Free Republic

In a 2017 video posted to his company’s YouTube channel, OceanGate Expeditions’ CEO Stockton Rush, who perished along with four passengers on the ill-fated Titan submersible in mid-June, described the glue holding the vessel together by comparing it to a popular food. The 2017 video showed the submersible being put together as Rush asserted, “It’s pretty simple, but if we mess it up, there’s not a lot of room for recovery,” Then he added, “The glue’s very thick, so it’s not like Elmer’s Glue; it’s like peanut butter.” Rush had been warned years before the tragedy that his vessel was...

The director of marine operations at OceanGate, the company whose submersible went missing Sunday on an expedition to the Titanic in the North Atlantic, was fired after raising concerns about its first-of-a-kind carbon fiber hull and other systems before its maiden voyage, according to a filing in a 2018 lawsuit first reported by Insider and New Republic.David Lochridge was terminated in January 2018 after presenting a scathing quality control report on the vessel to OceanGate's senior management, including founder and CEO Stockton Rush, who is on board the missing vessel.According to a court filing by Lochridge, the preamble to his...