by The CEO of the company that sent the Titanic shipwreck tour to the wreck of the Titanic joked “What could go wrong?” weeks before the disaster, a new documentary has been revealed.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush made the chilling statement during an interview with Radio St. John in Canada a few weeks before one of his submarines entered the ocean in June 2023.
Rush, along with French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman Dawood, were killed in the crash.
Her fateful comment is included in a new Channel 5 documentary about the disaster. During the interview, he was heard saying that he chose to do the trip in June because it was when the waters around the Titanic wreck were the “calmest”.
“So with the Polar Prince [the vessel that carried the submarine out to sea], that ice capability we thought, let’s move the mission a little earlier this year,” he said. “We specifically designed the submersible for this mission.”
These were not the only disturbing comments Mr Rush made before his death.
In a 2021 interview, which resurfaced after the disaster, OceanGate’s CEO also went on record as saying he was proud of “bending the rules” when building a Titanic tourist submersible.
“I’ve broken some rules to do this. The carbon fiber and titanium… there’s a rule that you don’t do that. Well, I did,’” he said.
Meanwhile, in an episode of BBC The Traveling Show in 2022, Mr. Rush expressed concern about an “extremely loud bang” during a previous dive on a Titan sub.
He said the noise was “not a deep sound” but downplayed the danger, adding that “almost all deep submarines make noise at some point.”
In the weeks after the deaths of the five passengers, former OceanGate employees and industry experts said they repeatedly raised concerns about the Titan’s construction and safety before it was sent in, with whistleblowers claiming the sub’s “experimental” carbon fiber hull was not – suitable enterprise. for extreme depths in deep sea exploration. It was also claimed that glue leaked from the seams of the ballast bags.
Although it is still unclear what happened in the moments before the explosion, a Channel 5 documentary Minute by Minute: The Titan Sub-Disaster the events leading up to the disaster are detailed.
The creators of the documentary interviewed experts who claimed that the last moments of the passengers on board the submarine would have been “absolutely torture”.
“The focus of both Stockton and PH would be trying to get some control over the sinking, trying to recover some height and get the vessel stable and back to the surface,” said Dik Barton, former vice president RMS Titanic Inc. ., a company that owns around 5,500 relics from the Titanic.
“That was their complete and total focus. The fear that would create, I can’t even fathom. For a little while, I think he would have been absolutely devastated.”
The vessel sank on June 20, 2023 after losing contact with the surface ship about an hour and 45 minutes into the voyage 900 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
A desperate four-day search and rescue mission was carried out to find out if the employee and his crew of five survived.
There was a glimmer of hope when Canadian aircraft searching for the missing submarine detected strange echoes from the vicinity where it was last located.
But the rescue mission ended in tragedy, with the US Coast Guard determining that all five crew members had died in a “catastrophic blowout” caused by massive water pressure collapsing the vessel.
On June 28, officials confirmed that debris from the vessel and “presumed human remains” had been recovered from the seabed.
Rear Admiral John Mauger later said that there did not appear to be a connection between the underwater sounds heard during the search and rescue mission and the location of the debris on the seabed.
“This was a devastating shock to the vessel, generating significant broadband sound down there that would have been picked up by the sonar buoys,” Mauger said.
The US Coast Guard warned that the bodies of the five passengers may never be found.
OceanGate operations have since ceased.
