Latest on Titan submarine hearing: OceanGate specialist breaks down and says nothing will “bring our friends back”

Catterson recalled problems with the drop weight during the two test dives he took part in years before the ill-fated Titan's departure.

He described how drop weights work. “The submarine went neutral, so the submarine went neutral… They could only drop 70 pounds. That's not enough to accomplish what they wanted to accomplish,” Catterson told the panel.

When asked whether OceanGate's staffing levels on the 2023 expedition were “adequate to ensure safety,” Catterson paused before answering, “I think the training and operations at sea could have been better.”

They trained in Everett, which is “like a bathtub compared to the North Atlantic,” he said. They had no experience in harsher conditions like fog. “The training probably wasn't a good knowledge base for out there,” where the Titan set sail.

“All is well here” were some of the last words communicated by the crew of the doomed submersible Titan before the submersible imploded on its mission to the Titanic wreck site in June 2023.

The message, revealed during Monday's Coast Guard hearing into the circumstances of the failed mission, was sent to the support vessel Polar Prince on June 18, 2023, shortly before the submersible imploded and all five crew members died. It was an incident that gripped both sides of the Atlantic as crews made a desperate attempt to rescue the crew after the submarine lost contact with the surface – without the world knowing the lives had been lost.

At Monday's hearing, the Coast Guard played an animated reenactment of the Titan's voyage, capturing the submersible's final, sporadic exchanges with the Polar Prince and shedding new light on the submarine's final mission.

At around 10 a.m. on June 18, Polar Prince asked the Titan crew if they could see the support vessel on the submersible's display. The support vessel asked the crew the same question seven times over the course of seven minutes. The Titan crew then sent “k,” meaning they were asking for a communications check.

He said that after the incident with Andrea Doria, he and Stockton Rush “pretty much stopped talking to me sensibly.”

In late summer 2016, Rush and others informed him that OceanGate was “no longer willing to pay for the permanent residence of his wife and daughter.” Lochridge believed he had “embarrassed him in front of clients,” referring to the Andrea Doria crash, which marked a “turning point” in Rush's relationship.

The next day, Rush presented him with a new contract to sign, which stated that he would have to compensate the company if he left within the next 12 months. Rush instructed him not to tell his immigration lawyer about the new agreement.

“I had my doubts,” Catterson said of the carbon fiber hull.

“I think if you put pressure on it, they can warp, they can shift, they can move in all three directions,” he added.

Asked if he had raised his concerns about the hull with OceanGate staff, Catterson said he had told Stockton Rush, Tony Nissen, the first witness today, an engineer, and David Lochridge, who was fired shortly after outlining his concerns about the Titan's design in an inspection report.