22 June 2023 , 21:57
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A former customer of OceanGate, the company that owned the Titanic submarine that likely suffered a "catastrophic implosion", has said he was "naive".
Arthur Loibl, 61, said the loss of five people onboard the submersible 'Titan' showed a person has to be "crazy" to undertake that kind of exploration.
OceanGate and the US Coast Guard confirmed earlier today that the wreckage of Titan had been found around 1,600 feet from the Titanic's bow. Questions now linger over how safe Titan was.
"You have to be a little bit crazy to do this sort of thing," the retired businessman and adventurer from Germany said.
Loibl said he first had the idea of seeing the Titanic wreckage while on a trip to the South Pole in 2016. At the time, a Russian company was offering dives for half a million dollars.
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After Washington state-based OceanGate announced its own operation a year later, he jumped at the chance, paying $110,000 for a dive in 2019 that fell through when the first submersible didn't survive testing.
'Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other,' in the small vessel, Loibl said (PA)Two years later he went on a voyage that was successful, along with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, French diver and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet and two men from England.
Rush and Nargeolet were two of the five victims onboard Titan. British billionaire Hamish Harding and British-based Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood, 48 and his 19-year-old son Suleman also disappeared Sunday after setting out for the wreckage of the famed ship.
"Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can't stand. You can't kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other," Loibl said, recalling his experience. "You can't be claustrophobic."
During the 2.5-hour descent and ascent, the lights were turned off to conserve energy, he said, with the only illumination coming from a fluorescent glow stick.
Loibl was onboard the Titan two years ago (AP)The dive was repeatedly delayed to fix a problem with the battery and the balancing weights. In total, the voyage took 10.5 hours.
The group was lucky and enjoyed an amazing view of the wreck, Loibl said, unlike visitors on other dives who only got to see a field of debris or in some cases nothing at all. Some customers lost nonrefundable payments after bad weather made descent impossible.
He described Rush as a tinkerer who tried to make do with what was available to carry out the dives, but in hindsight, he said, "it was a bit dubious."
"I was a bit naive, looking back now," Loibl added.