OceanGate used a mothership too small to carry the Titan in 2023, dragging it behind on a platform to save money, report says

• OceanGate rented an older mothership for its dives in 2023, according to The New York Times.

• The Polar Prince was smaller and less expensive than the ships it used before, the Times reported.

• And the Polar Prince didn't have room for the Titan, so the sub had to be towed, the report said.

OceanGate Expeditions rented a smaller, older mothership to bring the Titan submersible close to the shipwreck of the Titanic for its 2023 dive season, The New York Times reported.

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush rented the Polar Prince for this year's dives, a vessel that was cheaper than the motherships it had used for previous expeditions, according to the Times.

But the Polar Prince was too small to fit the Titan submersible on its deck. Instead, the vessel was towed for three days from St. John's in Newfoundland, Canada, to the dive site near the Titanic's wreckage.

Arnie Weissmann, the editor in chief of Travel Weekly who was set to go on a Titan trip in May before his dive was canceled, recalled telling one of the passengers who later died on board the vessel that "many of the problems with my nondive may have arisen because this was the first season that the Titan was being towed behind its support ship rather than being kept on its deck."

"I thought the sub and platform were being tossed around pretty roughly on a daily basis," Weissmann said he told the passenger.

Weissmann also wrote about an incident during his trip where the front of the platform and the submersible ended up underwater — an issue he said took the crew took more than half a day to fix.

Five people died aboard the Titan last month, including Rush, when it imploded during a dive to the wreckage of the Titanic. The submersible lost contact with its mothership about an hour and 45 minutes into its dive.

The Times asked OceanGate whether the Titan being towed could have caused damage to the submersible. A company spokesperson, Andrew Von Kerens, told the outlet: "OceanGate is unable to provide any additional information at this time."

The Polar Prince is a former Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker and buoy tender that was built in 1959, according to the Times.

Unlike submarines, submersibles rely on motherships for communication and for the crew to stay on board.

Passengers spent time on the Polar Prince before climbing aboard the Titan, participating in all-hands meetings and presentations from scientists, the Times reported earlier this month.

After the submersible went missing, many experts said they had raised concerns about the Titan's safety with OceanGate and, in some cases, with Rush himself.

Some of the company's decisions may have been down to costs. Rush said in 2017 that his controversial choice of using carbon fiber to build the submersible helped save the company money.

But experts told Insider that photos of the recovered wreckage suggested that its carbon-fiber hull failed first.

Rush and OceanGate repeatedly defended the submersible and its design.

In addition to Rush, four other passengers died on board the Titan: the British billionaire Hamish Harding; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a former French navy diver; the British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood; and Dawood's 19-year-old son, Suleman.

OceanGate Expeditions announced earlier this month that it was suspending "all exploration and commercial operations."

Read the original article on Insider