Passengers were stuck underwater in the Titan for two hours. Brian Weed
OceanGate’s sunken submarine Titan failed a test dive in 2021 due to an engine malfunction, according to a former passenger.
The Titan ship was stuck underwater for more than two hours, passenger Brian Weed told Business Insider.
“We kind of became like sitting ducks in the water with nowhere to go,” Weed said.
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OceanGate’s sunken submersible Titan got stuck underwater during a test dive in 2021 when its thrusters malfunctioned. And the ship — and the people on it — got stuck underwater for more than two hours, according to a former passenger.
“We kind of became like sitting ducks in the water with nowhere to go,” cinematographer Brian Weed told Business Insider.
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“I thought: We can’t do it”: Just last year, the pilot lost control of the Titan submarine
Expedition was a precursor to Titanic Dive
Weed was working for the Discovery Channel television show Expedition Unknown when he and host Josh Gates got the opportunity to test dive the Titan in Washington state’s Puget Sound in May 2021.
This dive was intended to lead to a shipwreck and serve as a ‘precursor’ to a submarine dive later this summer to the Titanic wreck in the depths of the North Atlantic.
Submarine managed only 30 meters
However, the submarine – piloted by Stockton Rush, the inventor and CEO of OceanGate – never made it deeper than 100 feet (about 30 meters) into the water, according to Weed.
The dive was beset with problems from the start, including exiting the launch pad, Weed said.
Once the submarine was finally in the water and cleared to dive, “everything went wrong,” Weed told Business Insider.
At least one of the submarine’s engines quickly failed, and “there was basically a major malfunction in the entire engine system,” Weed said.
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Computers had to be restarted
“It was somehow traced back to a computer problem. The computer systems had to be restarted and recalibrated,” Weed said.
He added: “We had problems with communication. We had trouble contacting the crew on top so they could help us troubleshoot. And this went on for at least an hour.”
The submarine spent more than two hours in the water before Rush “weakly admitted that we had to abort the dive because there was no way for the ship to get to the target,” Weed said.
“All the time I’m in the water in this one [Tauchboot] locked up and thinking it’s going to be Titanic in two months,” Weed told the insider. “We’re not going under 100 feet and it’s going to be 12,000 feet under the ocean.”
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OceanGate boasted that it would detect failures in Titan’s hull “long before the crew’s safety would be compromised”.
Titan CEO Rush: Excited and nervous
During the ordeal, Rush acted, according to Weed “excited” and “nervous” but always had “an excuse or a reason for everything that was going on.”
Weed called Rush “very persuasive,” “charismatic,” “smart,” and someone you “would like to trust.” But the cameraman said he had doubts about the safety of the sub.
“Stockton believes so much in his own creation and innovation that he wasn’t willing to even consider that he might be wrong,” Weed said. And he went on to say that he believes Rush is “blinded by his own hubris.”
read too
Passengers on the Titan submersible have been classified as “mission specialists” to avoid liability risks in the event of their death, according to a report
Bizarre remark
Weed said he was also surprised by a “bizarre” comment Rush made. Weed expressed concerns about what would happen in an emergency situation after being locked inside the sub.
Ultimately, Weed withdrew from the documentary film project over safety concerns. And he said that production of the episode of the show was later canceled.
The Titan submarine imploded during an expedition to the Titanic wreck last month, killing Rush and the four other passengers on board. After the submarine’s first disappearance, former employees and experts said they warned Rush that the submarine was unsafe.
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