In a statement to CNN, Kevin Williams, the executive director of UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory, said the lab’s expertise involved “only shallow water implementation,” and “the Laboratory was not involved in the design, engineering or testing of the TITAN submersible used in the RMS TITANIC expedition.”

The filing said OceanGate’s vessel was the result of more than eight years of work, including “detailed engineering and development work under a company issued $5 million contract to the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory.”īut according to the University of Washington, the laboratory never dealt with design or engineering for OceanGate’s Titan vessel. The filing lays out the Titan’s testing details and its specifications, including that it had undergone more than 50 test dives and detailing its 5-inch-thick carbon fiber and titanium hull. The legal representative informed the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, which oversees matters related to the Titanic, of the company’s expedition plans at the time. In a 2021 court filing, OceanGate’s legal representative touted the specifications and a hull monitoring system that he called “an unparalleled safety feature” built into the Titan submersible. Classing may be effective at filtering out unsatisfactory designers and builders, but the established standards do little to weed out subpar vessel operators – because classing agencies only focus on validating the physical vessel,” it read. “Classing assures ship owners, insurers, and regulators that vessels are designed, constructed and inspected to accepted standards. The vast majority of marine (and aviation) accidents are a result of operator error, not mechanical failure,” it said. It said classing innovative designs often requires a multiyear approval process, which gets in the way of rapid innovation.Ĭlassing agencies “do not ensure that operators adhere to proper operating procedures and decision-making processes – two areas that are much more important for mitigating risks at sea.

This 'classing' system ensures vessels are designed and built following regulations such as the number of life rafts or types of materials used.īut the Titan submersible that went missing en route to the Titanic wreck, is not classed, the blog post said. In a 2019 blog post on OceanGate’s website, the company said most marine operations “require that chartered vessels are ‘classed’ by an independent group such as the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), DNV/GL, Lloyd’s Register, or one of the many others.”

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