OceanGate’s founder says the company didn’t start out making its own subs

OceanGate’s founder and former CEO said the company never planned to build its own submersibles while testifying during a hearing on the Titan ship explosion.

Guillermo Sohnlein founded OceanGate in 2009 with Stockton Rush, who was one of five people who died in a catastrophic eruption during a deep-sea trip to see the wreck of the Titanic in June 2023. He left the company in 2013, the year before OceanGate. began to dive into the Titanic with the Titan, an experimental, unclassified vessel.

While testifying at the US Coast Guard’s two-week hearing on the implosion, Sohnlein said when he founded the company, “developing the subs himself was not in the original plan.”

He said the vision is to get a fleet of deep-sea submarines that can carry five people up to 6,000 meters that will be available for charter. They don’t want submarines to need special aircraft carriers or support ships to be able to go anywhere in the world and operate any ship.

He said active commercial submersibles dived very shallowly – less than 1,000 meters – limiting the amount of sea they could explore.

“We want to change that,” Sohnlein said. “We wanted to give humanity more access to the sea – and specifically the deep sea, what is deeper than 1,000 meters.”

OceanGate pivots to build its own submersible using carbon fiber

Sohnlein said he knew he had to build his own submersible to get the business model right.

“If you think about the business requirements to be able to carry five people 6,000 meters without a dedicated drone that can be used anywhere in the world – there is no substitute that can do that,” he said. “Then, if you consider the cost, yes, it will be very expensive.”

Sohnlein said that Rush “convinced itself that it could build a submarine that would meet all the requirements of the business.”

Sohnlein said he’s starting to look at carbon fiber as a potential alternative to pressure hulls.

“It’s not a novel idea,” he said. “It’s not innovative, it’s just something that we started looking at when I was still there.”

Roy Thomas, an engineer with the American Bureau of Shipping, testified during Monday’s hearing that according to ABS underwater regulations, carbon fiber pressure hulls are “unacceptable materials for submersibles.”

“They have very little resistance to impact loads, and their bodies are prone to deformation under applied external loads,” he said.

Rush became CEO of OceanGate in 2013, as the company moved into developing its own submersibles.

“We transitioned from the operations phase to the engineering phase, and that was really his strength and not mine,” Sohnlein said of Rush. “It makes sense for him to take control of the company.”

Sohnlein said he made the “difficult decision” to leave the company at the time because there wasn’t much to do in terms of operations.

Sohnlein said he still owns about 500,000 common shares in OceanGate, but “basically resigned because of the fact that I’m not going to see anything from those equity shares.”

OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations after the deadly implosion.

The founders of OceanGate never moved to Titan

Sohnlein said he was offered “many times” to dive on Titan, though he never did.

“As a shareholder, I don’t want to take up a room in the sub. I wanted to make it available to those who dive it is intended for,” He said, a person who sees the Titanic as “a lifelong dream.”

He also said that he was not interested in going to Titanic.

“Sokton or I have never been driven by tourism,” he said. “We’ve never been motivated by going where people have been before. The reason we entered this is because we both want to explore. We want to not only explore ourselves, but create technology that allows us to explore the ocean.”

“So going to see a shipwreck that has been well-documented, and that a bunch of people have gone to, that does not excite me. It does not excite Stockton,” he continued.

Sohnlein describes the conversation when Rush told him he wanted to do the Titan’s first dive test to 4,000 meters solo. Said Rush to him, “I don’t want anyone else in the sub. If something happens, I want it to only impact me. It’s my design. I believe in it. I trust it. I don’t want to risk. other people, and I’ll go alone .”

In addition to Rush, those killed in the Titan explosion included French explorer Paul Henri Nargeolet, British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman.

The hearing into the implosion is scheduled to run through Friday.

In his closing remarks, Sohnlein said he doesn’t know what happened but he hopes to find “a valuable lesson.”

“This is not supposed to happen,” he said. “This shouldn’t have happened, five people shouldn’t have lost their lives.”

He also said he hopes others are inspired by his mission and Rush.

“This cannot be the end of deep sea exploration. This cannot be the end of deep diving submersibles, and I do not believe that it will be,” he said. “But I hope that one day, in the future, we will look back at this moment as a major turning point in human history – when the general and global public is finally active in all our efforts, everything we do to explore the deep ocean , learn and preserve.”