A man who had a place booked for the Titanic sub trip has said he pulled out after feeling ‘less than convinced’ about the safety of the commercial vessel.
OceanGate’s tourist submersible went missing while travelling to the wreckage of the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean, with the company confirming there were five crew members on board.
Search teams are now in a race against time to find the tiny craft, which is said to have only around 96 hours worth of air inside - with reports the oxygen is due to run out at 11am BST on Thursday 22 June.
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After the sub disappeared, a number of previous passengers have come forward to share their own experiences on board, including CBS reporter David Pogue, who tweeted to say the Titan sub also ‘got lost for a few hours’ when he was travelling on it last summer.
In his report last November, he said the crew closed the hatch, which had ‘17 bolts’, meaning there was ‘no way to escape’ without people on the outside letting people out.
“There’s no backup, there’s no escape pod - it’s get to the surface or die,” Pogue added.
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Brit Chris Brown, 61, had booked onto the OceanGate trip alongside his friend Hamish Harding - one of the five people on the missing vessel.
However, despite reserving his spot, he eventually decided to pull out.
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Speaking to The Sun, he explained how he dropped out after growing ‘concerned’ by the quality of technology and materials used by OceanGate, having found its controls were ‘based on computer game-style controllers’.
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He said: “I found out they used old scaffolding poles for the sub’s ballast — and its controls were based on computer game-style controllers.
“If you’re trying to build your own submarine you could probably use old scaffold poles. But this was a commercial craft.
“Eventually I emailed them and said, ‘I’m no longer able to go on this thing’. I asked for a refund after being less than convinced.”
The Titan vessel is controlled with a simple system, using the guide from the mothership on the surface of the water.
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Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate – also one of the missing crew members – told Pogue in his segment that some of the parts inside the vessel were 'off-the-shelf components', using one of its interior lights, bought from the recreational-vehicle company CamperWorld, as an example.
Speaking about the controls, Rush said: "We only have one button, that's it. It should be like an elevator, it shouldn't take a lot of skill.
"We run the whole thing with this game controller."
However, Rush insisted the Titan creators had worked with the likes of Boeing, NASA and the University of Washington to create a sub that would be capable of withstanding deep-sea pressure.
Featured Image Credit: Necker Island Point of Inaccessibility/ OceangateTopics: Titanic, World News, News