The co-founder of the company that owned the experimental submersible that imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic told a Coast Guard panel Monday that he hoped that the silver lining of the disaster will inspire a renewed interest in exploration, including the deepest waters of the world’s oceans.
The co-founder of the company that owned the experimental submersible that imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic told a Coast Guard panel Monday that he hoped that the silver lining of the disaster will inspire a renewed interest in exploration, including the deepest waters of the world’s oceans.
“This can’t be the end of deep ocean exploration. This can’t be the end of deep-diving submersibles and I don’t believe that it will be,” said businessman Guillermo Sohnlein, who helped found OceanGate with Stockton Rush.
Sohnlein ultimately left the company before the Titan disaster in June 2023. Rush was among the five people who died when the submersible imploded. Though Sohnlein left the Washington company years ago, he spoke in defense of its efforts in the aftermath of the submersible’s implosion.
On Monday, he testified that the company wanted to create a fleet of four or five deep-diving submersibles capable of carrying five people to 6,000 meters (6,500 yards) deep. The plan for the company was to have no dedicated mothership — which would’ve lowered costs substantially, he said.
“We wanted to give humanity greater access to the ocean, specifically the deep ocean,” Sohnlein said.
Sohnlein testified that the company zeroed in on the use of carbon fiber for the doomed vessel because the company wanted a lightweight, less costly submersible that did not need to be tethered to a specific mother ship. He testified that the use of carbon fiber as “not a novel idea” and said “people have looked at that before.”
No existing submersible builders could meet the company’s requirements, necessitating the pivot to building its own subs, Sohnlein said. And he said the company worked closely with the Coast Guard during development.
