Minutes of a key meeting at the ill-fated Titan submarine maker have revealed the CEO said in 2018: “No one dies on my watch – period.”
The film chronicles a tense exchange between OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and his former maritime operations manager, David Lochridge, and three other employees.
The diary shows Mr Lochridge raised safety concerns, to which Rush replied: “I don’t want to die… I think this is one of the safest things I’ve ever done.”
The document was released by the US Coast Guard as part of its investigation into the June 2023 disaster when the submarine exploded while en route to the wreck of the Titanic. All five passengers died, including Rush.
OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations following the incident, raising questions about the safety and design of the submarine.
During two weeks of hearings, investigators are seeking to shed light on the cause of the tragedy and make recommendations to prevent similar incidents from happening again.
The transcript was uploaded to the investigation website on Friday, but some parts of the document were redacted.
The US Coast Guard has now confirmed to BBC News who spoke at the crucial exchange during the two-hour meeting.
Mr Lochridge – who gave evidence at the public inquiry last week as a former OceanGate employee – was summoned to a meeting on 19 January 2018.
He compiled a “quality control report” that outlined serious problems with the submarine’s design.
These concerns included concerns about the poor quality of the submarine’s hull, which is made of carbon fiber, and problems with how the Titan was built and tested.
Last week, he told the inquiry: “That meeting turned into a two-hour, 10-minute discussion… about firing me and that my disagreement with the organization on safety was not an issue.”
The 2018 meeting was recorded and the minutes recorded Mr Lochridge as saying: “I was addressing what I considered to be safety concerns, concerns that I had raised verbally… but were dismissed by everyone.”
Stockton Rush was recorded responding: “I listened to them and I answered you, and you found my answer unsatisfactory.”
“Everything I’ve done on this project has been people telling me it won’t work — you can’t do that,” Rush continued.
After telling the meeting attendees that he did not want to die and that he believed his submarine was safe, Rush continued: “I have a good granddaughter. I’m going to stay here. I understand this kind of risk, and I’m going into it with my eyes wide open and I think this is one of the safest things I’ve ever done.”
He then added: “I can give you 50 reasons why we should cancel and why we fail as a company. I’m not dead. Nobody dies on my watch — period.”
Mr Lochridge was fired after the meeting and later raised his concerns with the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha).
But he said the U.S. government agency was slow and ineffective. After coming under increasing pressure from OceanGate’s lawyers, he dropped the lawsuit and signed a nondisclosure agreement.
At the end of his testimony at the Titan inquiry last week, he said if the government had properly investigated OceanGate, the tragedy could have been avoided.
In other developments related to the case, the US Coast Guard also released images of the Titan showing the dome of the vessel falling off when the submarine was brought out of the sea after a dive in 2021.
A paying passenger on that Titan flight described the incident in his testimony on Friday.
“The force of the platform hitting the deck… it basically sheared off some of the bolts and they shot out like bullets,” said Fred Hagen. “And the titanium dome fell off.”
It was one of 118 technical failures listed by the US Coast Guard involving the Titan diving to the Titanic that occurred before the 2023 disaster.
Public hearings will continue this week.
Testimony Monday came from OceanGate co-founder Guillermo Sohnlein, the company’s former chief technical officer Phil Brooks and Roy Thomas of the U.S. Bureau of Shipping.
