French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet had made more dives to the Titanic than any other human, so many that he was known as “Mr Titanic”.
So when he and four other crew died onboard the experimental Titan submersible last year, there was some surprise that with his level of experience he had undertaken to act as navigator on OceanGate’s tourist trip to the deep-lying wreck.
Now the Nargeolet family are claiming that OceanGate and its late founder and CEO Richard Stockton Rush, who was piloting the carbon-fibre vessel when it disappeared on 18 June, 2023, had deliberately misled the former naval commander to believe that Titan was safer than it was.
They also say that, contrary to earlier reports that the occupants would have known nothing when Titan imploded, they would in fact have had prior warning of impending danger and suffered “mental anguish” in their last moments.
The family have now launched a US $50 million wrongful-death lawsuit against Rush, OceanGate and other entities involved in developing Titan, requesting that the circumstances of the fatal incident be considered before a jury.
Titan lost contact with its support ship two hours after leaving the surface, and a highly publicised deep-sea search and rescue mission continued for four days before the wreckage was found less than 300m from Titanic’s bow, at a depth of 3.8km.
In the lawsuit the family claim that Rush had seemed take pride in flouting industry standards, actively cultivating an image of himself “as a ‘maverick genius’ of the deep-sea diving world”.
In the past he had criticised US passenger-vessel safety legislation because it ”needlessly prioritised passenger safety over commercial innovation”.
His approach was allegedly typified by use of a cheap Logitech video-game controller to pilot Titan. The “hip, contemporary, wireless electronics systems” used, unlike those of any previous submersible, relied on the power-source remaining uninterrupted, say the family.
The lawsuit was filed on 13 August at the Superior Court in Washington for King County. OceanGate was based in the state before suspending all its operations following the disaster.
’Persistent carelessness’
“The catastrophic implosion that claimed Nargeolet’s life was due directly to the persistent carelessness, recklessness and negligence of OceanGate, Rush and other defendants in their design, construction and operation of Titan,” state the plaintiffs.
“Nargeolet may have died doing what he loved to do but his death – and the deaths of the other Titan crew-members – was wrongful.” The Titanic expert had made 37 descents to Titanic since 1987, mostly working for salvor RMS Titanic Inc to retrieve artefacts for its exhibitions.
He died alongside Rush and paying passengers British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani-British businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman. OceanGate had required them to sign liability waivers acknowledging the risks of the expedition before it began.
“We have alleged in the lawsuit that had Stockton Rush been transparent about all the troubles that had been experienced with the Titan, as well as the previous, similar models, someone as experienced and knowledgeable as PH Nargeolet would not have participated,” says Matt Shaffer, a lawyer representing the family.
Another of the legal team, Tony Buzbee, stated: “I think it is telling that even though the University of Washington and Boeing had key roles in the design of previous but similar versions of the Titan, both have recently disclaimed any involvement at all in the submersible model that imploded.”
Safety record
Deep-sea submersibles have generally enjoyed a good safety record but are usually made from solid titanium rather than titanium attached to a lightweight carbon fibre body, as used for Titan.
Some experts and potential passengers had publicly criticised the submersible’s design long before the trip, as reported in previous stories on Divernet, but their objections had been dismissed by Rush as he sought to persuade deep-sea tourists to pay up to US $250,000 to visit the Titanic site.
He is said to have claimed to have fitted an advanced acoustic safety system that would warn Titan’s occupants should the hull be cracking under pressure, but a mechanism designed to drop ballast and bring Titan back up in an emergency is said to have failed.
“By experts’ reckoning, they would have continued to descend, in full knowledge of the vessel’s irreversible failures, experiencing terror and mental anguish prior to the Titan ultimately imploding,” claims the lawsuit.
Cited alongside OceanGate and Rush as defendants are the company’s former director of engineering Tony Nissen and Hydrospace Group, Janicki Industries and Electroimpact, companies said to have been involved in designing and manufacturing Titan.
Also on Divernet: CALLING THE DIVE: 8 WHO MISSED TITAN’S FINAL DESCENT, TITAN PARTS RECOVERED – AS TITANIC RADIO SALVAGE SHELVED, TITAN DISASTER: HISTORY SHOWS DEEP-SEA DIVING IS FAR FROM RISKY, FALL-OUT FROM THE TITAN DISASTER, LOST TITAN SUBMERSIBLE CREW NAMED
