Titan deputy CEO dismissed security warnings as ‘baseless cries’, emails say

Warnings about the safety of OceanGate’s Titan submersible have been repeatedly dismissed by the company’s CEO, email exchanges with a major trade show specializing in deep-sea exploration.

In messages seen by the BBC, Rob McCallum told OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush he was potentially putting his customers at risk and urged him to stop using the sub until it is certified by an independent agency.

Mr Rush replied that he was “tired of industry players trying to use a safety argument to stop innovation”.

The tense exchange ended after lawyers for OceanGate threatened legal action, McCallum said.

“I think you potentially put yourself and your customers in a dangerous dynamic,” he wrote to the OceanGate boss in March 2018. “.

In the messages, Mr Rush, who was among five passengers who died when the Titan suffered what officials say was a “catastrophic implosion” on Sunday, expresses his frustration at criticism of the Titan’s safety measures.

“We have heard too often the unfounded cries of ‘you are going to kill someone,'” he wrote. “I take that as a serious personal insult.”

Mr McCallum told the BBC he had repeatedly urged the company to seek certification of the Titan before using it for commercial tours. The vessel was never certified or classed.

“Until a submarine is rated, tested and proven, it should not be used for commercial deep diving operations,” he wrote in an email.

“I implore you to take all necessary precautions in your sea trials and trials and to be very, very conservative,” he added. “While I appreciate entrepreneurship and innovation, you are potentially putting an entire industry at risk.”

In his response a few days later, Mr. Rush defended his company and his credentials.

He said that “OceanGate’s innovative, engineering-driven approach… goes against submersible orthodoxy, but that’s the nature of innovation.”

Throughout the exchange, Mr. Rush defended his qualifications and questioned the existing framework around deep-sea expeditions.

He said “industry players” were trying to prevent “new entrants from entering their existing small market”.

“I am well qualified to understand the risks and issues associated with underwater exploration in a new vehicle,” he wrote.

Mr McCallum then responded in no uncertain terms, writing: ‘It will be sea trials that will determine if the vehicle can again handle what you intend to do with it; take care and stay safe.’

“There are a lot more things to do than Titan and the Titanic,” he said.

Mr. Rush founded OceanGate in 2009 and the company offered customers the opportunity to experience a voyage to the high seas, including to the wreck of the Titanic, aboard Titan for a price of 250,000 $ (£195,600).

The company has not commented on the email exchange.

Experts have questioned Titan’s safety and the regulation of private sector deep-sea expeditions. Concerns have been raised about the Titan’s experimental design and the carbon fiber material used to build it.

Mr. McCallum was among more than three dozen industry executives and experts who signed a 2018 letter to Mr. Rush warning that OceanGate’s approach could lead to “catastrophic” problems.

“The industry has been trying for several years to get Stockton Rush to stop its program for two reasons,” Mr McCallum, a specialist who runs his own sea shipping company, told the BBC on Friday.

“The first is that carbon fiber is not an acceptable material,” he said. “The other is that it was the only submersible in the world doing unclassified commercial work. It was not certified by an independent agency.”

Submarines can be certified or “classified” by maritime organizations – for example by the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) or DNV (a global accreditation organization based in Norway) or Lloyd’s Register.

This basically means that the vehicle must meet certain standards on aspects such as stability, strength, safety and performance. But this process is not mandatory.

In a blog post in 2019the company said the way it was designed was not part of the accepted system – but that “does not mean that OceanGate does not meet the standards where they apply”.

“Stockton thought of himself as a bit of a maverick entrepreneur,” McCallum said. “He liked to think outside the box, didn’t like to be locked into rules. But there are rules – and then there are sound engineering principles and the laws of physics.”

Mr McCallum argues that no one should have traveled in the Titan submarine.

“If you stray from sound engineering principles, which are all based on hard-won experience, there’s a price to pay, and it’s a terrible price,” he said. “So it should never happen again. It shouldn’t have happened this time.”