former employees have testified. If he had attempted, it could have been difficult to obtain class approval. There were no set rules for classing a carbon fiber sub, an ABS expert told the board, and there are real engineering considerations behind its limited use in pressure-hull applications. 

"Carbon fiber composites are not included in the list of approved materials for submersible hulls in ABS rules," said senior principal engineer Roy Thomas, and he laid out a long list of reasons. Carbon fiber breaks suddenly when overloaded, without early signs of trouble. "There is no yield point to the material. It goes all the way to the failure point and then it catastrophically fails with little or no warning," he said. 

The material also degrades with UV light; internal voids or damage can remain hidden; it is sensitive to small amounts of local damage, like cuts or impacts; it is susceptible to fatigue failure from cyclical pressurization and depressurization, which occurs on every dive; and the material can potentially be damaged by saltwater ingress into the epoxy matrix under the extreme pressures of the deep. On top of these issues with perfectly-prepared carbon fiber products, proper manufacturing of thick carbon fiber sections is difficult, and care must be taken to avoid voids, blisters and delamination. 

Even if the Titan's cigar-shaped hull had been built out of titanium, it would have been unorthodox, Thomas added. "We have not seen cylindrical pressure hulls being used below 1,000 meters depth of seawater," he said. A spherical hull is the best shape for resisting external pressure, he explained, because the stresses are evenly distributed.  

Passenger-vessel difficulties 

Oceangate co-founder and former CEO Guillermo Sohnlein told the board that during his tenure, different Coast Guard sector commanders had differing views over whether his business was a passenger-for-hire operation. Some Coast Guard sectors were not open to the idea of "shoehorning" OceanGate's fee-for-participation business model into the regulations for an "oceanographic research vessel," he acknowledged.

Any submersible with at least one paying passenger requires a Coast Guard certificate of inspection in U.S. waters. To fund its for-profit operations, OceanGate collected thousands of dollars from high-net-worth individuals, classified them as "mission specialists" with a small operational role, and operated the sub as though they were non-passengers.

Sector Miami ruled that OceanGate was a for-hire operator in 2012, and when the board presented a copy of the letter with this ruling, Sohnlein acknowledged that it had forced the company to close shop in South Florida and return to Washington State. The firm eventually ceased its fee-for-participation dives in U.S. waters. 

Sohnlein explained that the Coast Guard's passenger-sub rules are too onerous and that until the regulations change, it will be impossible to turn a deep-diving sub company into a viable business in U.S. waters. As an example, he said that the difficulty of getting a 100-ton six-pack license and the need to follow an approved passage plan would be too hard to overcome. 

"It doesn't make sense to have the sub operator have a 100-ton license," he said. "And you don't know what route you're going to take. You're certainly not going to follow the same path every single time." 

In further questioning, he said that he was not sure whether the company's very first submersible was compliant with the Jones Act, which would be required if it were to operate for hire in U.S. waters. The bow section was manufactured in the UK, and the rest was modified and reassembled in the United States. 

While other former employees have emphasized OceanGate's financial goals, Sohnlein said that the firm's mission was "to give humanity greater access to the ocean." Sohnlein stepped down as CEO of OceanGate in 2012, but he retained a minority stake in the company.