The Titan submersible had to abort a dive just days before the implosion that killed its five passengers as they explored the wreck of the Titanic, an ex-employee of the company that operated the vessel testified on Thursday. The testimony from former OceanGate scientific director Steven Ross came as the US Coast Guard began a two-week hearing on Monday into the 2023 catastrophe, which will feature evidence as to what went wrong and whether physical or design failure contributed to the accident, which garnered worldwide attention.

Ross told the hearing that the earlier dive had to be aborted due to a valve malfunction that left at least one passenger hanging upside down and took “considerable time” to correct.

He said that when the privately-owned and operated submersible surfaced during that dive, it tilted so its bow was pointing upwards at a 45-degree angle.

Ross, who was inside along with four other passengers, explained that “there’s nothing to hold on to inside this submersible.”

The pilot that day — OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who died in the implosion days later — “crashed into the rear bulkhead,” Ross said. 

“The rest of the passengers tumbled about. I ended up standing on the rear bulkhead,” he continued. 

“One passenger was hanging upside down, and the other two managed to wedge themselves into the bow end cap.”

He said no one was injured in the incident, but that inside the cramped and confined space “it was uncomfortable and unpleasant, and it took considerable time to correct the problem” — at least an hour, by his reckoning. 

Rush, he said, was “upset” by the incident.

Rush and four passengers descended in the submersible on June 18, 2023, to observe the wreck of the Titanic.

But contact was lost less than two hours after their departure. A vast rescue operation was launched in the hope that the passengers had simply lost power and were drifting helplessly in the ocean’s depths.

However, within days it became clear that the sub had been destroyed in a cataclysmic implosion. 

Victims are presumed to have died instantly in the disaster, which occurred under the crushing pressure of the North Atlantic at a depth of more than two miles (nearly four kilometers).

Apart from Rush, the four others on the Titan were British explorer Hamish Harding, French submarine expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani-British tycoon Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman.

The family of Nargeolet has taken OceanGate to court, claiming $50 million for negligence. 

A debris field was found 1,600 feet (500 meters) from the bow of the Titanic, which sits 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

The Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in 1912 during its maiden voyage from England to New York, with 2,224 passengers and crew on board. More than 1,500 people died.

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Almost a year after the Titan sub implosion, an Ohio real estate investor intends to prove that the expedition can be completed safely by sending a two-person submersible down to Titanic-level depths. Billionaire Larry Connor said he and Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey will travel more than 12,400 feet to the Titanic shipwreck site in the submersible, as per a report in the New York Post.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the investor Larry Connor said, “I want to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way.”

Mr Connor has designed a Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer, a $20 million vessel, which will carry out the voyage. It has been named “4000” for the depth in meters it can reach. “Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology. You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago,” he added.

Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey told WSJ that Mr Connor called him a few days after the Titan sub implosion and said that need to build a sub that could dive safely. “You know, what we need to do is build a sub that can dive to (Titanic-level depths) repeatedly and safely and demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that, and that Titan was a contraption,” Mr Lahey told about the billionaire. However, the real estate investor has not mentioned any specific date or timeline.

Mr Lahey was among the numerous industry critics who attacked OceanGate before and following the catastrophe, accusing it of questionable safety standards. Following the implosion, he called OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush’s strategy for getting people on board “quite predatory.”

Notably, the passengers on Titan had to sign a waiver that classified the ship as “experimental” three times and listed numerous ways in which they could die, as per a report in Business Insider. Errors, unsuccessful travel, and a sense of insecurity were also mentioned by previous travellers.

British explorer Hamish Harding, French submarine expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani-British tycoon Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman and Stockton Rush, died in the tragic accident. OceanGate has since then stopped these expeditions.

Experts recovered presumed human remains from what was left of the Titan sub after almost five days. Mangled debris recovered from the small submersible was offloaded in eastern Canada, which brought to an end a difficult search-and-recovery operation. A debris field was also found on the seafloor, 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, which sits more than two miles below the ocean’s surface and 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.