Years before piloting last summer's failed Titan voyage, Ocean Gate founder and CEO Stockton Rush crashed a submersible into a shipwreck and then handed the ship's basic controls over to a more experienced employee.
OceanGate whistleblower David Lockridge told the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Investigation Board on Tuesday morning that Rush insisted on piloting a Cyclops submersible to the Andrea Doria, which sank off the coast of Massachusetts in the summer of 2016.
“He wouldn't listen,” Lockridge recalled, saying Rush ignored warnings about severe weather and tidal conditions when he deployed a submersible less than 250 feet deep with three paying clients on board.
Lockridge told the commission that Rush ignored pleas from him to stay away from the Andrea Doria, “slammed straight down” on the Cyclops as it landed, then “basically drove at full speed” and drove the submarine into the port side of the decaying bow.
Lockridge said Rush then began to panic and asked if there was enough life support on board.
“His behavior was unprofessional,” he said of his former boss' response to the crisis.
Lockridge repeatedly begged Rush to hand over the PlayStation controller that controlled the submarine, but Rush refused.
Lockridge claims Rush only agreed to take over the controls after a paying passenger yelled at him to get off.
Finally, in a fit of frustration, Rush threw the controller at Lockridge, hitting him in the side of the head, he recalled.
Rush threw the controller so hard that one of the buttons flew off, but Lockridge was able to reattach it and bring the submarine safely to the surface within “10 to 15 minutes.”
“This should never have happened. If he had acted like other submarine pilots I know, [it wouldn’t have happened]” Lockridge told the Coast Guard board about the near miss.
He explained that the Andrea Doria incident marked a turning point in Lockridge's relationship with Rush.
Lockridge claims that from that point on, he was phased out of the Titan submersible project, his concerns about the safety of the vessel were repeatedly ignored, and he was eventually fired in January 2018.
In June 2023, the Titan explodes in the North Atlantic near the wreckage of the Titanic, killing Rush and four passengers.
Rush was the submarine's pilot at the time of the accident.
