Rob McCallum, a co-founder of EYOS Expeditions, was brought on as an adviser to examine some of OceanGate's submersibles, and despite finding clear problems, he found his concerns went on deaf ears.
McCallum says everyone was extremely on-board with operations, describing the scenario as: "Everyone was drinking Kool-Aid and saying how cool they were with a Sony PlayStation." The expert says he immediately brought up his concerns about using a video-game controller to pilot the submarine, explaining that it wasn't designed for anything like this.
"And I said at the time, 'Does Sony know that it's been used for this application? Because, you know, this is not what it was designed for.' And now you have the hand controller talking to a Wi-Fi unit, which is talking to a black box, which is talking to the sub's thrusters," McCallum told the press.
"There were multiple points of failure," said the submarine expert.
While McCallum never managed to inspect the Titan, Oceangate's other projects were quite similar. He got to look at the submersible known as Cyclops I, which was the precursor to the ill-fated Titan.
Mr McCallum also told the New Yorker's Ben Taub that he had spoken to CEO Stockton Rush about the use of Bluetooth on the submersible, explaining to the over-eager founder that, "every sub in the world has hardwired controls for a reason — that if the signal drops out, you're not f****d."
Stockton Rush, Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood, and Suleman Dawood were all killed in an underwater implosion on June 18th, after the sub lost contact and 'went missing'.
In the weeks since, it's become clear that multiple employees, like Mr McCallum had also expressed their concerns over safety and been rebuked or even fired for doing so. McCallum cut ties with the company after he learned that no marine agency would inspect or sign off on the vessel, which he felt was clearly a sign that it was unsafe for commercial use.
David Lochridge, who had worked for OceanGate as both an independent contractor and an employee from 2015 to 2018, emailed another ex-associate, Rob McCallum, expressing worries about the dangers associated with the Titan submersible., The New Yorker reported.
David's email stated, "I don't want to be seen as a Tattle tale but I'm so worried he [CEO Stockton Rush] kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego." David had been involved in legal disputes with OceanGate after claiming wrongful termination for raising safety concerns regarding the Titan's testing and overall safety.
Despite multiple warnings, Stockton Rush had felt that it was simply enough to 'warn' people that it could go under, with employees reporting that he frequently told them: “We want everyone going into this fully informed. This is an experimental sub, this is a dangerous environment.”
At the same time, former passengers and those inquiring about tickets to go on one of these 'expeditions' say that Rush assured them personally that it was safe and that they had taken many trips. Technically, this was true, but now it turns out that the Titan only managed to reach the depth of the Titanic wreck in only about 14 per cent of the time.
Lawmakers agree, though, that disclosing the 'dangerous' nature of the trip in release forms was not enough, and at this point, Oceangate is being investigated by both American and Canadian federal governments.
