Topline
Stockton Rush—the OceanGate CEO who perished on the Titanic sub that went missing earlier this week and led to a multicountry search of the ocean—said in an interview clip two years ago that he had “broken some rules” with the design of the sub, adding he broke them “with logic and good engineering behind” him.
“I’d like to be remembered as an innovator,” said Stockton Rush, the CEO who died in the presumed … [+] implosion, before adding that he broke rules “with logic and good engineering” behind him to create the vessel.
Key Facts
Rush, who led OceanGate with the mission of making deepsea exploration accessible to tourists, admitted to breaking rules to build the vessel—specifically by building it with carbon fiber and titanium, against industry standards—in a 2021 interview with Alan Estrada, a vlogger who joined Rush on a trip to the Titanic wreck aboard the sub.
The submersible was “experimental” and had not been approved by “any regulatory body,” according to CBS reporter David Pogue, who rode the submersible on a trip to the seafloor last year in which they also got lost for a few hours.
The sub had previously made two successful voyages to the Titanic, although concerns were raised from scientists at the Marine Technology Society, who wrote a letter to OceanGate in 2018 criticizing the company for failing to meet a set of industry standards for vessel safety and urged OceanGate to send a prototype for review, according to a letter obtained by the New York Times.
Crucial Quote
“I’d like to be remembered as an innovator. I think it was General [Douglas] MacArthur who said, ‘You’re remembered for the rules you break.’ And I’ve broken some rules to make this. I think I’ve broken them with logic and good engineering behind me,” Rush said in the interview. “It’s picking the rules that you break that are the ones that will add value to others and add value to society, and that really to me is about innovation.”
Key Background
Five passengers—Rush, British aviation mogul Hamish Harding, longtime French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Sulemon—boarded the OceanGate Titan on Sunday morning and lost contact with the sub’s mother ship less than two hours into their descent to the seafloor. The group was descending to the ocean floor to visit the site of the R.M.S. Titanic’s infamous 1912 wreck, which was about roughly 400 nautical miles off the coast of Newfoundland. After the loss of contact, a huge search and rescue operation began, involving U.S., Canadian and French rescue teams. It was believed that when the crew first descended, they had 96 hours of oxygen, meaning rescuers had until Thursday morning to find the vessel. Early on Wednesday, a jet identified underwater noises in regular intervals in the search area, which were speculated to be the sounds of the passengers banging on the submersible’s single 21-inch window. Then, on Thursday, debris was found about 1,600 feet away from the Titanic’s bow that the Coast Guard said is “consistent with the catastrophic loss” of the submersible’s pressure chamber, leading them to announce they believed thatthe five passengers on board had “sadly, been lost,” though no human remains were found.
Further Reading
Mi expedición al TITANIC parte 1/4 (Alan Por El Mundo)
Titanic Sub Search: Fact-Checking Claims About The Tourist Submersible That Went Missing (Forbes)
