Original subtitles

[vehicle whirring]

[indistinct radio chatter]

- [motor slows] - [coughs]

- [man 1] All right, we're doing it now. - [laughter]

Ready to go. There's your submarine right back there.

[passengers chattering]

[man 2] Titan, we'll get squared away and start bringing you guys on board shortly.

[indistinct radio chatter]

Right. You're going.

Another day at work.

[indistinct chatter]

[woman] All right. There you go.

- Thank you. - Yeah.

- [air hissing] - [screws squeaking]

[man] Okay?

Yeah, you're doing good. Just keep that pace.

Uh, there's really nothing that happens that requires an immediate response.

Okay? So, if you hear an alarm,

just don't worry about it.

Best thing you can do is don't do anything.

[tools grinding]

- [eerie music plays] - [seam slams]

[music fades]

[deep rumbling]

[popping]

[rapid cracking]

[man] I heard something.

[footsteps]

[pilot] You guys still got bottom contact?

[men] Yes.

- [man 1] Some kind of object. - [cracking]

[man 2] Yeah, there's something coming up.

[man 1] Something is coming up to starboard.

[rapid popping]

[crack]

[eerie music continues]

[music fades]

[wind chimes dinging]

[Hammermeister] I've reflected a lot on my time there

and my time there was not normal.

I mean, I think back to the times where I was a part of dives that happened

and... thinking back how uncomfortable I felt bolting people into the sub.

And so when that initial news article popped up

and it said "Tourist sub lost in the Atlantic,"

I knew right away it was OceanGate.

[anchor 1] The U.S. Coast Guard says it is bringing all assets to bear

in the search for a missing submersible

off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

[anchor 2] Its last location ping was directly above the wreck of the Titanic.

A frantic search now underway for the vessel

with oxygen fast running out.

[Lochridge] I got a text from one of my colleagues at submarine rescue.

At that point, I felt sick to the stomach.

[Lochridge] Everything that I gave to the authorities,

everything that had happened to me,

everything that I'd seen, my concerns, there was nothing I left out.

[indistinct chatter]

[Lochridge] They should have acted on it.

Good afternoon.

Nothing was done.

[engine whirring]

[coast guard] This is an incredibly complex search operation.

The surface search is now approximately two times the size of Connecticut,

and the subsurface search is up to two and a half miles deep.

[horn blares]

The search and rescue teams are working in incredibly challenging conditions.

[reporter 1] It was last heard from an hour and 45 minutes into its dive,

but OceanGate not sounding the alarm for another several hours.

As of yesterday, there were two C-130s that conducted search and rescue flights.

By later today, an Air National Guard C-130 will also join the search.

[dramatic string music playing]

[Tony Nissen] My phone blew up just from folks sending me clips, articles.

I would get a text: "Have you heard? What do you think?"

But then I knew we'd be sitting here one day.

And here we are.

[music continues]

[Hammermeister] Almost right away, there was some back-and-forth texting

between old co-workers and myself.

One of them replied and said, "It's actually really happening."

Our thoughts and prayers are with the crew of the Titan and their loved ones.

We will continue to work as hard and as quickly as possible

in an effort to locate them.

- I will take a few questions. - [audience clamoring]

Go ahead.

[Hammermeister] It was a worldwide story all of a sudden.

[man speaking German]

[speaking Japanese]

[British woman] I mean, this is truly the stuff of nightmares.

It's unimaginable what the people in there are going through.

[Hammermeister] I didn't really know how to talk about it.

I didn't know everyone on board,

but I knew Stockton well.

[anchor 3] Five people are on board,

including the OceanGate CEO, Stockton Rush,

as well as 58-year-old British aviation billionaire, Hamish Harding.

[anchor 4] Pakistani businessman, Shahzada Dawood,

and his son, Suleman, are also on board.

And we understand French explorer, Paul-Henri Nargeolet,

oft referred to as Mr. Titanic, is also on the vessel.

[interviewer] What did you do first?

[woman, in French] I cried.

For the first ten minutes I cried a lot. I was really scared.

[interviewer] Do you remember which authorities contacted you?

[in French] The U.S. Coast Guard.

In the last two hours, the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed

that a Canadian aircraft detected underwater noises.

Yesterday, a Canadian P-3 detected underwater noises in the search area.

As a result, ROV operations were relocated in an attempt

to explore the origin of the noises.

[Sidonie Nargeolet, in French] It was comforting to see that...

So, when the search was on,

all the family members thought they would find them.

We all really believed. We had hope.

Everything had to be done very quickly, but

at that point, no one spoke about finding debris.

[plaintive violin playing]

[Hammermeister] The story had the ingredients.

It had Titanic.

It had billionaires.

It had running out of time.

[reporter 2] Officials now believe it's down to less than two days' worth

of breathable air.

[Hammermeister] The news had an oxygen countdown in the corner.

And it was really hard to go on any sort of media.

The search for the missing submersible,

which was on its way to the wreck of the Titanic,

has already covered an area nearly the size of Wales.

Court documents show a former employee sued the company in 2018 claiming...

Time really has become the most precious commodity.

[Hammermeister] I definitely doomscrolled a good while.

My friends were checking in on me.

Making sure that I wasn't on my phone for too long.

[distorted audio streams]

I didn't do fucking shit!

What if all of this is actually a ploy to keep people

from visiting the Titanic wreckage?

But if that's the goal, why?

[Hammermeister] It's hard to put into words.

And I felt a lot of different feelings, including anger.

[violin continues]

[Hammermeister] It was a very weird week.

But even the first day,

the general assumption was the worst.

[music fades]

[eerie music playing]

[stirring musical swell]

[official] The Coast Guard has officially convened

a Marine Board of Investigation

into the loss of the submersible and the five people on board.

That investigation will be led by Chief Investigator

Captain Jason Neubauer.

[slate clacks]

[Jason Neubauer] I was, uh, just about to retire from the Coast Guard,

but I absolutely wanted this case because it was so unique

that when the Admiral asked me if I would do it, I immediately said yes.

[reporter 3] You can see a blue ship. It's called Polar Prince,

that took the submersible Titan out to sea.

This ship is flagged in Canada.

There will be representatives from the safety board there to receive them.

[Neubauer] When something like this happens,

the first thing you want to check for is jurisdiction.

Anybody who has the flagged state of a vessel involved in an incident

automatically has jurisdiction.

The deadly implosion involved the American-made OceanGate Titan sub,

which launched from a Canadian ship in international water.

So this is a complicated multinational investigation.

[Neubauer] The Titan was not flagged by any foreign nation or a U.S. state.

That was, uh, very unusual.

Never seen that before.

[interviewer] You've never seen that before?

No, in 26 years of doing investigations, so...

[interviewer] How does that happen?

I think it happens by design.

[gulls calling]

[man 1] Can we start with the lights off and turn them on?

[man 2] Sure.

- [hatch closes] - [switches clicking]

[videographer] What else can you show me in here?

We have external lights here.

So I think they... Are they hooked up? They look like they are.

This is our oxygen system.

So this is the bottle you use for normal operation.

And all of these are emergency, the ones that are in red.

So that's four days of emergency oxygen.

The pilot's back here.

He's typically back here like this with two displays.

So he can fly off of one.

[objects banging]

[videographer] And how do you drive it?

Uh, with this controller.

[videographer] He was a humble human being,

but he was an arrogant scientist for sure.

Like, he knew he was smart. There was no doubt about it.

He knew he was a genius even.

Just the way he was talking, the confidence.

He was a very confident person, right? Like, like,

he says things with conviction.

He tells you what he's going to do. And he tells you why it works.

The way he says it makes you go like, "This guy knows what he's talking about."

I think we made great progress in the '60s and '70s

on manned, um, ocean exploration.

And it died off for a lot of explainable but illogical reasons.

[man over radio, in French] 279.

- [in French] How much? - 279.

279.

[Cousteau, in English] I have long felt that undersea exploration

is not an end in itself.

To enter this great unknown medium

is the privilege of our era.

[Rush] Most scientists get involved in marine biology

because they want to go in the ocean. They're interested in the ocean,

and they have a passion for it.

Even if I gave you a 3D representation of the Grand Canyon

and piped in the smell of sage grass, it won't replace being there.

[Cousteau, in English] Down here, we can clearly hear

the squeaks and clicks of the dolphins.

[squeaks, clicks]

[Rush] Being able to hear and see and feel the entire environment

is something you can't duplicate.

[gentle uplifting music playing]

[no audible dialogue]

[Assi] They needed more exposure.

That's where we came along.

The stuff they were making was very basic.

So the idea was, "Make us videos,

so we can catch the attention of people," right?

They had wild ideas, like they want to take Pearl Jam in the submarine,

or he talks about some floating city that could also submerge.

Stockton used to say, "Accessibility is ownership."

If there's a small island in the middle of the ocean

and you're the only one who can access it,

it doesn't matter who owns it, you have ownership over it

because you have the accessibility to get to it.

And he truly believed in that.

Hello, I'm Stockton Rush, and I was the pilot today

on a dive to look at trawl sites, uh, off of Friday Harbor.

[Rob McCallum] I first met Stockton

when OceanGate was getting off the ground in Seattle.

They were actually more focused on science and education, primarily in Puget Sound.

[burbling]

[woman on radio] Cyclops comms check, over.

[pilot] Read you loud and clear topside.

[McCallum] But in 2015, things started to change.

If you ever wanted to visit the wreck of the Titanic,

well, your opportunity is coming.

Tourists will be able to participate in the first submersible expedition

to the Titanic since 2005.

Mr. Rush, thanks for this today.

Oh, pleasure to be here.

At the time, I was probably the only person on the planet

that he knew that had run expeditions to Titanic before.

[reporter 4] Two and a half miles beneath the ocean surface

lies the wreck of the Titanic.

There she is.

That is unbelievable.

[McCallum] We are an expedition company.

We had delivered around 150, 160 people to Titanic.

Why has it taken so long for something like this to come about?

Because as you know, there's a lot of interest even to this day in the Titanic.

Yes, I don't think many people appreciate

there are only four manned submersibles that can get to the depth of the Titanic.

Titanic is a huge drawcard.

I'm actually flying a remotely-operated vehicle.

And this is Gilligan. I don't know if you can see him there.

He's the green sort of... toaster on steroids.

I mean, even now, over 100 years after she sank,

she just captures people.

[film projector clanks]

[Rush] People are so enthralled with Titanic.

I read an article

that said there are three words in the English language

that are known throughout the planet, and that's:

Coca-Cola, God, and Titanic.

[McCallum] Stockton saw an opportunity

to restart tourist visits to Titanic.

There was discussion about how we would market those expeditions,

how we would process paying clients, what the experience would look like,

and how we would build and grow the product.

[anchor 5] CEO Stockton Rush and his team

will be the first since 2005 to see the site.

Civilians paying the inflated price of a first-class passage

on the Titanic's maiden voyage.

You're there with a mission. So somebody comes with us,

they're going to work on operating the sonar...

[McCallum] But first the idea was to build a team.

[music fades]

[Lochridge] As soon as I finished school, I joined the Royal Navy.

I ended up working as a commercial diver, ROV pilot

and I've been involved in submersibles for 20-plus years now.

This is L5. Kilo, kilo, kilo.

Roger L5, hard seal.

My wife Carol, she actually saw an advert online at the time,

and she said, they're looking for somebody to fulfill the position

of Director of Marine Operations.

[Bonnie Carl] A girlfriend of mine happened upon their website

and sent it to me and said, "Wow, look at this. Isn't this cool?"

I started diving in 2013,

and I fell in love with it.

So I... [chuckles] ...basically was cyber-stalking OceanGate for a while,

and lo and behold, a bookkeeping job came up.

[ship horn blows]

[Tony Nissen] I was just on LinkedIn one day, on the ferry,

and came across this company

that, uh, was building submersibles in my backyard

and I thought, huh.

I love building stuff.

Started in the Navy as a deep-sea diver.

I studied Material Science at UC Berkeley.

- [camera operator] Rolling! - Excellent, okay.

[Nissen] They're looking for a technician.

[Carl] It was a significant pay cut.

I'm a CPA, and I knew I'd be overqualified,

but to be able to combine not only what I'm trained to do,

but what my passion is, I mean, that sounds like a dream job to me.

[Assi] The whole time we worked with OceanGate,

everybody was privileged to be there,

felt like they were special to be there.

As you can see here, we've got the manned submersible, Cyclops.

This is a five-man submersible.

It's got a maximum operating depth of 500 meters.

Um...

I was going to be running the submersible projects themselves.

They had two existing subs,

Cyclops 1 and Antipodes,

and they had the build of Titan, which was exciting.

I just felt like I was drawn in,

to actually do something that potentially nobody had ever done before.

[applause]

Thanks very much.

Um, you may have seen in the write-up of this

that I wanted to be an astronaut.

That's why I got an engineering degree. I watched Star Trek, Star Wars,

and I wanted to see those alien life-forms.

And eventually, I realized that

all the cool stuff that I thought was out there is actually underwater.

And in fact, um...

[Carl] Stockton Rush was definitely a salesman.

I got the impression that he wanted to do things differently, to be different.

Anybody with the right amount of money can build a sub and go down to Titanic,

but he was doing it differently.

The goal was, where do you want to go in the ocean?

What is the most known site in the ocean?

It's clearly the Titanic. And to go to the Titanic, which is at 3,800 meters,

requires a special sub.

[dramatic music playing]

[reporter 5] His underwater vessel, now under construction,

will be able to carry five people to the Titanic,

more than two miles down.

Where is your excitement factor on this?

Oh, definitely at eleven! [laughs] So...

[Lochridge] Every submersible is different.

Some are made of steel, some are made of acrylic,

some are made of titanium.

But this is the first time a design like this

with a carbon fiber hull was going to be used at those depths.

So it was all unknown, completely unknown.

[voiceover] This is APL,

the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle.

[no inaudible dialogue]

[Nissen] With APL, they worked on the mechanical stuff

and the control system with the PlayStation controllers.

We even had an office down there. I'd go once or twice a week.

[Lochridge] With APL being on board, I had a level of comfort.

[Lochridge] But the big appeal for myself to go over to this project was

that the vehicle was going to be getting classed.

[McCallum] When we say something is classed,

we're essentially saying that a third-party agency

has independently certified it as safe.

The analogy would be, if you decide to build

a home-built aircraft,

you can take yourself and your friends in it so long as nobody pays money.

But the minute you want to transport fare-paying passengers in the vehicle,

you need to get it certified by an independent agency.

In the marine world, that would be called getting the vehicle classed.

[Lochridge] They'll look at design, they'll look at build,

they'll look at annual inspections on these things.

[Lochridge] OceanGate's other two subs had been classed.

So with this whole vision of going to Titanic

with this new sub that was meant to be getting classed,

what's not to appeal?

[reporter 5] Rush says his submersible

is one of the safest forms of transportation in the world.

By the time we're done testing it, I believe it's pretty much invulnerable.

And that's pretty much what they said about the Titanic.

- That's right. - [chuckles]

[clerk] Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you are about to give

will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,

- so help you God? - I do.

[clerk] Thank you. You may be seated.

We do the hearing in the form of a trial. It looks like a court setting.

- [Neubauer] Good morning, Mr. Nissen. - Good morning, sir.

All of my questions are related to your background

and then your experience with OceanGate as the Director of Engineering.

Sure, sounds good.

[Neubauer] Several investigators ask the questions.

Every witness in this instance has the right to counsel.

Also participating in the hearing are the parties of interest.

And in this case, we had OceanGate attorneys.

You want to get to the facts, and that's the primary goal of a hearing.

Cut through the rumors and get to actually what happened.

[Neubauer] In what year did you begin working with OceanGate?

March of 2016.

And in March of 2016, what were you hired on as?

The Director of Engineering.

And what were your roles and responsibilities in that job

as the Director of Engineering?

I was pitched by OceanGate that the Cyclops 2 craft,

uh, was nearly complete.

I was going to put together the parts

and then just start executing it. And so I was...

[watch alarm beeping]

My apologies.

That's my watch telling me I have an abnormally high heart rate.

Um, I was originally asked, to, uh, to just finish this.

It was going to be a year. And that's it.

[Neubauer] And how would you describe the workplace environment

when you started with the company?

[Nissen inhales, exhales]

The first week was great.

[Neubauer] We've studied Mr. Rush and his leadership style.

So I feel like we have a good understanding of how he ran the business.

[interviewer] Meaning... what exactly?

[Neubauer] Well, he took a lot of employment actions in front of others.

It wasn't behind the scenes. I think people knew

if you challenged the boss on some of these issues

that there was a possibility you'd be gone.

During my time there,

and I'm not sure exactly when it dawned on me,

but, um, the business model didn't start to make sense to me.

We didn't have an income stream.

He said that they were going to flag the Titan in the Bahamas

and launch out of Canada

so that they wouldn't fall under U.S. jurisdiction.

But that if the Coast Guard became a problem,

that he would buy himself a congressman and make it go away.

Mr. McCoy, is that a direct quote?

He said, "I would buy a congressman."

I'd never had anybody say that to me directly.

And I was aghast. And basically after that,

I resigned from the company and I couldn't work there anymore.

[Mark Harris] In those early days he was quite easy to get in contact with.

He was very approachable.

And I was very interested in what they were planning to do,

which was kind of democratize ocean exploration.

[typing]

[Harris] Got in touch with the company. I talked with Stockton,

and then he invited me to come on their prototype vessel.

Stockton was a typical startup entrepreneur.

I've met many of them, dozens over the years, hundreds probably.

[interviewer] Where did this guy come from?

Like, uh, what do you know about Stockton Rush?

[Harris] He came from privilege.

There's no doubt about that.

He was a graduate of Princeton.

Not the strongest student academically,

but he obviously got an engineering degree.

He built his own airplane from a kit.

And that's a plane he would fly for many years afterwards.

Later he even built a kit submersible.

You know, very confident, full of enthusiasm.

Both Stockton and his wife, Wendy, were from generational wealth.

In fact, Stockton could actually trace his ancestry

all the way back to two signers of the Declaration of Independence.

[Rush over radio] How do you read us?

We read you loud and clear. How do you read us?

[Rush] When you speak slowly, just fine.

We are going to lift off.

[radio chatter]

[Harris] His wife, Wendy,

she was the great-great-granddaughter

of two people who actually perished on the Titanic.

The Strausses had formed a mercantile empire

that actually resulted in such household names as the Macy's Department Store.

So Stockton was definitely part of the one percent.

Stockton could be a very awkward person.

And if he wasn't happy with somebody, he was very vocal.

Very vocal.

I have emails that were supplied to me by an anonymous source

that shows how he dealt with people in his organization.

And there was plenty there that was concerning.

I'd started hearing some stories about Stockton's temper.

He seemed to be very defensive whenever anybody asked questions that were pointed.

[Neubauer] Are you aware of any dives where...

[watch alarm beeps]

He would blame everything on everybody else.

He came across, even initially, as quite arrogant.

[Rush] It all really started with the idea that there had to be

some kind of business opportunity in exploring the ocean.

To me, that's where we're going to have cities

- ...before we have them up in space. - [woman] Ah!

On the moon? That is so cool. And there are so many incredible...

[Carl] He wanted to be a Jeff Bezos

or Elon Musk.

It is a fixer-upper of a planet.

But eventually you can transform Mars into an Earth-like planet.

How would you do that?

He referred to those guys as "big swingin' dicks." [sighs]

And he loved that term and used it all the time.

He was using OceanGate and how OceanGate was different with the carbon fiber

from anybody else in the industry.

If he can pull this off, he can be a big swingin' dick too.

Would you describe Titan, based on the information that you know,

as an experimental, uh, manned submersible?

Yeah, but it was an experimental submersible

that they had already taken deposits to go to the Titanic in.

[dramatic chords play]

[ship horn blows]

[Bill Price] I was hesitant to tell my wife and my family what I was doing

because I was still a little bit skeptical.

If I tell them, they're going to be worried.

So I didn't want to put them through that.

[dramatic chords play]

[Price] You could tell that Stockton was in charge. It was his operation.

Watch your head. Got it? Take all your gear on the back.

[Rush] We have clients that are

Titanic enthusiasts, which we refer to as Titaniacs.

- [employee 1] Everybody here? - [employee 2] Okay, let's gather up here.

A lot of our mission specialists are also space people.

Um, it differs in a significant way, in that we actively seek

the involvement of the mission specialists who come out with us.

[applause]

[employee 2] So, head call for the mission specialists.

Dive checks. We're at four. Pre-brief now we're...

[McCallum] The term mission specialist is a workaround.

There are some rules about operating vessels at sea.

Those rules differ depending on whether you are a crew member

or you're a paying passenger.

There are things that are maybe less critical.

For example, reviewing video content.

You know, you're not going to hurt anybody if you mess that up.

But we have our mission specialists closing the dome.

Well, that's pretty critical.

[screws rattling]

[drill whirring]

[McCallum] Stockton was trying to confuse that,

insisting that nobody was ever referred to as a passenger.

Colin Taylor, uh, mission specialist.

Uh, Richard Taylor, mission specialist.

It was just one of the steps that OceanGate took

to make sure that they could work around US legislation.

[Rush] There are certain things that you want to be buttoned down,

and that's the pressure vessel.

You know, once the pressure vessel is...

you're certain it's not going to collapse on everybody, everything else can fail.

[Price] One of the things that impressed me is the total transparency.

[Price] In all of the documentation it was very straightforward

that you're, you know, basically signing your life away.

[whirring]

[indistinct voice over speaker]

[interviewer] I've got to say, being one of the first to go

to the bottom of the ocean

in an experimental sub

sounds frightening.

[Price] Well, you're not alone. A lot of people have said that to me.

But, um, I felt confident. I felt confident in both Stockton

and in P.H.

[Price] P.H. had been there 37 times,

and he knows, you know, everything about the Titanic

and a whole lot about submersibles and diving.

[uplifting music playing]

[P.H. Nargeolet] Each dive is a new experience.

Each dive is a new adventure because you never see the same thing exactly.

[voiceover] This is an elite French research vessel.

George Tulloch is the expedition leader.

Tulloch's company, RMS Titanic,

is responsible for conserving the historic ocean liner.

To coordinate the expedition,

Tulloch has chosen P.H. Nargeolet, a former French Navy commander.

[S. Nargeolet in French] I appreciate the Titanic,

but it took away a lot of time with my dad.

[sentimental music playing]

[in French] When I was little, we lived in the south of France.

My father wasn't often at home because he was often on trips with the Navy.

He did many missions at sea.

They discovered new objects,

retrieved them from the sea in order to protect them.

[shouts] Hello!

[music fades]

[in French] His work was his passion.

Brody, Horizon cadet, and OceanGate intern.

Steve, Mission... uh, Media and Marketing,

and General Ops support.

- [camera beeps] - P.H., sub crew.

Sub crew.

- Know-it-all. - [laughter]

[employee 2] Most experienced submersible pilot nearly in the world now.

- That's who you are, P.H. - [Taylor] Bravo.

[in French] He didn't work for OceanGate, I prefer to say it.

He was invited.

That is important. Mmm.

[indistinct voice over speaker]

[Price] There was a certain amount of, uh, anticipation.

They call it the abyss for a reason.

[oxygen tank hisses]

[water burbling]

- [indistinct speech] - [air hissing]

[man 1] How far away do you think?

[man 2] I would say

five hundred.

Five hundred meters.

[Price] When we're coming across the floor,

all of a sudden there's this big wall,

and that was surreal.

It was, "Oh, my God, that's it."

[P. Nargeolet] We are alongside the... the hull now.

[Price] There is the bow!

[Nargeolet] Yeah, I can see the bow.

[dramatic musical swell]

[Price] Oh, wow, look there. It's the...

- Is that the telegraph or something? - [Nargeolet] Yeah.

[Taylor] Mm-hmm. Those are all the plaques.

- [Price] And the plaques, yeah. - [Taylor] Mm-hmm.

[Price] There was a million things running through my head,

but the main thing was that,

"I'm actually here seeing this.

This is incredible."

And I'll never forget that.

[camera shutter clicks]

[anchor 6] It's an incredible view

more people are getting a chance to see up close.

This expedition included nationally and world-renowned scientists,

explorers, and Titanic experts.

Leading the charge on this expedition is OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.

How do you feel?

Uh, well, I know how I felt right when we were done, which was exhausted.

Um, and now I'm just...

[Assi] I was really happy for them.

I wanted them to succeed

because their goal was noble.

Today we're getting some new first images from a historic dive

by OceanGate founder...

[anchor 7] And we are pleased to say that the CEO and founder Stockton Rush

joins us live from Connecticut with more. Stockton, this is incredible.

[cheering]

[Rush] I didn't really have a chance to absorb it until I got back to the ship.

When I got to the surface was this amazing thing

'cause it had been 12 years

of working to do this, and to get there was great.

[interviewer] We do have to acknowledge

that he did do

what he set out to do.

He took a carbon fiber sub to the Titanic.

[McCallum] Yes, that is true,

but there was no way of knowing when it was going to fail.

But it was a mathematical certainty that it would fail.

So having a dive or two, or ten, to Titanic

is not a measure of success.

[indistinct chatter]

[McCallum] And personally, I will never understand

how it survived the first test dives.

The investigation will show that there was some switching of hulls

about halfway through the process because the earlier one did fail.

[thunder rumbles]

[man] Okay.

[indistinct chatter]

[Rush] Today we'll be doing our third pressure test of the carbon fiber hull.

Uh, reasonably, we would like to get to 6,000 PSI which is 4,100 meters.

But there's a non-zero probability

that it may implode as it did in the first test that we did.

[man] Okay.

[Assi] They did multiple tests.

Because they were testing the depth, how deep can we go.

[Lochridge] I knew it was new materials they were going to be using.

The carbon fiber. I knew nothing about carbon fiber

until I moved across. Nothing.

[McCallum] Carbon fiber is essentially string made from carbon.

It's coated in a glue or a resin to hold it together.

[Rush] Lined up.

[McCallum] Carbon fiber is very, very strong,

and it's a lighter and cheaper material.

[Rush] It's good enough.

[Harris] It's in many new, um, systems, many new products,

people are using it for lots of reasons

because it's really light, really strong.

- [Rush] Are we good? - [rattling]

When I looked at the cost of operating a sub, it's the ship.

The two things that drive the cost of submersible operations...

It's not the... replenishing the oxygen

or the carbon dioxide scrubber, that's nothing.

It's all about the ship.

And the next most important thing is mobilization.

How do you get the stuff from one location to another?

That's 90 percent of your cost.

[Harris] If you were to build a five-person sub

out of steel and titanium,

it would be extremely large and extremely heavy.

You'd need something enormous to lift it out of the water to carry it.

What about these ones I'm holding now? They don't have a lot of...

This doesn't go any higher than where it is.

[Harris] If you can realize that dream of a carbon fiber submersible,

you can drop the price, you can suddenly have fleets of these submersibles

operating around the world.

Okay, now what?

- He's got to do all that? - [man] Yeah.

[Harris] It's not like metal.

You know, titanium is extremely well understood.

Carbon fiber is far more idiosyncratic,

in that the little fibers inside there can snap.

[click]

That snap? That actually creates a sound.

[Dave Dyer] We have the acoustic sensors.

If we have carbon fiber that snaps,

we can pick that up in the acoustics.

Any time a fiber snaps, that weakens the structure, as you can imagine.

[chattering]

If an individual strand of fiber cracks,

if carbon cracks inside the hull,

this hopefully will detect that crack, which is indicative of structural failure.

[Rush] Got some fuzz.

[Harris] This was called the acoustic monitoring system.

It was basically an array of microphones

all over the hull that listened for each of those fibers breaking.

The sound of that carbon fiber snapping, OceanGate believed,

could actually be used to determine

whether it was about to fail the whole structure.

In 2021, their website claimed that their real-time monitoring

is an unparalleled safety feature,

so that anyone inside that submersible would get a forewarning.

They'd have time to stop their descent to surface safely.

[woman] We hope that we hear nothing. That would be ideal.

That we hear nothing and that the structure is perfectly sound

the whole way through the test.

[woman 2] How did you get involved with OceanGate?

[woman] Um, so, they had contacted somebody at Boeing.

So both myself and the other gentleman, Jake, work for Boeing.

[Harris] Connecting with Boeing helped a lot.

[machine whirring]

Carbon fiber was something these Boeing engineers understood.

And they were just based literally steps away from OceanGate's headquarters

in Everett, Washington.

So the Boeing team there in 2013

created a concept design document.

It was a pretty hefty document, like 70 pages, I think.

In that document, I would say they had set out a path or a roadmap

to build such a vessel.

[Dyer] Okay, coming down.

[Harris] These Boeing engineers were very concerned

about the possible performance of the carbon fiber hull.

[Dyer] The purpose for this test is, we've scaled the hull down

to about a quarter of the size of the full-size model.

We assemble it, we put all our instrumentation in it,

we run it and put it into the chamber

and it simulates taking that hull down to the depth that we want to go.

- [Dyer] Are you stable? - We're stable. We're good.

[Dyer] John, you ready?

Fifteen hundred. Go ahead.

[air pump rattling]

Each one of these pulses is some kind of an event in the hull.

Epoxy settling or a strand breaking. Hopefully not breaking, but...

What's our pressure, John?

We're at 3,500.

Let's go to four.

Where are we now? There we are.

Oh.

- [woman laughs] - [Rush] What do you think, Dave?

Let's just see how she settles down, but that's a lot of events.

[woman] Yeah, you don't want to do that.

- [loud snap] - [all] Oh!

[Rush] Okay.

[woman] Where did it go to?

[Dyer] It went to 4,000...

4,009 (PSI).

So at least you know the acoustic monitoring works.

[Rush] Well, yeah, but the fact that he couldn't even...

We didn't get to the last pressure we did last time. I mean, that kind of...

that solves a lot.

On that day, they were super excited, then when it imploded, they got pissed.

[man] Oh, here it is.

- Yeah, right here. - [Dyer] Let's go see.

[Rush] I just can't believe it.

We couldn't even get past fucking 4,300 PSI.

[Dyer] No.

[Assi] Stockton, he had that vibe of like,

"Everything is going to work out," like, "We got this."

Look at that.

[woman] Oh.

[Rush] Yeah, so it's an implode-explode.

Well, okay.

[Stockton] I think it was around 3,000 PSI,

we started to see a little bit of acoustic activity on one of the hemispheres.

And it got worse,

um, and when we stopped at 4,000 PSI

the whole thing failed.

So the good news is,

we started to see evidence of failure before it happened,

which is one of the test objectives:

to validate the acoustic monitoring and see if you can predict failure.

All tests are good tests.

That came out... different.

[Dyer] Excellent piece of art.

It's a regular Jackson Pollock.

[McCallum] The monitoring system for the hull

was something that was dreamt up by OceanGate,

in order to try and give some comfort

to people who were asking too many questions.

After we set the threshold to 2,000, now here we have a bunch of events

that have happened here on a number of different data channels.

So right now it's been relatively quiet at 6,000,

so we're going to go up to 6,500

and if we start seeing some events, we'll stop.

[McCallum] You know, if I have a ski made of carbon, or composite material,

and I'm putting pressure on the ski and you can hear it creaking and cracking,

you don't actually know when it's going to snap.

[bang]

I would say that was it! [chuckles]

- [man] Should we stop now? - Yeah, I think so.

[McCallum] So you're listening to this thing screaming,

you're listening to it stressing

and telling you that it's under immense pressure,

but it can't tell you when it's going to fail.

[Harris] The Boeing engineers sent Stockton an analysis of that hull,

the forces exerted on the hull as it would go deeper and deeper,

that had a skull and crossbones

at the depth just below where the Titanic would be sitting.

[Harris] It was quite a telling sign to me that their concerns went pretty deep.

[female investigator] Why did OceanGate and Boeing stop working together?

I-I don't know exactly. You know?

I think maybe we were too expensive.

Even when it was obvious that Boeing wasn't going to build the sub,

Stockton kind of had the recipe book.

And then I think Stockton realized that he needed

some engineering expertise in-house.

You couldn't contract everything out to University of Washington, APL...

As the Director of Engineering, did you make all engineering decisions?

No.

- Did you make any engineering decisions? - Yes.

And who would make the majority of the engineering decisions?

[Nissen] It was Stockton.

Most people would just eventually back down from Stockton.

Like, it was almost death by a thousand cuts.

[Harris] So Tony came on board, I think 2016.

He centralized a lot of the engineering expertise

and hired other engineers and built up the engineering team...

that were to really replace U-Dub,

to do their own designs and to create a-a finished vessel.

[objects rattling]

Stockton turned to me and said, "Well, now it's your problem."

[chuckles]

[Lochridge] The wreck itself, it lies off Nantucket.

We steamed out with the submersible, Cyclops 1.

We knew it was going to be the test for the company,

and it was going to be very dangerous.

[Stockton] We're going to stay down as long as possible.

We have a new comms procedure. We're going to go two hours.

We're going to drop 100 meters up current, best guess.

Like Titanic, the plan was to actually map the entire wreck.

I was going to be taking four of the paying passengers down.

But on the day of diving,

Stockton decided he no longer wanted me in the sub.

He was going to be taking the passengers down.

And that's when I protested.

The wreck is decaying at a rapid rate. It's very, very dangerous.

There's a lot of hazards.

He just decided he wanted to do

what he wanted to do, and he was the CEO.

So we did lock heads on that day.

I eventually persuaded him to allow me to come in the sub,

but he wanted to pilot it.

[no audible dialogue]

[Lochridge] I'll pass it right down. You can get yourself in.

[wind whooshing]

[Rush over radio] Starting to initiate underwater comms.

I'm going to start the camera now.

[Rush] Go for it.

Go ahead and vent at will.

[man in blue] Vent at will.

[air hissing]

[man in blue] Venting.

[air hissing]

[Rush] Dive, dive, dive.

[man in blue] Dive, dive.

[Rush] All right. We are lifting off.

Roger, liftoff.

- [Lochridge] Clear of the LARS. - [Rush] Yep.

[Rush] Roger, read you topside. We are 3-2 meters descending.

[Rush over radio] Comms check. All good at 4-0 meters.

[static hisses]

[Rush] Tell me when you get bottom contact, we are at eight meters off.

[Lochridge] Nothing yet.

- [woman] There it is. - [Rush] There it is.

[man] It's right there, see it?

[Rush] Okay, bring it in.

[man] Oh.

- [woman] There it is. - [Rush] Yeah.

[woman] We see it perfectly well.

That's the lights?

[Rush] Can we, uh...

[woman] Rotate a little bit more.

[man] We're very, very close.

[Rush] We're too far down.

[man] There's debris all around us.

- Right, okay. - [Rush] See that?

- [man] That's the shot out here. - [Lochridge] Wow. Okay.

[man] I'm just saying, we're a little close.

- [man] I'm not telling you what... - [Rush muttering]

[Lochridge] He came down, drove forward three meters away from the bow.

Basically, he brought us into a debris field.

[Rush] I'm going to put some lights on. Ready?

- [woman] Okay. - [man] Yeah. Yeah.

- [Rush] Okay? - [man] Yeah.

[Rush] I'm going to motor to the three o'clock,

so that if we drift, we drift past it.

- [man] Okay. - [Rush] Okay?

[Lochridge] The wreck's only three meters off to the port side, Stockton. Whoa.

Come down, come down, come down. Come down. Come down.

Come down. Keep coming down.

[air hissing]

Okay, if you've got nothing ahead of you, kick ahead, okay?

Kicking ahead slowly, slowly.

- [man] What is it? - [Lochridge] I don't know.

Just keep going, about a hull.

[whirring]

[Lochridge] He brought us in to the starboard side

and jammed us in underneath the bow.

So he had us jammed good and proper.

I said to him, "Please don't do anything. Just give me the controller."

[Rush] If we went straight up, are we... We're not going to hit it.

We're going to get damn close though, right?

[Lochridge] No, we are going to hit it. For sure.

Chris, if you could keep an eyeball out of the port side of the viewport, okay?

We're just looking for any cables, any wires.

[Lochridge] He didn't have a lot of experience in piloting subs.

Right, it's a piece of debris, for sure.

- It's right above us. - It's right above us.

At that point, I got us clear, I motored 50 meters away,

turned us round, and I said,

"That is what we were supposed to have fucking done on the dive."

And he said, "Thank you, I owe you one."

Topside, for information, we are 3-0 meters off the bow,

returning to surface.

Current depth, 5-2 meters.

[air hisses]

[woman] We got stuck underneath the bow.

[camera operator] I don't even know if I want to hear this story.

Literally, you could see it in the dome port,

and it was right behind us.

David took over.

Yeah, David was looking up.

He looked up in the dome port.

We were gonna go straight, but there's a big hill.

But yeah, we were right underneath the bow. It was great.

We saw-- Definitely there is a wreck down there. It's big.

[Lochridge] The passengers were hugging.

But with Stockton, it was a complete turnaround for me.

[photographer] On three! One, two...

[Lochridge] He never really spoke to me the rest of the trip.

The dynamic changed.

[Lochridge] After the Andrea Doria,

I started getting cut out by senior management

from the Titan project.

I was dropped from all email communications,

verbal communications.

I was totally out of the loop. But at the same time,

I am the chief pilot. I was the Director of Marine Ops.

It was going to be me that was going to be doing all these dives.

Obviously in my head, I'm like, "This isn't right. It's not right."

Being me, very vocal,

I spoke to some of the board of directors when they came in.

I would speak to Stockton on a regular basis.

Chief Operating Officer, Stockton's wife.

All these people that basically ran this company.

And I would speak to them and express my concerns.

And because it didn't just come in as a ready-built sub,

I was seeing every single piece.

And pretty much every single piece had an issue.

[whirring]

[Rush] Today is the critical joining of the titanium and the carbon fiber.

That seal needs to be uniform and small, but not too small.

This is the point of no return right here.

[shutter clicks]

[Lochridge] The engineering director, Tony Nissen,

we used to argue on a regular basis.

Level. Do a good cleaning. Check the surface out.

[Lochridge] He brought in people that had very little experience

from the manned submersible industry.

A lot of them were fresh out of college.

[reporter 6] Mark Walsh is lead electrical engineer

and a recent grad of WSU Engineering School in Everett.

24-year-old Nicholas Nelson is too.

[Nelson] Just knowing that we're sending something down to 4,000 meters,

and it's our design that's being brought there is just amazing.

[Nissen] For a while, David would come to me and...

I kind of want to use the word complain,

but really, it's David's way of expressing his concern.

[Lochridge] At the time, I had no experience of carbon fiber,

but for the untrained eye, it was like Swiss cheese.

You could actually see the porosity,

you could see the delaminations, you could see all the voids.

When they eventually sealed up the titanium interface rings,

they took it out into the car park at Everett

and sprayed it with truck bed liner.

[Nissen] Stockton was annoyed if somebody just questioned

the idea of what we were doing.

He very much took that personally.

[anchor 8] An Everett-based company just finished building a submarine

that they'll take to the Titanic this summer.

So this is a laser scanner.

[reporter 6] OceanGate Engineering Director, Tony Nissen,

is showing off some of the high-tech equipment

he and his team are about to install on their newest five-person sub, Titan.

New cameras will capture 4K resolution.

[Lochridge] As these components were actually getting put together,

I was the only person to stand up to them and say,

"You have to get this thing inspected.

We have to get the third-party inspectors in."

"Are you getting them in?" "We're dealing with it, we're dealing with it."

I was just, I was fobbed off on every occasion.

It brings a tear to my eye.

It took a lot of pain to get here.

[chuckles] I'd say it was a lot of pain to get here. We did this extremely fast.

[McCallum] We were at lunch one day at OceanGate,

and Stockton said that he decided

that he saw no need for classification, for third-party oversight.

[interviewer] How'd that go over at lunch?

[McCallum] I stood up, and I said, "Sorry, I can't be part of this conversation,

nor can I be associated with OceanGate or this vehicle in any way." And I left.

He had every contact in the submersible industry

telling him not to do this.

But once you start down the path of doing it entirely yourself,

and you realize you've taken the wrong turn right back at the beginning,

particularly for Stockton,

then you have to admit that you were wrong...

That's a big pill to swallow.

[Rush on radio] Ready to rock and roll.

[air hisses]

[Lochridge] They said to me,

"This is getting handed off to you in the coming weeks."

I'm like, "Guys, I've already said, we're not diving this."

- [glass shatters] - [cheering]

[Lochridge] So Stockton said to me,

"Okay, I want you to go out there and carry out an inspection of the Titan."

[Lochridge] Over a number of days, I did tests.

I took photographs.

From there, drafted what I thought was a very nice email

stating, at the end of the day, the responsibility lies with me.

And I sent that out on January the 18th.

The following morning, I get an email. We're going to be holding a meeting.

It was myself. It was Bonnie Carl, the HR Director.

Scott Griffith, Quality Assurance Director.

I had Stockton Rush, the CEO.

And Tony Nissen.

[Rush on recording]

- [Rush] - [Carl, Lochridge]

[Rush]

[Lochridge interjects]

[Lochridge] I'm not naive.

I could sense the mood.

[Rush on recording]

[Lochridge hesitates]

[Lochridge] I could tell in Stockton's voice, he was nervous.

He was shaking. I could see his hands.

He was angry.

He was so angry.

It's not the most angry I've seen him, or heard! [chuckles]

But... that day was pretty bad.

[Rush on recording]

[Lochridge]

[Rush]

[Lochridge]

[Rush]

[Lochridge]

- [Rush] - [Lochridge]

[Lochridge]

[Rush]

Why test something with people in it?

I don't understand that.

To me, it was just sheer arrogance.

[Rush on recording]

I didn't know what to say,

but I was blown away

that at this point they were willing to play Russian roulette.

[Carl on recording]

[Lochridge]

[Rush]

[Lochridge]

[Rush]

[Nissen] I feel bad for David. I really do. It shouldn't have happened.

That day Stockton told me

it would be nothing for him to spend $50,000 to ruin somebody's life.

[interviewer] Did he say that to you in regards to David?

Yeah.

That changed my life in that company.

Changed how I had to manage the engineering department.

I had to make sure that nobody spoke up.

I worked for somebody that is probably borderline clinical psychopath,

but definitely a narcissist.

How do you manage a person like that who owns the company?

[Carl] I knew at that moment I couldn't work at that company anymore.

I went home and updated my LinkedIn profile,

and obviously I didn't say anything to Stockton or Neil at that point.

And Stockton went along as though,

"Okay, now Bonnie is going to be our next lead pilot,

and this is going to be great."

"We're going to have a female lead pilot. This is going to play well to the media."

And I just remember thinking,

"What is happening? Are you nuts? I'm an accountant."

I decided to leave.

I don't think I said two words to Stockton,

and that's where I left it at.

[Hammermeister] I had stuck with the company for over a year as an intern.

Near the end of my senior year of university,

they sent me to the Bahamas.

[rousing music playing]

[Hammermeister] Titan was down there in testing.

[man over radio] Max. Do you copy?

[Max] Go ahead.

[music fades]

That was kind of like, "All right, you can help work on this stuff,

and if it's something that works out for both of us,

then we can take you on full-time and give you a job offer."

It was my first work trip.

[thunder rumbles]

[man with clipboard] So we've got dive 39.

Objective of a 4,200-meter depth.

We've got a long day ahead of us,

so we're going to be starting operations tonight.

The game plan is to start vessel prep at 3 a.m.

[Hammermeister] At the beginning, Stockton did the dives by himself in Titan.

[Rush] Okay.

I've got the recorder on. Voice recorder is on.

It is 3:55 a.m.

in sunny Marsh Harbor.

[water burbling]

[electronic whirring]

[Hammermeister] He had said it was loud, but he had said that's what we expected.

That's the carbon fiber "seasoning."

I've never heard of seasoning a hull.

Okay. You get quite a bit of noise.

I've got that on the microphone.

Uh, quite... attention-getting pops.

[loud pop, crackling]

[Rush] Man, what the fuck!

[pop]

As long as it doesn't crack, I'm okay.

[cracking, popping noises]

That'll get your attention.

That will get your attention. [sighs]

Stockton wanted one acoustic sensor on there.

I put 18 strain gauges and nine acoustic sensors.

He was angry that I did that.

He was more afraid of being lost at sea,

sitting on the surface than he was of the vehicle imploding.

[popping]

[Rush] Unbelievable. 3,938 meters, Dana.

Ah...

- [cracking noises] - [Rush exhales]

- [loud pops] - Close enough.

[screws grinding]

Titan, your bolts are out. You can pressurize now.

[Rush] Copy that. Will do.

[buzzing]

[man] Ohh.

[Rush] A little bit of water for you!

Hey.

- [cheering] - [man in helmet] Welcome back.

[man, shouting] Four thousand meters!

That's right, 17.3 hours, another record.

[laughing]

I think James Cameron is the only other person

to be in the sub that long alone as well.

Amazing accomplishment, everybody.

Let's celebrate.

- [whooping] - [applause]

Okay. Yeah!

The funny thing is this was mission 39.

The depth I got on the camera, 3,939.

I did it on purpose just for that.

I could have easily gone to four, but why?

Anybody who doesn't call 3,939 four... is an ass.

It violates the NAR, and then we don't care.

It's like, "That's not good enough for you? Fuck you."

[camera operator] Could you go ahead and scratch that for the camera,

and say you did go to 4,000?

[Rush] That's right.

You're going to edit this out.

4,039, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Unload them all in there.

Okay.

[Nissen] We were looking at the data, and I told Stockton,

I said, "Look, we don't know what good looks like."

"What I do know is it shouldn't look like that."

[pops]

[cracks]

[loud pop]

[Nissen] If you're hearing,

or your acoustic monitoring system is showing you spikes,

it's still breaking.

You don't want to hear that anymore, because if it's not breaking, it's intact.

- Congratulations, man. - Thank you.

- Awesome. - [chuckles]

[interviewer] Do you think that Stockton understood the risks?

[Nissen] No.

He didn't.

Allegedly, he's a degreed aerospace engineer,

but there are scientific principles he wholly didn't understand.

[Nissen] 2019 was going to be the first Titanic mission.

He was angry I wouldn't sign off on it.

"You need another dive. We need a clean dive out of this."

[wind whooshing]

[indistinct chatter]

[Harris] The Bahamas testing process went on for months.

[Rush] All right, Mark, let it go.

Again.

Again.

[Harris] It was a bit of a chaos, to be honest.

There were a lot of problems with the electrical systems,

um, which needed replacing.

Okay, we're good. Lock me up.

[Harris] And at that point, they'd already had some really serious concerns

about what was going on with that hull, the noises it was making.

Looking good, hold that line.

Hold that line.

- Okay, a little bit to starboard. - [radio chatter]

[Harris] It took four months from Stockton's solo dive

for them to dive the Titan again to a deep test.

On board that day

was another submersible expert, Karl Stanley.

He had built his own submarine.

He was operating it for tourism down in Honduras.

And Stockton was proud and wanted to show off the Titan.

[Stanley] My relationship with Stockton goes back at least ten,

possibly up to 15 years.

When I learned that he was making a carbon fiber sub,

I was excited about it.

I went out to Washington and I gave him a week of free labor,

working on the first version of the launch and recovery vehicle

with the understanding that one day, somewhere, that I was going to get a ride.

We dove over 12,000 feet.

[Stanley] Forty to the bottom.

- [Rush] Forty meters to the bottom? - [Stanley] Forty meters.

- I do not have visual. - [cracking]

[Stanley] The cracking sounds would amplify when you got deeper.

[multiple cracking echoes]

[cracking getting louder]

[male investigator] So after you came up from the dive,

did you partake in any meeting

where the results of the real-time monitoring acoustic sensors

were examined by the group

and tried to isolate where the sound occurred?

That information was not shared with me.

He didn't think much of our... He didn't have me sign a waiver,

never gave me a spiel about

how "everything's transparent and please ask any questions."

It was just like, "You're here, let's go."

Welcome, gentlemen. How are you doing?

[Rush] Hey!

[Harris] After the dive, Karl and Stockton exchanged emails.

[male investigator] You say, "The sounds we observed yesterday

do not seem consistent with glue joints breaking,

air cavities breaking."

"The only question in my mind is if it will fail catastrophically."

At any point within those emails,

were you made aware that a crack was identified in the hull?

[Hammermeister] I had tickets to St. John's.

I was going to be a part of the topside team.

We were planning out a lot. We had mobilized and shipped containers.

And then one of our pilots found a crack in the sub.

[man] Okay, go ahead.

Go in with the needle nose another inch. Okay. Right there.

- [man 2] Right there? - [man] Right there.

Yeah.

Do it again.

I can see, not the paint moving,

but I see black hull moving in and out.

- [man 2] The black moving? - [man] Yeah.

[man 2] Yeah.

[Hammermeister] They brought everything back from the Bahamas,

and they ended up having some of the engineering team

grind out the carbon fiber hull to see how deep in the crack went.

That was not public knowledge,

they said, "Do not say anything to anyone."

[Nissen] After I got back from the Bahamas

and cutting out a lot of the crack, Stockton asked me to go to lunch.

He told me that two people on the board

told him that I should have known that this problem was there.

And I told Stockton, "I did know, and I told you it was there."

"And in fact, I wrote a report that showed that it was there."

And Stockton said, "Well, one of us has to go.

And it's not going to be me."

Okay.

[Hammermeister] A few engineering folks were fired.

I was very surprised.

We had a meeting six days before my flight to St. John's.

Coincidentally, the boat canceled as well.

To the public, Stockton said, "Obviously we need a topside vessel."

And they said, "Yeah, we're not going."

And then it was later brought out to the public,

you know, "We're going to redo this hull."

And I don't think it was ever quite explicitly said why.

I was like, "I should just quit."

[Nissen] I wasn't going to fight him. I wasn't going to go to the board.

Because Stockton stated clearly how he likes to ruin a life. [chuckles]

[gulls calling]

[Paul McDevitt on recording] Uh, okay.

[McDevitt] Mr. Lochridge contacted our office in 2018.

Initially, you know, I thought his case seemed like it was pretty strong.

[Lochridge on recording]

[Lochridge] Within days of that happening, OceanGate were informed.

I was enrolled under the Whistleblower Protection Scheme.

I was told that I would be protected.

[McDevitt] OceanGate did respond.

They filed a lawsuit against Mr. Lochridge.

It was, "We're coming after you, your wife,

your house, your green card..." everything.

I mean, it was a crusade. "How dare you stand up against me?"

Wankers. That's on camera.

"Wankers" a good word over here?

[interviewer] It's the Whistleblower Protection Program, right?

[McDevitt] Unfortunately, whistleblowers, they're not protected from retaliation.

We're not like the, you know, Witness Protection Program

or something like that.

We, you know, what we do is investigate.

[Lochridge] The intent was to shut us down.

Basically, keep me quiet so they could proceed with the project,

get out to Titanic, and take people out there.

[female investigator] This next set of questions, when I say Titan hull,

I am specifically talking about the second Titan hull.

[man] Okay.

[female investigator] Can you describe the third scale model testing?

I don't have those tests in front of me.

I didn't get them. But I know that it failed.

So we knew that we had to do something different because it wasn't working.

[Hammermeister] After the crack happened, I wanted to quit.

That's when they were like, "You know what,

we're going to remake the hull for Titan in a better way."

And I was like, "Okay, they're doing the right thing. I can stay."

[Harris] There was a lot of pressure when this first hull failed.

They suddenly realized,

"Not only can we not get revenue coming in this year.

We now have to replace either that hull or the whole vessel."

Hundreds of thousands of dollars, you know, millions of dollars

by the time you put in people's time and effort.

[Hammermeister] Right before the new year,

Stockton and the new engineering head that they had brought on

offered me a position as a project manager,

to help out with the timeline management of the new hull.

They also said, "We want to train you as a submersible pilot.

We want to bring you full-time onto the operations team."

Stockton, he had said, you know, "We want you to be a female, young pilot.

We want you to be the face of the company."

He says he doesn't want a 60-year-old man or something.

When I asked for a raise, "They said, no, this is lateral."

And then, because I think that you might ask me again why I stayed...

[interviewer] Yes, I will.

It was COVID. [chuckles]

And was watching all my friends throughout the pandemic

get laid off everywhere.

And I was like, "Okay, if I have a job, cling on to it."

[Harris] Money got tight.

He realized suddenly we're looking at probably a two-year runway

before you can dive again.

Stockton downsizes the engineering team.

There were not a lot of big meetings regarding the build of the new hull.

It was oftentimes the head of engineering,

the COO, and Stockton, and myself.

They were working with a lot of different carbon fiber vendors.

And the group that they hired to make it,

they were carbon fiber industry experts.

But they had not ever made a submersible before.

The third scale model was built and then tested in July of 2020.

It failed at 3,000 meters.

And that was pretty disheartening, I think, for the team.

But then for me, it was kind of the response to that.

[female investigator] So to confirm, there was no successful third scale model test

to Titanic depth prior to going to this full scale hull.

That's correct. That's correct.

[Hammermeister] They started on the full-size hull.

[interviewer] Were you able to talk to anyone about it?

[Hammermeister] Yeah.

I did speak up.

A lot of people did.

Like, they discussed their concerns. They're like, "What do you mean?"

Like, "This failed. You're going to keep going?"

Stockton was just so set on getting to the Titanic

that nothing that anybody said made much of a difference.

And I was not going to bolt anyone inside of that sub.

And that was something that a lot of my coworkers at the time agreed on,

and none of which stayed with the company much longer.

They said, you know, "You either stick with us or you don't."

And I said, "Okay. I'm putting in my two weeks."

[interviewer] Did you track what was happening after you left?

With the new hull?

Yeah. As best I could.

I was just hoping they weren't going to go.

[David Pogue] To this day,

we, the journalists don't know

how much we were misled by whatever Stockton told us.

I'm a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning,

and one day I got an email

that said a company called OceanGate has invited us to do a story.

[interviewer] Was there no hesitation at all?

- No hesitation at all. - [interviewer] That's pretty trusting.

Ha! Well, I just figured the guy clearly wants press.

He's not going to put a live correspondent on anything that's dangerous.

[Pogue] We were there in the second summer of operation.

They would make five expeditions a summer.

One nine-day trip is an expedition.

[Pogue] They do that five times.

Each expedition has five chances to go down to see the Titanic.

[alert sounding]

Titan reports on bottom at 3,748 meters.

[scattered hoots]

All told, that is 25 opportunities per summer.

And in total, after two summers, they'd only been down there nine times.

[water splashing on microphone]

But I felt like OceanGate had a maniacal safety culture.

They had this rule of three.

If three tiny things were wrong or out of place or not optimal,

they don't dive. They cancel the dive.

[Rush] They're bringing us back up.

- They're bringing us back up? - [Rush] Yeah.

Yep, they're bringing us back up.

- Something happened? - Something happened.

[Pogue] They had literally the leading expert on Titanic diving, P.H. Nargeolet,

probably the greatest expert alive.

I asked him over and over, "Nothing about this worries you?"

And he said, "No, of course not."

I said, "Okay, that's fine. That's fine. No problem."

That also gave me a lot of reassurance.

[Pogue] What is your function on this expedition?

I'm helping as much as I can, because I know a little bit the Titanic.

[Pogue] You know a lot about the Titanic.

[inaudible]

[McCallum] P.H.'s involvement is always going to be a mystery to us.

[man over radio] Slip drop rate is released.

[McCallum] He was told in no uncertain terms

that he was lending his credentials

to something that had a clear and obvious flaw to it.

[Nargeolet] Slow down, slow down. He's just in front of us.

[McCallum] His response was always the same.

"I'm an old man. I've had a fantastic career.

If I can help add safety to their operation,

then that's a win."

[Pogue] Oh, my gosh. Here's the bow, guys.

- [man] Yeah. - [laughter]

[Pogue] Do you guys see it?

[man] Look at that, how it just kind of emerges out.

[Wendy Stockton over speaker] All hands, Titan is on the bow of the Titanic

at a depth of 3,741 meters.

- Okay, done. There we go. - [cheering]

Piece of cake.

[McCallum] How on earth did Stockton get as far as he did?

I will never understand that.

[Rush] We've been lucky.

I don't know if it was Elon came up with this,

but luck is the number-one superpower.

And anybody who's done anything in the ocean appreciates luck.

[McCallum] It just became such a tight group of people

who had such strong belief in what they thought they were doing

that it became almost cult-like.

- [wind whooshing] - [woman cheering, clapping]

[man on radio] Titan topside.

Welcome back to the surface.

Whoo! Yeah, baby!

- [whooping] - [applause]

[indistinct chatter]

[Pogue] He fully believed in what he was doing and that it would work.

Why else would he be the pilot on most of the dives?

Why else would he invite a television crew to film it?

Your sub has just returned from the entire day at the Titanic.

- Again. - Again! [chuckles]

Our David Pogue was invited recently

to join the highly select and very small group of people.

[Pogue] Our story about OceanGate aired in November of 2022.

I think viewers thought it was super cool, super interesting.

Stockton was thrilled.

He said, "We're already getting calls."

[female investigator] Mr. Catterson, did you ever go on a dive on Titan?

[Catterson, quietly] No.

Would you have felt comfortable going on the Titan to depth?

No.

[Nissen] Stockton's and my relationship started to turn sour.

As everything was built,

he wanted me to be the pilot that runs the Titanic missions.

And I told him I'm not getting in it.

That certainly was the death of me.

If you can't convince your own people who believe in your mission

that your vessel is safe,

then there's something deeply wrong with your company.

Do you listen to those concerns? Do you take them on board?

Do you make them part of the process of making this the safest vehicle

that they all wanted?

Or do you call them into a conference room and say you're fired?

[McCallum] The unsung hero in this is Dave Lochridge.

He was perhaps alone in the room that realized how bad things really were.

I mean, he refused to compromise his professional standards.

[Lochridge] We decided to counter-sue OceanGate.

But rather than what OceanGate did,

they decided to sue us in civil court,

which remains behind closed doors.

We decided to do it in federal court so that it would become public knowledge

and the public have complete information.

[Lochridge] We had to fight them with everything we've got.

But it was costing us financially.

I mean, for the first seven months, we put savings into this.

We fought them from our own pocket.

And as you can imagine, a lawsuit is no easy thing,

especially when you're being threatened with theft, fraud.

Once we get the written response

and we get all the evidence from both sides,

unfortunately, at that point, the investigation has to pause

because as an investigator, I have a lot of other cases.

[Lochridge] "Please note, at this time,

I have 11 cases that are older than yours.

I will be in contact with you as needed. Thank you for your patience."

My wife and I had decided, this is... I'm not going to say pointless,

but it was going nowhere, and it was causing more hurt for us.

Um, and ev... It's difficult.

So Carol and I decided to... to walk away.

We were running out of money. We were running out of fight.

We were done. We were burnt out.

The authorities weren't willing to help us.

We had to walk away. That was it.

[McDevitt] He had OceanGate breathing down his neck.

So he basically withdrew his complaint.

[interviewer] And then that case just goes away?

Mm-hm. Yeah.

[male investigator] Dr. Ross, in expedition 2022,

were you there for the entirety of the expedition? All five missions?

No, I only attended mission four and five.

[male investigator] Were you on board for dive 80?

Yes.

We know that the carbon fiber was starting to react differently at depth

based on the incident that occurred on dive 80.

[Alfred Hagen] We were ascending, and I-I don't recall the depth.

I think we were fairly close to the surface,

but we were still underwater.

And there was a...

you know, just a large bang or cracking sound.

On mission four, when we got to the surface, Scott was piloting.

He heard a really loud bang.

- Um, not a soothing sound. - [Scott] No.

Um, but on the surface, and as Tim and P.H. will attest,

almost every deep-diving sub makes a noise at some point.

[metallic creaking]

[Neubauer] The vessel was still able to make additional dives after that occurred,

but the data changes significantly after dive 80.

That's where the real-time monitoring system could have been a huge benefit.

Because it is showing additional fibers are breaking.

[rumbling, hissing]

That should have been a warning.

In the end, they discounted the one system

that was gonna be vital to their operations.

It is really, in my mind, the smoking gun of what eventually caused this.

What we really wanted to do was bring the sub back,

at least to Everett,

and pull the insert

and just look at the inside of the hull

to see if there were any cracks.

And, um, it was very frustrating

because it was left in St. John's and left on the dock.

[wind howling]

[Nissen] I told Stockton, "Don't do that."

"Once we build this, it cannot be stored in sub-zero.

It cannot go freezing."

If water gets in there,

and you sit it out in freezing conditions and that water expands, it breaks fibers.

With 100% certainty,

that sub could not go freezing.

It's critical to keep the water out.

[Brooks] We had no way to work on it, no way to look at it,

and, uh, we were told it was a cost issue,

that the cost of shipping it back was prohibitive.

They were low on money, so we couldn't do that.

And, really, that was basically around the time that I left.

[hesitating] I had gotten quite frustrated with some of these issues

and had decided to leave the company.

[Neubauer] By the third operating season, it was clear

that a lot of the engineering expertise had departed OceanGate.

[inaudible]

[Neubauer] It appeared that OceanGate felt comfortable

after the vessel was able to get to depth,

that they had a proven concept that could just keep operating.

All right, let's just do our walk. I'll just keep it natural right now,

and I'm going to come back and do all my talking points later.

- You want me to just point some stuff out? - Oh, yeah, yeah. All right.

So first time hopping on the boat. I'm so excited.

We're going to walk up, check it out, and just kind of go around

and see what we got ourselves into for the next few days. [laughs]

Let's go.

My name is Jake Koehler. I'm a YouTuber.

[laughs]

"Scuba Jake" is really what I go by.

What's up, guys? Welcome back to my channel.

If you're new, my name's Jake, and I'm a treasure hunter.

So today we're in...

[interviewer] What was it about the Titanic?

I was always intrigued by the story.

I mean, I actually went online

and looked at the videos of the scene, what it looked like.

Like, one of the scariest movies growing up was Titanic for me.

It was weird, like, coming full circle

that I was going to go check it out as an adult, but...

I actually reached out to OceanGate myself.

So here it is. This is Titan right here. That's the sub. Go take a look.

[people chattering]

[Koehler] So is that the part you said, aesthetically...

[male employee] Yeah, this fiberglass is up. Kind of the hood is open.

[Koehler] Makes it look a little bit more

like we're winging it, which is pretty cool.

- [male employee] "Winging it." - [woman laughs]

Yeah!

Just kidding. [laughs]

[interviewer] Were you aware so far that spring,

that they had not had a successful dive?

Um, I learned that, especially when I first got to Newfoundland,

that the first couple missions were unsuccessful.

It's just the weather was so bad.

[metallic creaking]

[Koehler] But we spent a few days out there, and I got seasick a lot.

[woman] Oh, my good God! [laughing]

[laughing continues]

Are you okay?

[Koehler] We were going out. It was always really windy. The waves were really big.

I was ready to get home, I'm not going to lie,

but at the same time, we came for a reason.

[indistinct chatter]

- [Koehler] All right, we're doing it now. - [people laugh]

[Koehler] Ready to go. There's your submarine right back there.

[man on radio] Negative.

[Koehler] You know what I didn't realize, is it's freezing cold.

And I got in.

It was really strange

because at that point I've never been inside of it before.

[woman] Ah!

[indistinct chatter]

- [metallic clatter] - Oh, no!

There goes one.

That's all right. Just a nut, we got many.

[Koehler] Alright, guys.

[man on radio] Stockton, ready to dive.

[static clicks]

[Koehler] Yeah, we are. We're doing it.

Oh my... Jesus!

[man murmurs]

Look at this. We... It... We're literally straight down.

[indistinct chatter]

[Koehler] What's he saying right now?

[male employee] He said, "You're locked in."

"Okay to lock in?"

[Rush] That means they're probably going to bring us up.

[male employee] Yeah, you know, because we've had no comms for a while.

[Koehler] We were about to go off, but the fog rolled in,

so that dive was canceled.

I'd be interested to hear what happened up there.

I'm sure it's not too much fun.

Mm. Yeah.

[Koehler] It kind of sounds, you know, weird to say now,

but I was a bit disappointed.

[Koehler] That whole duration probably took a couple hours,

but I remember I was like, I remember my feet being cold.

[man on radio] Topside.

[Koehler] Because the condensation on the inside of the submersible,

you could see it beading.

Later on, I remember they had the crane holding up the dome

after everyone had passed away,

and I just remembered my feet was literally on that dome

just a few days before.

And I'm just thinking like, damn, you know, like, what if that was me?

It's a bit... tough.

[Koehler] You know, it's not really... it's not about me.

I, you know, just feel bad for everyone else, of course,

but, uh, yeah, it's tough.

It's a lot of what-ifs, but you can't live like that, you know.

[sniffs]

[Harris] In 2023, OceanGate had made four previous dive attempts,

and they were all foxed by either weather or technical difficulties.

On the first dive of the final expedition,

about one and a half hours into that dive,

communications and tracking suddenly stopped.

[low rumbling sound]

[rumbling continues, then fades]

- [waves lapping] - [wind blowing]

[Harris] From the very first time I talked with people

when the sub was still missing,

there were sources who were saying to me they had left because of Stockton.

I had one source who told me he had two phones because of Stockton.

He didn't want Stockton to know what phone...

There was... There was one who actually wouldn't really fully open up to me

until we all learned that Stockton had died.

[melancholy, orchestral music playing]

[Harris] It was at that exact moment

I believed there was a real story about why this had happened.

[Rush] This is the future of the company.

This is the path I've determined to take.

I have no desire to die.

I've got a nice granddaughter. I am going to be around.

[sighs]

The real mistake isn't in the idea that something wasn't classed,

or we didn't follow a set of regulations.

That's not really the mistake.

[Harris] Stockton came to identify himself with OceanGate.

He's the guy who does this.

He's the guy who breaks through barriers to unlock the oceans to humanity.

If you criticize any aspect of that operation,

you're criticizing him personally.

[Lochridge] The main thing

is if something goes wrong with you being in that submersible,

your topside support...

Everybody says, "Oh, it'll just be Stockton's wife.

That's the only person you'll be liable for." Nonsense.

Those are the ones that are left with the aftermath.

Those are the ones that are left to answer to the accident investigation team.

OceanGate is done.

It's culture that caused this to happen.

It's culture that killed the people. A hundred percent.

[interviewer] Did you receive any news or update

from OceanGate after the implosion?

[in French] No. OceanGate, on the contrary, was silent.

Not even a little note, "We're sorry your dad died." Not even that, no.

[reporter 7] Now to the new lawsuit by the family of a Titanic explorer

killed in the submersible implosion last year.

The wrongful death suit seeks $50 million

and claims those on board were terrified as they realized what was happening.

[Lochridge] He wanted fame.

First and foremost, to fuel his ego, fame.

That was what he wanted.

And he's got it.

[Rush] I have no desire to die, and I'm not going to die.

[Rush] What may easily happen is we will fail.

I can come up with 50 reasons to call it off, and fail as a company.

I am not dying. No one's dying under my watch. Period.