International- OceanGate rented an older mothership for its dives in 2023, per The New York Times.
- The Polar Prince was smaller and less expensive than the ships it used before, the NYT reported.
OceanGate Expeditions rented a smaller and older mothership to bring the Titan submersible close to the RMS Titanic for its 2023 dive season, The New York Times reported.
The company's CEO, Stockton Rush, rented the Polar Prince for this year's dives, which was cheaper than motherships it used for previous expeditions, according to the Times.
But the Polar Prince was small and couldn't fit the Titan submersible on its deck. Instead, it had to be towed for three days from Canada's St. John's, Newfoundland, to the dive site near the Titanic's wreckage.
Arnie Weissmann, the editor in chief of Travel Weekly, who was due to go on a Titan trip in May but had his dive canceled, claims to have told one of those who ended up dying on board 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 reportedly said.
Weissmann also wrote about an incident where, during his trip, the front of the platform and the submersible ended up underwater, and that the crew took more than half a day to fix the issue.
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 if 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 was built in 1959 and is a former Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker and buoy tender, according to the Times.
Submersibles, which are different to submarines, rely on their 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 some 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: British billionaire Hamish Harding, former French navy diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman.
OceanGate Expeditions announced earlier this month that it was suspending "all exploration and commercial operations."