CNN
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A former employee of OceanGate Expeditions emailed another former partner of the company several years ago with an ominous warning about the potential failures of its Titan submarine and its CEO. North Atlantic, according to New Yorker.
David Lockridge wrote about Oceangate CEO Stockton Rush. The company offered $250,000 per ticket tours of the 111-year-old remains of the Titanic.
Lockridge began working as an independent contractor for OceanGate in 2015 and then as an employee between 2016 and 2018. CNN reported. He soon became embroiled in a lawsuit with OceanGate, claiming he was wrongfully fired for raising concerns about Titan’s safety and testing.
02:55 – Source: CNN
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“I consider myself very bad at doing dangerous things, but it’s an accident waiting to happen,” Lockridge wrote in an email to Rob McCallum, a project partner at a marine-certification company, according to a report by The New Yorker.
“There’s no way on earth you could have paid me to dive this thing,” Lockridge continued.
McCallum, a divemaster who led expeditions to the Titanic, warned Rush in 2018 about the safety of the Titanic submarine, telling the CEO that he was putting himself and his clients at risk. CNN previously reported.
David Hiscock/Reuters
Titan’s recovered submarines from OceanGate Expeditions arrive in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador on Wednesday via Horizon Arctic.
The OceanGate was scheduled to reach the remains of the Titanic on June 18 when it lost contact with its mother ship, about 1 hour 45 minutes. Several days later, officials confirmed the Titan — a 23,000-pound vessel made of carbon. Fiber and titanium, and the size of a minivan – suffered a “catastrophic explosion”.
The Five men on board Identified as Rush; British businessman Hamish Harding; French diver Paul-Henri Narcolet; Pakistani billionaire Shahjata Dawood; and Dawood’s 19-year-old son Sulaiman Dawood.
