In a 2021 court filing, OceanGate’s legal representative touted the specifications and a hull monitoring system that he called “an unparalleled safety feature” built into the Titan submersible.

The legal representative informed the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, which oversees matters related to the Titanic, of the company’s expedition plans at the time.

The filing lays out the Titan’s testing details and its specifications, including that it had undergone more than 50 test dives and detailing its 5-inch-thick carbon fiber and titanium hull.

The filing said OceanGate’s vessel was the result of more than eight years of work, including “detailed engineering and development work under a company issued $5 million contract to the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory.”

But according to the University of Washington, the laboratory never dealt with design or engineering for OceanGate’s Titan vessel. 

In a statement to CNN, Kevin Williams, the executive director of UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory, said the lab’s expertise involved “only shallow water implementation,” and “the Laboratory was not involved in the design, engineering or testing of the TITAN submersible used in the RMS TITANIC expedition.”

In 2022, the legal representative updated the Virginia court on OceanGate’s expeditions in another court filing.  

“On the first dive to the Titanic, the submersible encountered a battery issue and had to be manually attached to its lifting platform,” the filing in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia reads. 
“OceanGate decided to cancel the second mission for repairs and operational enhancements” after the vessel “sustained modest damage to its external components,” it reads.

There were no submersible-related issues that canceled dives on the third, fourth, or fifth missions, according to the court filing. 

CNN has reached out to OceanGate for comment.