A key employee who described an experimental submersible as unsafe, doomed to failure before its final fatal journey, testified on Tuesday that he often clashed with the company’s co-founder and felt that the company was only focused on making money.
David Lochridge, former Chief Operating Officer of OceanGate, is one of the most anticipated witnesses who will appear before the commission investigating the causes of the implosion of the Titan on its way to the remains of the Titanic last year, in which the five people on board died. His testimony echoed that of other former employees on Monday, one of whom described OceanGate's CEO, Stockton Rush, as an unstable person with whom it was difficult to work.
"The idea of the company was to make money," Lochridge explained. "There was very little science involved."
Rush was one of the five people who died in the implosion. OceanGate owned the Titan and took it on several dives to the Titanic dating back to 2021.
Lochridge's testimony began a day after other witnesses portrayed the image of a troubled company that was eager to put its unconventional design vessel in the water. The accident triggered a global debate about the future of private underwater exploration.
Lochridge joined the company in the mid-2010s as a veteran engineer and submersible pilot, and claimed that he soon had the feeling that he was being used to lend scientific credibility to OceanGate. He said he had the sense that the company was using him as part of the project "so that people would come and pay money," and he didn't like that.
"I felt like a puppet," he said. "The company made me give talks. It was hard. I had to show up and make presentations. All of that."