Witness gets emotional recounting doomed Titan dive during Coast Guard hearing on submersible implosion

(NEW YORK) — A witness got emotional recounting the day of the doomed Titan submersible dive while testifying Thursday during the U.S. Coast Guard’s hearing into the deadly implosion.

Renata Rojas, a banker who had previously gone on a dive to the Titanic on the experimental vessel, was volunteering and assisting the surface crew during the 2023 expedition when the submersible catastrophically imploded on a deep-sea voyage to the shipwreck site, killing five people, including OceanGate founder Stockton Rush.

The hearing took an approximately 10-minute break on Thursday during Rojas’ testimony so that she could compose herself before discussing the June 18, 2023, dive.

“They were just very happy to go,” Rojas recalled of the passengers, crying during her testimony. “That’s the memory I have. Nobody was really nervous. They were excited about what they’re going to see.”

Rojas testified that beyond issues with a dinghy, there was nothing unusual about the day of the dive — everything was done on time and they had “wonderful weather.”

She said the submersible went into the water on schedule, around 9:15 a.m. local time. She said she was waiting to hear updates on the dive after breakfast a couple hours later, but they had no update on the communications with the sub.

There was a loss of communication with the Titan at approximately 10:47 a.m. local time, according to the Coast Guard. The sub was expected to surface at about 3 p.m. local time, the Coast Guard said.

Rojas said there didn’t seem to be anything of concern until about 5 or 6 p.m. local time.

“Usually they’re allowed at least an hour in the bottom. Could it be possible that if they were in front of the bow, everybody begged in the sub to take another hour?” she said. “Like if it was me in the sub, I probably would have said, ‘Please give me another hour.’ You have to take that into account.”

After three hours of searching the surface for the sub, per OceanGate loss-of-communications protocol, the surface ship Polar Prince contacted the Canadian Coast Guard at 7:10 p.m. local time, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

Debris from the Titan was found after a four-day search.

In addition to Rush, those killed in the implosion included French explorer Paul Henri Nargeolet, British businessman Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman.

Rojas said she had saved “for a long time” for her own expedition to the Titanic. She said she didn’t think it would ever happen until she was connected with OceanGate.

She said she signed up in 2016 or 2017 to go on a dive in 2018, though didn’t go until July 2022. She said OceanGate had to make a new carbon-fiber hull and the COVID-19 pandemic caused delays.

She said she knew the submersible was experimental but felt safe.

“I knew what I was doing was very risky. I never, at any point, felt unsafe by the operation,” she said.

Asked if any OceanGate employees or past employees ever brought up safety concerns to her, Rojas said there was one who told her she wouldn’t get in the sub.

“This is never really sold as a Disney ride,” she said. “This is an expedition where things happen, and you have to adapt to change. That was, at least for me, it was very clear.”

She said as a passenger, she felt she was given the opportunity to voice any safety concerns, though never did personally.

“I knew the risk that I was taking, and still decided to go,” she said.

She said she understood that the sub was not classified by a certification society.

“It was similar to the Apollo program — they tested by doing,” she said. “Neil Armstrong didn’t ask somebody, ‘Is this vessel classed?’ before he went to space. He just got in and went.”

“For me, it was the drive of exploration,” she said. “Exploration requires risks.”

Rojas had done several dives with OceanGate, including a 2016 dive to the Andrea Doria shipwreck on OceanGate’s Cyclops 1 submersible. She said she paid $20,000 to go on it.

David Lochridge, the former director of marine operations for OceanGate, testified on Tuesday that Rush was difficult to work with during that Andrea Doria dive. Lochridge said Rush, who was piloting the sub, ended up getting the vessel stuck in the wreck and panicked. Lochridge said Rush was behaving unprofessionally and refused to relinquish control until Rojas, with tears in her eyes, yelled at Rush to give Lochridge the “effing controller” that piloted the vessel.

Lochridge testified that Rush threw the PlayStation controller at his head and one of the buttons came off, though he said he was able to repair it and get them back to the surface.

Rojas refuted part of Lochridge’s testimony on Thursday, saying, “He must have gone on a different dive. Nobody was panicking, nobody was crying, and there was definitely no swearing and yelling.”

She said Rush put the controller on the floor at Lochridge’s feet, and she did not see it broken.

Rojas, an experienced scuba diver, said she went on other dives with OceanGate until the Titan was ready to go to the Titanic. She recounted a 2015 meeting with Rush.

“He told me a sub had not been made, that he had plans to make a sub to go to Titanic,” she said. “It was going to take time, but he wanted me to go out on other expeditions, and, you know, kind of test the waters of how they did things.”

She said she enjoyed being a mission specialist — what OceanGate called its paying customers.

“It was fun. I was learning a lot. I was working with amazing people,” she said. “Some of those people are the very hard-working individuals that were just trying to make dreams come true.”

Rojas is the first mission specialist to testify during the two-week hearing, which started on Monday. Another, Fred Hagen, is scheduled to testify on Friday.

“We all want to find out what happened,” Rojas said at the close of her testimony on Thursday.

“What we have all gone through — it’s still raw,” she said, crying. “Nothing is going to bring our friends back. I hope that this investigation creates an understanding that with exploration, there’s risk. And without taking that risk and the exploration, the world would still be flat. I hope that innovation continues so that we can make the oceans accessible to people like me.”