A former employee of OceanGate was reportedly sacked after he aired out his concerns about the safety of the Titan submersible, which resulted in the death of five people, including the company’s CEO.
David Lochridge, who was OceanGate’s ex-director of marine operations and chief submersible pilot, was fired after he raised a number of concerns on the matters of design and safety of the submersible, according to The New Yorker.
The publication reported that as soon as Lochridge was hired in 2015, he clashed with the expedition company’s CEO, Stockton Rush and the company’s director of engineering Tony Nissen.
On 18 January, 2018, Lochridge reportedly found “several critical aspects to be defective or unproven” with Cyclops II, which was renamed to the Titan.
Per The New Yorker, the next day, Lochridge sent his findings to OceanGate’s leadership, where he wrote: “Until suitable corrective actions are in place and closed out, Cyclops II (Titan) should not be manned during any of the upcoming trials.”
Lochridge’s report allegedly infuriated Rush and reportedly led to him scheduling a meeting with Lochridge that afternoon. According to The New Yorker, the meeting got really messy and reported there was talk of legal action. It reportedly then ended with Lochridge getting sacked from OceanGate.
“I would consider myself pretty ballsy when it comes to doing things that are dangerous, but that sub is an accident waiting to happen,” Lochridge wrote in an email to another OceanGate associate, Rob McCallum.
“There’s no way on earth you could have paid me to dive the thing.
“I don’t want to be seen as a tattle tale, but I’m so worried he kills himself and others in the quest to boost [Rush’s] ego.”
The New Yorker also reported that after Lochridge was fired, Rush approached OceanGate’s director of finance and administration and asked her if she’d like to be the chief submersible pilot. The publication reported that she quit as soon as she was able to line up a new job.
According to BBC News, Lochridge wasn’t the only one who warned Rush of the flaws of the Titan. In 2018, McCallum, who Lochridge emailed, told Rush that he was putting clients in potential danger.
In messages obtained by BBC News, McCallum reportedly wrote to Rush: “I think you are potentially placing yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic.
“In your race to Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry: ‘She is unsinkable’”.
Rush replied to McCallum’s claims saying: “We have heard the baseless cries of ‘you are going to kill someone’ way too often. I take this as a serious personal insult.”
On June 2023, the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed that all five people aboard the submersible that went missing on an expedition to the Titanic shipwreck had died in a “catastrophic implosion”.
OceanGate released a statement confirming the identities of the passengers.
“We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost,” the company stated.
Soon after the devastating news, OceanGate was condemned online after people noticed that the company released a job ad for a pilot for their vessels.
Image source: Getty Images / Anadolu Agency
