OceanGate, Inc.

OceanGate is a privately held company based in Everett, Washington, providing crewed submarine solutions for research, military operations, and commercial exploration. The company's crewed submersible technology is used for deep-sea technology testing, underwater site survey and inspection, underwater scientific research and data collection, and underwater film and media capture for various industries. OceanGate is focused on developing and providing crewed submersible services to help enable researchers and explorers access to the ocean's resources and lower the cost of discovery of the ocean.

Stockton Rush, CEO and founder of OceanGate.

OceanGate was founded in 2009 by CEO Stockton Rush, who graduated from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned an MBA between 1987 and 1989. Stockton Rush also earned a Bachelor's degree in Aerospace, Aeronautical, and Astronautical Engineering from Princeton University and started OceanGate after working as a commercial pilot. He has been cited in various interviews talking about his interest in exploration, specifically ocean exploration, based in part on his personal belief that people will colonize the ocean before colonizing space.

An OceanGate Cyclops 1 submersible.

The first submersible developed by OceanGate was engineered in collaboration with the University of Washinton's Applied Physics Laboratory. The submersible is named Cyclops 1 and is capable of carrying a crew of five. It was first launched in March 2015 and is now on display at Seattle's Museum of History and Industry. In the wake of the 2023 Titan mission to view the wreck of the Titanic and its disappearance, the mention of partners and collaborators on the development of OceanGate's submersibles was removed.

In July of 2021, OceanGate launched its first submersible to the Titanic shipwreck site, a 12,500 foot-deep dive in the North Atlantic. The submersible took photos of the wreck before resurfacing. In addition to this dive, OceanGate planned to make annual trips to the Titanic to employ 3D imaging techniques to document the wreck's condition over time.

OceanGate's Titan submersible.

The Titan was a Cyclops-class crewed submersible designed and manufactured by OceanGate. The submersible was designed to take five people to depths of 4,000 meters or 13,123 feet for site survey and inspection, research and data collection, film and media production, and deep sea testing of hardware and software. The submersible used off-the-shelf components to help streamline the construction, operation, and field replacement of parts. OceanGate developed a patented, integrated launch and recovery platform with the Titan to increase the ease of operation in varying sea states and used a local, appropriately sized ship for the project.

Further, the Titan was developed with OceanGate's proprietary Real-Time Health Monitoring (RTM) system, to provide a real-time assessment of the integrity of the hull throughout every dive. This system uses co-located acoustic sensors and strain gauges through a pressure boundary in order to analyze the effects of changing pressure on the vessel as it dives deeper.

OceanGate's 2023 expedition to the wreck of the Titanic included five high-net-wealth individuals and lost contact on June 18, 2023, during the second hour of the dive. Passengers included Stockton Rush, Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood, Suleman Dawood, and Paul-Henry Nargeolet.

The lost submersible led to an extensive search operation, including the Canadian and United States Coast Guards, which deployed boats with sonar capabilities, and the U.S. Navy, which deployed a lift system capable of recovering objects from 20,000 feet deep. On Tuesday, June 20, 2023, banging sounds were detected by sonar device, although it was unclear whether the noises were from the missing submersible, and ocean factors further complicated the efforts to identify and locate the noises. Conditions on the submersible have been described as cramped, with no standing room onboard, and likely freezing due to the lack of sunlight and the near- or below-freezing temperature of the water at the depth they were believed to be at.

The expedition was part of an eight-day trip, which cost passengers around USD $250,000 per head. The Titan submersible used in the expedition did not use a tether connected to a surface vessel, as is common in these types of submersibles; rather, it operated through an acoustic link through sonar signals that allow for the transmission and reception of short messages between the surface and vessel, often limited to basic telemetry and status information.

However, in the second hour of the expedition, the vessel lost contact, leaving some to suggest the battery-powered vessel may have suffered a power failure. And though it would be ideal to have an emergency backup power source to maintain emergency and life support equipment, it was unclear if such a system was onboard or if it was operational. It was also unclear at the time of the loss of contact what other safety systems were onboard and what, if any, damage they had suffered.

Late on Thursday, June 22, 2023, The United States Coast Guard and Canadian Coast Guard found a debris field near the wreck of the Titanic. After further investigation by deep sea submersibles, the wreck had features consistent with the OceanGate Titan submersible. Based on the debris, it is assumed the vessel suffered some kind of failure that led to a rapid implosion.

The loss of contact with the expedition and the extensive search operation led to the resurfacing of previous concerns around OceanGate's submersibles. These concerns came in 2018, when an OceanGate employee, David Lochridge, brought safety and quality control concerns to OceanGate's senior management, for which, according to an accompanying lawsuit, he was terminated. The report allegedly detailed numerous safety concerns of Lochridge, including worries regarding what Lochridge described as visible flaws in the carbon fiber supplied to OceanGate. Lochridge was also concerned that the company's acoustic hull warning detection would trigger with only milliseconds before catastrophic implosion.

The missing submersible also led to industry experts airing some previous safety concerns, which they allege had been mentioned to OceanGate or others. These include an industry expert belief that the Titan submersible was experimental with no industry certification or oversight, which is not representative of common industry practice. The typical industry classification process puts a craft through recognized third-party agency reviews to ensure it has been tested properly and that it is safe.

OceanGate responded to these claims in 2019, explaining that the Titan was not classed because the company believes the classification process inhibits innovation and does not address pilot error, which it considers to be the cause of most marine accidents. Legal experts noted, as the search for the missing submersible expanded in hopes to find it before the onboard oxygen ran out, that based on the safety waiver signed by passengers, the likelihood of a successful lawsuit on the part of the families of those onboard the submersible was very slim. However, some have noted the potential for the company to face federal charges for negligent homicide.