OceanGate Expeditions CEO and founder Stockton Rush once boasted about “breaking some rules” in order to build the Titan submersible that imploded in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean Sunday, killing him and four other passengers.
Rush made the fateful comments in a 2021 interview with Mexican travel blogger Alan Estrada.
“I think it was General MacArthur who said ‘You’re remembered for the rules you break’,” he said in the video interview. “You know I’ve broken some rules to make this [the Titan]. I think I’ve broken them with logic and good engineering behind me.”
CEO and founder of OceanGate Expeditions Stockton Rush. Rush was one of the members onboard when the Titan imploded. OceanGate Expeditions/AFP via Getty Images
One such rule he claimed to have broken was using carbon fiber and titanium for the materials used to construct the tourist Titanic-bound deep-sea sub.
“Carbon fiber and titanium — there’s a rule you don’t do that. Well I did,” Rush said. “It’s picking the rules you break that are the ones that will add value to others and add value to society.”
The family of British billionaire Hamish Harding, who was one of the five passengers who died descending to the Titanic wreck this week, is mourning the loss of a man they called “a living legend.”
"Hamish Harding was a loving husband to his wife and a dedicated father to his two sons, whom he loved deeply. To his team in Action Aviation, he was a guide, an inspiration, a support, and a Living Legend,” his family said in a statement via Action Aviation, the Dubai-based company he owned, after debris of the Titan submersible was discovered.
British billionaire and world explorer Hamish Harding was remembered by his loved ones after debris from the Titan was located Thursday. AP
"He was one of a kind and we adored him. He was a passionate explorer -- whatever the terrain -- who lived his life for his family, his business and for the next adventure. What he achieved in his lifetime was truly remarkable and if we can take any small consolation from this tragedy, it's that we lost him doing what he loved.
Harding's final voyage concludes a lifetime of impressive travel.
The 58-year-old was one of six astronauts to visit space aboard the Blue Origin mission last year.
He also boasts three Guinness World Records for his daring exploits, has also made multiple trips to the South Pole, including one with retired Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who became the oldest person to reach the pole at 86.
Pelagic Research Services, the company behind the remotely operated vehicle [ROV] that discovered the submersible debris near the Titanic wreck on Thursday, said it deployed the craft as quickly as it could after OceanGate contacted them on Sunday.
After OceanGate lost contact with its Titan submersible as it descended to the north Atlantic depths Sunday morning, the company called PRS to ask for help. The group was assigned the “primary role” of searching for the missing vessel with its Odysseus 6K craft, CEO Edward Cassano said in a statement.
Within 20 hours, a nine-member PRS crew and necessary equipment departed from Buffalo Niagara International airport aboard three US Air Force C-17s, according to the company. They landed in St. John's Newfoundland on Tuesday and immediately set out on the Canadian ship Horizon Arctic.
They left St. John's within six hours and assembled and tested the ROV before it was deployed in the area of Titan’s last known location.
The vessel's debris was found shortly after.
"We have been just one part of an incredible and overwhelming maritime rescue response" Cassano said in a statement. "It's a difficult loss, and our hearts go out to the families and friends of all those affected by this tragedy."
United States Coast Guard officials said Thursday that Titan imploded under pressure, instantly killing all five passengers on board.
The stepson of French explorer and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who was one of the five passengers who died aboard the Oceangate submersible, said his stepfather would have been happy to spend his final moments near the Titanic.
John Paschall said that Nargeolet, whom he referred to as his nickname “PH,” was as happy as anywhere else when he was under the sea.
"Yeah, I think in my own opinion his home away from home was the ocean. He just felt so comfortable there," Paschall told CBS News. "I know so much of the focus of this discussion is about risk, and I felt he just accepted the risk and knew what it was, but he loved what he did.”
Nargeolet, dubbed “Mr. Titanic” for his expertise on the infamous ocean liner, would have been happy to have died near the ship that was so important to him, Paschall said. AFP via Getty Images
Nargeolet, who was dubbed “Mr. Titanic” for his expertise on the infamous ocean liner, would have been happy to have died near the ship that was so important to him, Paschall said. He had reportedly visited the wreck more than 30 times before Sunday’s doomed expedition.
"The Titanic meant so much to him, every artifact he brought up, whether it was small or it was large, meant so much to him. And the ones he was able to share with family was incredible,” he told CBS.
“He was just an amazing man in what he was able to do, and, yes, being in the Titanic, in that area, in his final moments, while it's so raw and fresh that we're dealing with it, I think it means a lot that he spent his final moments near a scene in the world that meant so much to him.”
Paschall praised his stepfather for being supportive when he came into his life when he was a freshman in high school and sparked his interest in science. He also said he was delighted Nargeolet got the chance to meet his newborn son last year before his death.
The doomed Titanic sub would have imploded and killed its crew so fast the five people aboard “never knew it happened,” an expert in submersibles told The Post.
Debris from the OceanGate Expeditions’ Titan submersible was found Thursday, confirming all those aboard had perished.
The Coast Guard said the array of debris on the ocean floor, found 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic, meant the craft would have suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” sometime after it had been lost one hour and 45 minutes into its dive to the wreck, 12,500 feet below the surface on Sunday.
By the time communication was lost, the vessel would have been just shy of 10,000 feet below the surface, experts told The Post, at which point the enormous water pressure would mean any tiny weakness, crack or fissure to the submersible’s hull would cause it to instantly implode.
Titan submersible passengers, clockwise from top left: explorerHamish Harding; OceanGate Expeditions CEO and founder Stockton Rush, Suleman Dawood and his father Shahzada Dawood; and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet. Dirty Dozen Productions/OceanGat/AFP via Getty Images
The Titan submersible disappeared Sunday roughly 450 miles from the coast of Newfoundland. Becky Kagan Schott / OceanGate Expeditions
Expert Ofer Ketter said the implosion would occur within a millisecond, if not a nanosecond, if something breached the hull of the vessel to cause a loss in pressure.
“They never knew it happened,” he said, of the five victims. “Which is actually very positive in this very negative situation.”
“It was instantaneous — before even their brain could even send a type of message to their body that they’re having pain,” Ketter, co-founder of a private submersible company called Sub-Merge, told The Post from Costa Rica.
The bodies of the sub’s five explorers — Suleman Dawood, 19; his business tycoon father Shahzada, 48; British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58; famed Titanic explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77; and OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush, 61 — are unlikely to be recovered.
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), a former Navy Seal, blasted the emergency response to the missing OceanGate submersible as an “epic failure of leadership,” after its crew was presumed dead from an implosion on Thursday.
“I have been hearing a lot of concerning things from people,” Crenshaw told reporters from the steps of the Capitol, Fox News reported. “What appears to be the case is epic failure in leadership. Where exactly that leadership failure is, I don’t know. Is it the White House, Coast Guard, Navy? I’m not sure.”
After the submersible was first reported missing on Sunday after losing communications with its support ship, Crenshaw said two critical pieces of equipment should have been deployed: a 6K ROV [remotely operated vehicle] and a Magellan submarine.
On Thursday, the ROV found debris from the vessel near the Titanic wreck. Officials said the craft imploded during its descent, killing all five passengers on board instantly.
Crenshaw served as a Navy Seal before becoming a House rep for Texas. FOX News
“Now, it’s important to note, that if you had just deployed those assets, they would have arrived on scene by Wednesday morning at the latest. That tapping continues to be heard and chatted about in all these channels throughout Wednesday. Then it stops late Wednesday,” he said, referencing the “banging noises” detected in 30-minute intervals by rescuers during the search.
“They finally deploy that 6K ROV, the only thing capable of actually going to that depth and seeing what’s down there, this morning. It deploys down there and the wreckage was exactly where they thought it would be. So where’s the failure here? The failure is to not put all your options on the table.”
Crenshaw then referenced a Wall Street Journal article published Thursday, in which a U.S. Navy official confirmed their top-secret acoustic detecting system heard a sound akin to an implosion shortly after the vessel was first reported missing.
“So, what seems to me is that the leadership, the Coast Guard, was operating off of this assumption that that was an implosion,” he said.
“Now, other experts in this industry tell me that that could have easily been the sub just hitting the floor. And then you add that with this tapping, which was apparently like your standard procedure SOS, every half hour, you are hearing that throughout the day Tuesday and Wednesday, it begs the question — could this have been resolved differently if leadership had just acted sooner and actually put options on the table instead of just assuming, well it doesn’t matter because they’re dead. “
Implosions happen shockingly fast, as demonstrated by an old animation of a railroad tanker suddenly collapsing. TikTok animators extrapolated what that might have looked like underwater.
In one clip, posted by user @sincerelybootz, a vessel that looks like a military sub suddenly flattens out, curls into a taco-shaped piece of metal and then rips apart — leaving behind nothing but air bubbles and shrapnel.
“It’s very instantaneous as far as death when it comes to any lives that may be on board,” the narrator states.
In another clip, posted by user @starfieldstudio, the OceanGate Titan is careening toward the seafloor when it begins to crumble like a stomped tin can. Metal explodes after the implosion, leaving no trace of the craft.
There’s a tragic poetry to the debris of the vessel being found 1,700 feet from the bow of the Titanic, the watchword for disaster at sea that has been the object of fascination since it went down in the North Atlantic in 1912.
There have been lots of questions raised about all that led to the loss of the Titan, and the five souls abroad, perhaps most importantly: What were they thinking? How could they have taken such a monumental risk?
The Titan submersible, operated by OceanGate Expeditions to explore the wreckage of the sunken SS Titanic. The submersible has since been confirmed to be destroyed, as parts of the hull were found among the Titanic wreck. Becky Kagan Schott / OceanGate Expeditions
They were bolted inside a cramped, 22-foot-long vessel equipped with only enough oxygen for several days that could go farther down in the depths than almost anything that could conceivably rescue them if something went wrong. Why do that?
For the same reason men have been driven to voyage on the sea, and venture under it when possible, from time immemorial.
The President of the international Explorers Club said the organization is heartbroken over the loss of the five crew members who perished on their deep-dive voyage to the wreck of the Titanic.
“Our friends and fellow Explorers Club members Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeolet are lost, along with Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, while trying to reach the RMS Titanic,” President Richard Garriott de Cayeux said in a statement.
He thanked thanked all of the agencies and organizations involved in the search for the lost submersible, which imploded. Debris from the vessel, called Titan, was found near the Titanic on Thursday.
Cayeux remembered his personal "dear friend" Harding, a British billionaire.
"He holds several world records and has continued to push dragons off maps both in person and through supporting expeditions and worthy causes," he wrote.
Nargeolet, a French Titanic expert, had been an active member of the Explorers Club since 2001, he said.
"They were both drawn to explore, like so many of us, and did so in the name of meaningful science for the betterment of mankind," Cayeux said of Harding and Nargeolet.
Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate and Titan's pilot, was a "friend" to the club who conducted lectures at its headquarters.
"While we did not know Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman personally, their desire to explore as a family would have led to to our doorstop at some point in their futures where we would have welcomed them," Cayeux wrote.
The Titan submersible implosion that killed all five on board was heard up by a top-secret US Navy acoustic detection system hours after it began its descent to the Titanic wreck, according to a report.
The Navy began using the system, which is used to locate enemy submarines, to listen for the Titan almost immediately after it lost contact with its radio ship on Sunday, a U.S. Defense Official told The Wall Street Journal.
Shortly after the Navy began listening, they heard what they believed to be an implosion coming from the area where debris from the vessel was found on Thursday.
“The U.S. Navy conducted an analysis of acoustic data and detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,” a senior U.S. Navy official told the paper. “While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”
In the days leading up to his ill-fated descent to the Titanic wreckage, 19-year-old Suleman Dawood "wasn't very up for it" and felt "terrified" about take the trip with his father, according to the university student's aunt.
But Suleman ultimately decided to make the daring voyage to the ocean floor in OceanGate's Titan submersible because the trip fell on Father's Day and he was eager to please his dad, 48-year-old Pakistani tycoon Shahzada Dawood, his sister Azmeh Dawood told NBC News.
"I am thinking of Suleman, who is 19, in there, just perhaps gasping for breath ... It's been crippling, to be honest," Azmeh told the outlet over the phone from her home in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Suleman Dawood was a student at the Strathclyde University in Scotland. AP
She said she was devastated to learn that she had lost her brother and nephew when United States Coast Guard officials confirmed on Thursday they had located debris from the submersible, which had imploded after losing connection with its radio ship.
"I feel disbelief," Azmeh said through tears. "It's an unreal situation."
The Dawood family is among the richest in Pakistan and has strong ties with the United Kingdom. Their fortune stems from Dawood Hercules Corporation Limited, a public investment holding company that focuses on agriculture, industries, and the health sector.
Shahzada is Vice-Chairman of one of its subsidiary companies, Engro Corporation.
Suleman was a student at the Strathclyde University in Glasgow, Scotland.
ROV Odysseus 6K, which is being used for the search, is an easily transportable and highly affordable deep sea system that integrates into ships of opportunity and is available on a global basis. Pelagic Research Services
The ROV system is being used to scour for remnants from the lost sub.
The Odysseus 6k device is a remote-operated vehicle that can dive 20,000 feet into the ocean. Pelagic Research Services
