Stockton Rush, the CEO and founder of OceanGate who was piloting the Titan submersible when it suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” once admitted to “breaking some rules” when it came to building the vessel.
The U.S. Coast Guard announced on Thursday that the Titan had imploded on its journey to see the Titanic shipwreck, which would have instantly killed all five of the sub’s passengers.
On board with Rush were billionaire Hamish Harding, businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman, and French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet.
OceanGate, the company that operated the dive, said in a statement on Thursday that the passengers had “sadly been lost.”
“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” the firm said. “Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”
Since the Titan went missing off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, on Sunday morning, questions have been raised about how competently the Titan was constructed. As time ran out to find the sub and its passengers, an old clip of Rush boasting about cutting corners resurfaced.
In a 2021 interview with Spanish YouTuber alanxelmundo, Rush outlined what he hoped his legacy would be—and admitted to ignoring established practices on his mission to make it a reality.
“I’d like to be remembered as an innovator,” he said, speaking from the interior of one of OceanGate’s submersibles. “I think it was [famous American General Douglas] MacArthur that said, ‘You’re remembered for the rules you break.’”
In the two-year-old YouTube clip, Rush revealed that he had followed this philosophy during the development of the ill-fated Titan submersible.
“I have broken some rules to make this,” he conceded. “I think I’ve broken them with logic and good engineering behind me. The carbon fiber and titanium—there is a rule that you don’t do that. Well, I did.”
CEO Stockton Rush: "I have broken some rules to make this. (…) The carbon fibre and titanium there is a rule that you don’t do that. Well, I did.“#Titanic #OceanGate #Titan pic.twitter.com/XuUAMuCJ2v
— stonking.com (@stonking) June 22, 2023
The Titan used carbon fiber in its hull, which according to a former OceanGate director, was one of many major safety problems with the sub. In a 2018 lawsuit, the ex-employee claimed to have been “immediately fired” for flagging safety issues with the Titan’s construction and urging the company to rethink the way the vessel was being built.
He wasn’t alone in noticing serious flaws with the Titan. Chris Brown, a millionaire digital marketing executive, has spoken out about how he pulled out of the vessel’s ill-fated dive after paying the deposit because he feared OceanGate was “cutting too many corners.” Brown said alarm bells started ringing for him when he discovered that the submersible had been constructed with old scaffolding poles and would be steered with a $29.99 battery-powered gaming controller.
Meanwhile, filmmaker and ocean explorer James Cameron—whose 1997 blockbuster Titanic won 11 Oscars—blamed the Titan implosion on OceanGate’s “completely inappropriate” carbon fiber design, labeling it “a horrible idea” in an interview on Thursday.
He said he had previously warned would-be explorers not to get on a submersible that used the material in its structure. Cameron said he told one individual contemplating the move: “You’re going to die down there, if you dive that thing.”
Cameron has been on more than 75 deep submersible dives, including 33 visits to the wreckage of the Titanic, and made a record-breaking solo dive in 2012 aboard a specially designed submersible called the Deepsea Challenger. He is also is an investor in a commercial deep-sea exploration company alongside billionaire hedge funder Ray Dalio.
After being warned several times about the Titan, Rush defended OceanGate’s decision to use unconventional materials and veer away from the rulebook.
“It’s picking the rules that you break that will add value to others and add value to society, and that to me really is about innovation,” he said in the 2021 interview. “Innovation is when you take an invention and you make it accepted broadly, and maybe thinking of ocean exploration the way everybody thinks of space exploration.”
He also argued that instead of focusing on colonizing space—a feat that billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have both expressed an interest in pursuing—humanity should look to the oceans as its next frontier.
“The future of mankind is underwater, it’s not on Mars. We’re not going to have a base on Mars or the moon,” Rush asserted. “We’ll try, we’ll waste a lot of money. We will have a base underwater…If we trash this planet, the best lifeboat for mankind is underwater.”
