The Titan submersible’s lead engineer says he told OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, ‘I’m not getting in it’ when asked to do a test dive

OceanGate Expeditions’ Titan submersible.

The Titan submersible’s lead engineer testified at a hearing that he felt pressured to prepare the ill-fated vessel for operations and even refused to do a test dive in it.

OceanGate’s former engineering director, Tony Nissen, testified during a Monday hearing by the Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation.

He was asked in the hearing whether he would have felt comfortable going down for a dive in the Titan. Nissen said that his relationship with CEO Stockton Rush soured after he refused to pilot in the submersible.

“I’m not getting in it,” Nissen said he had told Rush, adding he did not trust the operations crew of the vessel.

And when he was asked whether he felt “rushed to start operations,” Nissen replied, “100%.”

Nissen testified that he was fired in June 2019 because he stopped the team from going to see the Titanic that year. He said he had told them that “it was not working like we thought it would.”

During the hearing, it was also revealed that the last words the Titan’s passengers sent up to its support vessel support ship, Polar Prince, were, “All good here.”

According to an animated recreation of the Titan’s journey presented by the Coast Guard in the Monday hearing, the crew sent the message to Polar Prince about 30 minutes before it lost contact.

The hearing in North Charleston, South Carolina, is scheduled to last two weeks. Apart from Nissen, OceanGate employees like Bonnie Carl, its human resources and finance director, and David Lochridge, its operations director, will testify.

The hearing comes more than a year after the vessel set off to explore the wreckage of the RMS Titanic, nearly 13,000 feet underwater.

After the support vessel lost contact with the submersible, a frantic search and rescue operation ensued. The US Coast Guard and OceanGate finally announced on June 22, 2023, that the submersible had imploded.

All five men on board died in the tragic implosion. The victims were OceanGate CEO Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, British-Pakistani multimillionaire Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, and the former French navy diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet.