The lead engineer of the Titan submersible that imploded on a voyage to the Titanic wreck has told a hearing he felt pressured to get the vessel ready for the dive.
Tony Nissen is the first witness to testify at what’s expected to be a two-week US Coast Guard hearing into the deaths of five people on the Titan submersible.
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Mr Nissen said he “100 per cent” felt pressured by Stockton Rush, the co-founder of OceanGate which owned the Titan, to get the Titan ready for its voyage.
He also recalled refusing to pilot the Titan on a trip to the Titanic in 2019 because he didn’t trust the operation staff, and it was “not working like we thought it would”.
He was then fired later that year.
Mr Rush, British explorer Hamish Harding, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, and French deep-sea explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet were those killed on June 18, 2023.
A visual animation at the hearing revealed that the last words heard from the submarine were, “All good here.”
Via text messages, the last received from the Titan to staff on board a support vessel, the Polar Prince, read the submarine had dropped two of the weights helping it descend to the Titanic wreckage.
The Polar Prince then lost contact with the Titan and later failed to appear for its scheduled surface time of 3pm. The US Coast Guard was notified at 5.40pm.
It was initially thought it would take a year to conduct investigations, but the inquiry has taken longer.
It is the highest level of marine casualty investigation conducted by the US Coast Guard.