TitanPassenger Says Anyone Who 'Felt Safe' Diving in Submersible Was 'Delusional': 'Wasn't Supposed to Be'

Mar. 15, 2025

OceanGate’s ‘Titan’ submersible.Photo:EyePress News/Shutterstock

EyePress News/Shutterstock

A former passenger on OceanGate’sTitansubmersiblesaid during a U.S. Coast Guard hearing this week that the vessel ultimately “wasn’t supposed to be safe,” as he understood the dangers involved in exploring theTitanicwreckage before taking part in two previous dives.

Fred Hagen, an OceanGate mission specialist — which is how the company referred to its passengers — appeared at theCoast Guard’s ongoing hearinginto theTitantragedyon Friday, Sept. 20. He explained the experience from the perspective of someone who was previously onboard.

Hagen called theTitandive a “high-risk endeavor in which a dedicated attempt was made to adhere to a culture of safety,“ABC Newsreports.

“It was not safe diving in theTitanand it was never supposed to be safe,” Hagen said.

From left: Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Fred Hagen, Bretton Hunchuk and Dave Concannon in July 2021.Courtesy of Fred Hagen

Courtesy of Fred Hagen

Hagen then explained that he was not “going down in search of safety,” but rather “exploration.” He previouslytold PEOPLEthat participating in a dive is “a highly risky endeavor that could result in death,” something that passengers “clearly understand.”

Five people — including OceanGate CEOStockton Rush—died in the implosionin June 2023. The Coast Guard’s hearing kicked off on Monday, Sept. 16, and has since highlighted the final “all good here” message from the doomed voyage before the submersible lost contact with the surface, as well as other first-hand accounts from mission specialists.

The four other people onboard theTitanwho died in the tragedy were explorerPaul-Henri Nargeolet; adventurerHamish Harding; and father and sonShahzada and Suleman Dawood.

Hagen — who took part in dives in July 2021 and July 2022 to view the wreckage of theTitanic —also detailed “the paradigm that we had to be comfortable with,” per ABC News, which was that there “were limited assets” that could rescue passengers if something were to go wrong during the dives.

As he explained, citing conversations he had with people such as Nargeolet, those assets “probably could not be organized logistically and scrambled in time to save anyone if something went wrong” on the submersible.

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“We saw all the normal, iconic sites, and I wanted to investigate the area of the rupture,” Hagen said. “Of course, there’s a lot of currents swirling around and we briefly got stuck. It was just, like, pipes and things. When I say stuck, we weren’t stuck — I doubt if it was more than a minute or two.”

source: people.com