The Titan, Redux

[rachelmanija]

Must-read article on Stockton Rush and the Titan.

A few excerpts:

Lochridge’s report was concise and technical, compiled by someone who clearly knew what he was talking about—the kind of document that in most companies would get a person promoted. Rush’s response was to fire Lochridge immediately, serve him and his wife with a lawsuit (although Carole Lochridge didn’t work at OceanGate or even in the submersible industry) for breach of contract, fraud, unjust enrichment, and misappropriation of trade secrets; threaten their immigration status; and seek to have them pay OceanGate’s legal fees.

...

As chief pilot and the person responsible for operational safety, Lochridge had created a dive plan that included protocols for how to approach the wreck. Any entanglement hazard demands caution and vigilance: touching down at least 50 meters away and surveying the site before coming any closer. Rush disregarded these safety instructions. He landed too close, got tangled in the current, managed to wedge the sub beneath the Andrea Doria’s crumbling bow, and descended into a full-blown panic. Lochridge tried to take the helm, but Rush had refused to let him, melting down for over an hour until finally one of the clients shrieked, “Give him the fucking controller!” At which point Rush hurled the controller, a video-game joystick, at Lochridge’s head. Lochridge freed the sub in 15 minutes.

Comments

[recessional]

It doesn't matter what environment the thing is meant to operate on. If you don't like the boat comparison, you can also use a literal car, or ATVs, or dirtbikes: the trailer and the truck pulling it are operating on the highway. The vehicle that is cargo - that is not being driven on the highway over which the officer has jurisdiction - is not, and cannot be subject to inspection.

Lifeboats are an entirely different class of thing: they are safety devices, not cargo or independent vessels. Maritime authorities have the right to inspect the safety precautions of any vessel in their waters and require them to meet their laws; ergo they get to inspect the lifeboats. They don't actually get to inspect, eg, some passenger's yacht that's pulled up in the hold and isn't being used in their national waters.

The Titan was not a safety device attached to the Polar Prince, nor was it a working sea-vessel; it was cargo. What they did with it in international waters is not, legally, relevant to Canadian maritime jurisdiction. In order to be relevant to Canadian maritime jurisdiction (or even UK jurisdiction) the Titan would have to go in the water in public national waters and then drive out - that is what "operating out of" means. Until it drives from one place to another itself with passengers in the national waters, it's not "operating out of" - it's cargo.

This is not actually difficult or complicated, and it does apply, and is a frequent problem with overfishing and other poaching in international waters, as well as smuggling and other trafficking, and currently with certain wealthy assholes evading sanctions and seizure. It is difficult to solve, because absolutely nobody wants to grant other countries too much control over international waters or much right to intervene in things. I mean hell: we established, historically, the idea of "international waters" more or less at the mutual points of guns in the name of trade.

If something - even a boat, or a sub - is on a ship and is not a designated piece of safety equipment but is legally designated as cargo, then that something is cargo, and does not have to pass inspection as a working piece of machinery. This is how you ship things both by sea and land that aren't in working order, and there is certainly no law here that says you can't ship a submersible in and out of our ports, as cargo.

That, once he was in international waters, he then decided to use it, is no relevance to our maritime jurisdiction. Or to the US maritime jurisdiction where he built and tested the thing and which is right next door to ours.

The offered consolation prizes were in harbour, which have different rules for what is and is not doable within their shelter, including a vast ways of designating something as a "test" if they reallytry - and I note the references to many cancellations, many of which may in fact have been from port authorities going " . . . no". It's possible the St John's Harbour port authority should, indeed, revise what they allow to go on in-harbour, but given his skill at legal technicalities it's entirely possible he was within legal bounds there, as well - the designation of all people who used it as "specialists" (aka not passengers, who are covered by various laws, but workers who are allowed to "test" things) would cover a lot, short of challenging it in a court of law.