A multi-millionaire was very close to joining his fellow adventurers on OceanGate’s now-missing Titan submarine, but got cold feet over fears that the company was “cutting too many corners.”
Sixty-one-year-old British digital marketing magnate Chris Brown initially paid a $10,000 deposit alongside his good friend — and one of the currently missing passengers — Hamish Harding, according to the New York Post. Brown said he and Harding agreed to go on the expedition in 2016 after having a “few beers” on billionaire Richard Branson’s private island.
However, he “decided the risks were too high in this instance, even though I’m not one to shy away from risk” due to concerns about the vessel’s design.
One of Brown’s main concerns was that the submersible would be operated by a customized $40 video game controller released in 2010. The use of video game controllers is actually relatively common in operating high-tech machinery, with many U.S. military drones being piloted by repurposed Xbox 360 controllers. However, Brown noticed that much of the sub seemed to be haphazardly put together, with “old scaffolding poles for the sub’s ballast.”
“Eventually I emailed them and said, ‘I’m no longer able to go on this thing,’” Brown said, fearing that the submersible’s design was “cutting too many corners.”
“I asked for a refund after being less than convinced,” he added.
Brown still holds out hope for the passengers of the sub, saying, “Hamish isn’t the sort of fellow to panic. He’ll be extremely calm and will be processing plans, schemes, and ideas through his enormous brain. I fully expect he’ll be a calming influence on the others in the sub, and will be giving them hope.”
The search for the sub is becoming more desperate by the hour, as the Coast Guard estimated on Tuesday afternoon that the sub had less than 40 hours of oxygen left. Rescue crews are investigating “underwater noises” heard in the search area that could be the sub’s crew banging the craft to alert rescuers to their location, although nothing can be confirmed as of now.