Josh Gates, 45, the host of the Discovery Channel adventure show, “Expedition Unknown,” once went aboard the the same submersible vehicle from OceanGate that went missing last weekend, however, he recently revealed that he refused to take a second trip on it due to safety issues that he revealed have not yet “been made public.” Gates stated on Wednesday that the vehicle, the Titan, “did not perform well” when he was aboard, which is the reason why he did not take a second trip to see the site of one of history’s most famous shipwrecks, according to The New York Post.
“To those asking, #Titan did not perform well on my dive. Ultimately, I walked away from a huge opportunity to film Titanic due to my safety concerns w/ the @OceanGate platform,” he said in a post on social media. The Discovery Channel host then seemed to drop hints that the sub had some design flaws and past issues.
“There’s more to the history and design of Titan that has not been made public — much of it concerning,” he continued.
The submersible disappeared last Sunday as it was heading to the wreckage of the legendary Titanic with five individuals on board, including billionaire Hamish Harding. After several days of frantic searching, a debris field was discovered, revealing the tragic fate of the vehicle and its passengers.
A whole host of experts, along with a whistleblowing employee of the OceanGate company, had come forward in the past over fears concerning the safety of the Titan, especially due to the fact that OG refused to get the submersible certified by organizations like the American Bureau of Shipping and Det Norske Veritas located in Europe.
When individuals on Twitter asked Gates why anyone would want to get on board the vehicle, he replied by stating that it was a trip that gave people an opportunity to see a piece of history.
“To those questioning why people would dive to Titanic: the ship has fascinated the world since the night she sank. It’s a time capsule to another era of our history. It takes courage to make a trip like this. Admiration and prayers for the passengers aboard,” he posted. “I pray for a positive outcome to the rescue efforts of those aboard.”
Guillermo Sohnlein, the co-founder of OceanGate Expeditions, was fairly optimistic about finding the vehicle and passengers still alive early on Thursday, hours before the discovery of the debris field, saying that he believed the window for rescue was “longer than what most people think.”
Again, this was hours before the debris from the submersible would be found and the final fate of those aboard the vehicle would be made known to the world.
The public was told that the vehicle carried 96 hours of oxygen, which was scheduled to run out at 7 a.m. on Thursday, however, Sohnlein believed that the crew on board the vessel would have realized days before that they could make the oxygen last longer by “relaxing as much as possible.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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