Stockton Rush (61), the American CEO of OceanGate, is one of the five victims of the Titan submarine drama. Who is the adventurer who called investing in safety “pure waste” and whose submarine is now increasingly questioned?
For years, Stockton Rush dreamed of leaving Earth. He wanted to be an astronaut. As a teenager he learned to fly with the goal of exploring space one day. At the age of 19 he was already flying transport aircraft. As an engineer he helped develop the F-15, but Rush’s aviation career stalled there. The explanations for this vary. From bad eyesight to the realization that our solar system is a dead mess. Rush had found a new, even more mysterious world to explore, he said in a 2017 interview with Bloomberg. “I realized that all the cool stuff I thought was up there is actually underwater.”
According to Rush, the underwater world with all its strange creatures is closer to Hollywood films such as Star Trek and Alien than, say, to the planets Mars and Jupiter. But it wasn’t all romance that drove him. The man also got dollar signs in his eyes. There are only a handful of submarines in the world that can take people miles to the bottom of the ocean. He would build one himself and give the lucky few the ‘experience of a lifetime’ for very expensive tickets.
Rich family
Rush didn’t have to peddle his plan. He comes from a wealthy family. His grandfather was an oil and gas magnate who had made his fortune in Indonesia. While still working in aviation, Rush tried to grow his wealth as an investor.
In 2003 the first submarine is a fact. An uncomfortable two-person tube in which you had to lie flat on your stomach and which was only 100 meters deep. But he had contracted the “deep disease,” the underwater virus, Rush said in 2019 in Smithsonian Magazine. The urge to dive deeper and deeper. In 2009 he founded OceanGate.
Then the Titanic is not yet in the picture. Although Rush has a remarkable connection to the famed ship through his wife. Wendy Rush is the great-great-granddaughter of two famous shipwreck victims. Isidor Straus and his wife Ida were among the richest people on board when the ship disappeared under the waves in 1912. Their tragic end is well known: Isidor refused a seat in a lifeboat until all the women and children were saved. Married for 40 years, Ida refused to leave her husband. They were last seen on deck arm in arm as the ship sank. In the movie Titanic, there is the fictional but gripping scene where they hold each other in a bed as the water rises around them.
Rush wanted to explore new terrain, discover other wrecks. He even thought that interest in the world’s famous shipwreck was waning. After all, a company that offered tourist expeditions with Russian submarines had ceased doing so in 2012. It was only when Rush learned that the cancellation was due to the expiration of the submarine lease contract, and certainly not a lack of interest, that he set his sights on the Titanic.
‘Catastrophic’ problems
In 2018 submarine Titan is almost ready. The first expeditions were planned. Tickets, then for more than 100,000 dollars, flew out the door. At the same time, criticism swelled. Rush, in all his enthusiasm, had little regard for safety regulations. David Lochridge, head of maritime operations at OceanGate, lost his job because he begged to have the submarine inspected. In a lawsuit, he stressed the “potential dangers if the submarine reached extreme depths.” He was talking, among other things, about the window that allows passengers to look outside. This has been tested for a depth of approximately 1,300 metres. The Titanic is at almost 4,000 meters.
That same year, the sector also urged in a letter to have the Titan certified. OceanGate’s “experimental” approach could lead to potentially “catastrophic” problems, it said. There was concern about the material used. The hull of such submersibles must withstand immense pressure and is normally made of titanium. Rush opted for a combination with carbon fibre: lighter to transport and therefore cheaper.
Certification ‘waste of money’
Rush also seemed to pay close attention to the money for other parts. In a 2022 CBS report, a journalist indicates that much seems to be ‘improvised’. An interior handle was purchased from a camping supply store, Rush acknowledged. Cheap LED lights had to provide ‘atmosphere’, a game controller controlled the craft and the jettisonable ballast, in order to be able to ascend quickly, consists of heavy metal pipes from the construction industry. There is no communication or navigation system on board. Everything is done through text messages with the mothership.
Rush didn’t see the problem. According to him, the hull was of high quality, and that is the most important thing. “Your screws and lights may break, but it doesn’t matter. Then you are still safe.” He thought the certification was a waste of money. His ship was too innovative for the conservative inspection services.
A wealthy American investor from Las Vegas who showed interest, but expressed concern about the submarine’s safety, texted back that it was “more dangerous to cross the street.”
There were (minor) incidents on all of the Titan’s expeditions. Communications regularly fell out or the boat surfaced incorrectly and ‘bobbed’ around, Mike Reiss, who has been on the trip three times as a passenger, told the BBC.
The adventurer and visionary has thus had to pay the highest price for his aversion to regulation.