Prince Harry's North Pole guide sued over cancelled Titan submersible trip
A British explorer who guided Prince Harry to the North Pole is locked in a £1 million court battle over a cancelled expedition to the wreck of the Titanic on the OceanGate Titan submersible.
Henry Cookson is facing legal action from Karen Lo, the heiress to a Hong Kong soy milk fortune, who is claiming she should have been refunded for the Titanic trip she paid for but never took.
Ms Lo paid Mr Cookson's company £680,000 for the dive in 2017, but it was cancelled a year later after the vessel was damaged by lightning. Ms Lo was instead offered a priority place on a future expedition.
But she never took the trip because of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the Titan vessel then imploded during a dive to the wreck in June 2023, killing all five passengers including Stockton Rush, the OceanGate founder, and causing the company's operations to cease.
Ms Lo is now suing Henry Cookson Adventures, a Holland Park-based travel company specialising in trips for high net-worth individuals, claiming it is responsible for refunding her for the Titanic trip.
But Mr Cookson's company is fighting the claim, saying the heiress knew there were no refunds when she put her money down for the Titanic trip, and that she had a chance to go on the expedition later but never did.
Ms Lo has a reported net worth of $1 billion. Her wealth comes from Vitasoy, a soya milk and drinks company founded by her grandfather Dr Lo Kwee-seon, which has a reported global turnover of $1 billion and more than 7,000 employees.
She attracted headlines in 2018 when she bought Sting 's New York apartment for $50 million and again in 2023 when she sued a gallery owner for £500,000 over the alleged non-delivery of a Banksy painting she had bought.
On his company's website, Mr Cookson, a former safari guide and polar explorer, describes how he used his experience guiding horseback safaris in Kenya and in polar exploration, including a mission to the North Pole with Prince Harry, to set up the ultra high-end adventure travel company Cookson Adventures.
Papers lodged with London's High Court describe how Mr Cookson had previously been 'on friendly personal terms' with Ms Lo, even attending her wedding, and had organised trips worth 'tens of millions of US dollars' for her and her guests.
Having paid about £670,000 up front for the trip in May 2018, an email was sent by Cookson Adventures to Ms Lo explaining that the mission had been cancelled because the Titan craft had been struck by lightning and its electronic systems damaged.
Her barrister, Jack Harding, states in court papers: 'The defendant agreed to organise and supply a two-week expedition for the claimant and 17 others to visit the wreck of the Titanic between 30th June and 14th July 2018.
'The defendant's supplier for the expedition was OceanGate, a company which, at the material time, specialised in the provision of crewed submersibles for tourism, research and exploration.'
The contract 'provided 'clients' with 100 per cent credit toward 2019 Titanic dives or any other expedition offered by OceanGate' due to the cancellation, but 'OceanGate did not carry out any further dives to the Titanic wreck in 2019 or 2020', he said.
'The claimant, through her agents and legal representatives, subsequently requested repayment of the sums paid under the contract. The defendant has refused to refund any of the claimant's money.'
Ms Lo's lawyer says she wants her £670,000 back, plus interest at 8 per cent from May 2018, taking the total claim to more than £1 million.
However, Henk Soede, the lawyer representing Mr Cookson's company, denies they owe the heiress a penny.
'At no stage did the defendant agree to 'organise and supply' an expedition for the claimant and her guests to visit the wreck of the Titanic,' the lawyer states, insisting that Mr Cookson's company instead had an 'affiliate agreement' to be a booking agent for some of the planned trips, with OceanGate remaining the 'organiser'.
The contract had also contained a no-refund clause, with the agreement being that a credit towards a future voyage with priority booking rights be provided instead if the mission did not go ahead for technical reasons.
The lawyer states that while no dives took place in 2019 and Covid restrictions stopped any missions in 2020, dives took place in 2021 and 2022, which Ms Lo could have joined using her credit, prior to the final mission in 2023.
The case, unless settled, will come before a judge in court at a later date.
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