According to OceanGate co-founder, Titan was built from scratch because no one else could meet the requirements

(AP) – The co-founder of the company that owned the experimental submersible that imploded en route to the wreck of the Titanic said Monday that the company focused on using carbon fiber in making the ill-fated vessel because it wanted a lightweight, less costly submersible that wouldn’t have to be tethered to an expensive mother ship.

Businessman Guillermo Sohnlein, who co-founded OceanGate with Stockton Rush, called the use of carbon fiber “not a new idea” and said “people have looked at it before.”

Sohnlein eventually left the company before the Titan disaster in June 2023. Rush was one of the five people killed in the submersible’s implosion. Although Sohnlein left the Washington-based company years ago, he defended its efforts after the submersible’s implosion.

On Monday, he testified that no existing submarine builder could meet the company’s needs, necessitating the switch to building its own submarines. And he said the company worked closely with the Coast Guard and eventually moved the submarine to Miami to get more diving days and practice with it.

“We would never have moved the submarine to Miami if we had not been sure that the Coast Guard would agree with our actions,” Sohnlein said.

The Coast Guard opened a public hearing earlier this month as part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. Some of the testimony focused on the company’s problems. At the start of the hearing, OceanGate’s former chief operating officer, David Lochridge, said he had frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was only interested in making money.

“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge said. “There was hardly any scientific aspect to it.”

Sohlein also testified Monday that he left the company in 2013 as the company was shifting to engineering, which he said was a greater strength of Rush than his own. He said it was a “pretty easy decision” for Rush to take over the company, but it was harder to decide whether to stay at all.

Ultimately, Sohnlein said, he didn’t think it made sense for the company to continue paying him a $120,000 salary for a reduced position. He said he retained a minority stake in the company, which still exists.

“It just didn’t make financial sense to continue paying me that salary when I wasn’t going to do much more than oversee business operations,” Sohnlein said, adding that it was “one of the most difficult decisions I’ve had to make” and that he once thought it would be “his last job for life.”

Other witnesses scheduled to testify on Monday include former OceanGate chief technical officer Phil Brooks and Roy Thomas of the American Bureau of Shipping. The hearing is scheduled to last until Friday and include additional witnesses.

Lochridge and other witnesses painted a picture of a struggling company that couldn’t wait to launch its unconventionally designed vessel. The accident sparked a global debate about the future of private underwater exploration.

Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not undergone the usual independent testing. This, and Titan’s unusual design, led to it being subjected to critical scrutiny in the underwater research community.

OceanGate, based in Washington state, ceased operations after the implosion. The company currently has no full-time employees but was represented by an attorney during the hearing.

During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after exchanging text messages about Titan’s depth and weight during the descent. The support vessel Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if Titan could still see the vessel on its onboard display.

One of the Titan crew’s last messages to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded was “all is well here,” according to a visual recreation presented earlier during the hearing.

When the submersible was reported overdue, rescue crews rushed ships, aircraft and other equipment to an area about 700 kilometers south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Wreckage from the Titan was later found on the sea floor about 300 meters off the Titanic’s bow, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.

OceanGate said it has been cooperating fully with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. Titan has been making trips to the Titanic wreck site since 2021.

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