OceanGate was warned of potential ‘catastrophic’ problems with the Titanic mission.

Submarine industry leaders were so concerned about what they called the “experimental” approach of OceanGate, the company whose vessel has gone missing, that they wrote a letter in 2018 warning of potential “catastrophic” problems with submarine development and the planned mission to explore the wreckage of the Titanic.

The letterobtained by The New York Times, was sent to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush by the Manned Underwater Vehicles committee of the Marine Technology Society, a 60-year-old trade group whose purpose is to promote and educate the public about ocean technology.

The signatories — more than three dozen people, including oceanographers, submarine operators and deep-sea explorers — warned that they had “unanimous concern” about OceanGate’s development of the Titan submarine, the same vessel now missing in the North Atlantic with five people on board.

The committee’s chairman, Will Kohnen, said in an interview Tuesday that the letter stemmed from fears about what could happen if the company failed to adhere to established standards.

“The submarine industry was very concerned about the strategy of building a deep-sea expedition submarine without following existing classification safety guidelines,” said Mr. Kohnen.

The letter said that OceanGate’s marketing of the Titan was “misleading”, claiming the vessel would meet or exceed the safety standards of a risk assessment agency known as DNV, but the company had no plans to sell the vessel. to be assessed by the agency.

The industry leaders said OceanGate should test its prototypes under the supervision of DNV or another accredited registrar.

“While this may require additional time and expense,” the signatories wrote, “it is our unanimous opinion that this third-party validation process is a critical part of the safety measures that protect all occupants of submersibles.”

Mr. Kohnen said in the interview that Mr. Rush, CEO of OceanGate, called him after reading the letter and told him that regulations in the industry were hindering innovation. In a Blog post 2019 titled “Why Isn’t Titan Classified?” the company made similar arguments.

OceanGate said in the post that because the Titan craft was so innovative, it could take years to get it certified by leading rating agencies. “Notifying an outside entity of any innovation before field testing is anathema to rapid innovation,” the company wrote.

An OceanGate spokesperson declined to comment on the 2018 letter.

Another signatory to the industry group’s 2018 letter, Bart Kemper, said in an interview that he and other members were concerned that the Titan had not followed standard certification procedures.

“In this letter, they were basically asking them to please do what the other submarines are doing, especially the passengers,” said Mr Kemper, a forensic engineer who works on submarine designs, citing Atlantis Submarines, a Canadian company that conducts submarine travel , for example.

Another signatory, Charles Kohnen, Will Kohnen’s brother, said the entire industry was concerned about Titan. “We had concerns,” he said Tuesday, “and we addressed them in the letter and we made sure OceanGate received our concerns.”

More recently, OceanGate referred to some technical issues with the Titan in a lawsuit.

“During the first dive to Titanic, the submarine encountered a battery problem and had to be manually attached to the jackup platform,” the company’s legal and operational adviser, David Concannon, wrote in a 2022 petition to U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, which oversees Titanic-related matters. The submarine sustained modest exterior damage, he wrote, prompting OceanGate to cancel the mission to make repairs.

Still, Mr Concannon wrote in the application, 28 people could have visited the Titanic wreck on the vessel by 2022.

Mr. Concannon invited the federal judge hearing the case, Rebecca Beach Smith, to join the company on an expedition, according to a separate filing, something the judge seemed interested in doing.

“Perhaps if there is another expedition in the future I will be able to do that,” the judge wrote in May, adding that after hearing about the Titanic wreck for decades, “that chance would be quite informative and a first look.” on’ view of the wreck site by the court.

Kitty Bennett contributed research.