The OceanGate manager was reportedly encouraging passengers on a trip to the Titanic wreck in 2021 to “sleep” when one of the Titan submarine’s batteries “blew” during the voyage.
A videographer who was part of the expedition told the BBC program The Travel Show in 2022. According to Jaden Pan, the battery was dead about two hours later, at the start of the dive.
Not far from the wreck, OceanGate founder Stockton Rush informed the five passengers that they had to return to the surface.
“At first I thought he was joking because we were more than two hours away from our expedition and so close to the ground,” Mr. Pan said during the broadcast.
“Then he explained to me that one of the batteries had failed and that we had problems with the electronics for the weights, so it would be difficult for us to get back to the surface,” he said. -he adds.
The leader would then have offered his passengers to sleep while the weights dissipated, a process that can take up to 24 hours to get to the surface.
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Half the crew rejected this solution, forcing Stockton Rush to use another solution via a hydraulic pump to reduce weight and thus allow the machine to climb. According to the New York Post, which is reporting this story, the Titan then returned to the surface.
Remember that Mr. Rush was at the helm of the submarine when it imploded on June 18, killing everyone on board, including British billionaire Hamish Harding, French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and the Pakistani tycoon Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman.