OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush crashed a submersible into a shipwreck and then threw the vessel’s rudimentary controls at a more experienced employee years before he piloted the doomed Titan voyage last summer.

A former OceanGate worker gave a warning to the CEO of the company before the Titan submersible disaster. It’s been just over a year since the Titan sub suffered a ‘catastrophic implosion’ on its mission to visit the wreck of the Titanic.

OceanGate’s former operations director David Lochridge, who blew the whistle on safety concerns he had with operations at the company, outlined gaps and holes in the carbon fibre hull of the Titan, which he says was addressed by spraying truck bed liner onto the hull.

OceanGate’s former director of marine operations detailed the “appalling” faults with the original model of the doomed Titan submersible that he refused to sign off on — and detailed how its CEO liked to “do things on the cheap.