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Titan company co-founder says goal was to create fleet of subs, “give humanity greater access to the ocean”
The co-founder of the company that owned the experimental submersible that imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic described lofty goals when the company was created, telling the U.S. Coast Guard on Monday that the company wanted to create multiple deep-water submersibles that could be deployed around the world.
Businessman Guillermo Sohnlein, who helped found OceanGate with Stockton Rush, said the original vision was to create a fleet of four or five deep-diving submersibles capable of carrying five people to 6,500 yards deep. The plan for the company was to have no dedicated mothership.
“We wanted to give humanity greater access to the ocean, specifically the deep ocean,” Sohnlein said.
Sohnlein ultimately left the company before the Titan disaster in June 2023. Rush was among the five people who died when the submersible imploded. Though Sohnlein left the Washington company years ago, he defended its efforts in the aftermath of the submersible’s implosion.
The Coast Guard opened a public hearing earlier this month that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. Some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company. Earlier in the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.
“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”
U.S. Coast Guard Video courtesy Pelagic Research Services via AP
Other witnesses expected to testify Monday include former OceanGate engineering director Phil Brooks and Roy Thomas of the American Bureau of Shipping. The hearing is expected to run through Friday and include more witnesses.
Lochridge and other witnesses have painted a picture of a troubled company that was impatient to get its unconventionally designed craft into the water. The accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.
Steven Ross, the scientific director for OceanGate, told an investigative panel last week that the sub malfunctioned only days before it descended into the North Atlantic for its final, deadly dive.
Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.
OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.
During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.
One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual re-creation presented earlier in the hearing.
When the submersible was reported overdue, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.
The Coast Guard last week revealed new images showing the remains of the submersible on the ocean floor more than 12,000 feet underwater.
Pelagic Research Services via AP
OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.
In addition to Rush, the implosion also killed veteran Titanic explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet; two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood; and British adventurer Hamish Harding.
Last month, Nargeolet’s family filed a $50 million wrongful death lawsuit against OceanGate. Known as “Mr. Titanic,” Nargeolet participated in 37 dives to the Titanic site, the most of any diver in the world, according to the lawsuit.
Vice President Kamala Harris is set to visit Douglas, Arizona, on Friday, marking her first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. Harris will deliver remarks to call for tougher border security measures as part of her efforts to address border issues, according to a senior campaign official.
Harris plans to say that American sovereignty requires setting rules at the border and enforcing them, stressing that Border Patrol agents need more resources.
The vice president will make combating the flow of fentanyl a focal point of her remarks and refer to it as a “top priority” for her presidency. Harris will propose adding fentanyl detection machines to ports of entry along the border and will call on the Chinese government to crack down on companies that make the precursor chemicals utilized in the making of fentanyl.
While Harris will stress the need for border security and address the lack of current resources, the vice president will also advocate for an immigration system that is “safe, orderly and humane” according to campaign officials granted anonymity to speak freely on the prepared remarks.
As Harris is set to make her case on the border, the Biden administration will soon move to cement the asylum restrictions it enacted at the southern border over the summer, officials told CBS News. The planned amended proclamation would make it less likely for the asylum restrictions to be lifted in the near future, according to two U.S. officials who requested anonymity to discuss internal government plans. Officials have credited the stringent measure for a sharp drop in illegal border crossings in recent months.
Harris’ first border trip as the Democratic nominee comes as the vice president is looking to make gains on her opponent, former President Donald Trump, on border issues. According to a recent CBS News poll, 58% of likely voters consider the U.S.-Mexico border a major factor in deciding who they will vote for. The poll also found 53% of likely voters would support Trump starting a national program to find and deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.
Trump and Republicans have long campaigned on the need for strong border security and have attempted to place blame on Harris for the influx of illegal crossings during the Biden administration.
During a Thursday press conference in New York, Trump denounced Harris’ border visit, telling reporters “she should save her airfare.”
“She should go back to the White House and tell the president to close the border,” Trump said. “He can do it with the signing of just a signature and a piece of paper to the border patrol.”
Harris will argue, according to a senior campaign official, that Trump was responsible for scuttling a bipartisan border bill that would have enacted permanent asylum restrictions and authorized additional border agents and resources. Trump urged his allies in Congress to reject the bill earlier this year.
“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games,” Harris plans to say, according to excerpts previewed by CBS News.
While Harris has been pushing for Congress to pass the bill from the campaign trail, Trump on Thursday referred to the legislation as “atrocious.”
“It would allow people to come in here at levels that would be incredible and would allow them to get citizenship” Trump told reporters. “It was not a border bill. It was an amnesty bill.”
The measure that failed to garner enough support from Senate Republicans in the spring also included executive authority to turn away migrants during spikes in illegal immigration and would have expanded legal immigration levels.
contributed to this report.
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