Latest news with #Implosion:TheTitanicSubDisaster
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Inside the Life of Stockton Rush, the Titan Sub CEO
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Stockton Rush, the founder and CEO of OceanGate who died aboard the Titan submersible along with four others when it imploded in the North Atlantic Ocean in June 2023, was shaped by legacy, ambition, and controversy. A descendant of Founding Fathers and married into a family tied to the Titanic, he founded OceanGate to open access to deep sea tourism. But as Netflix's new documentary, Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, reveals, his resistance to oversight and confidence in his own vision helped set the stage for a fatal outcome. Here's a closer look at Rush's background, from his elite upbringing and engineering career to the decisions that led to the Titan's final dive. Rush was descended from two signers of the Declaration of Independence—Richard Stockton and Benjamin Rush—on his father's side, for whom he was named. Wendy Rush, Stockton Rush's wife, is the great-great-granddaughter of Ida and Isidor Straus, first-class passengers who died in the Titanic sinking in 1912. Wendy, born Wendy Hollings Weil, descended from the couple known for their refusal to be separated as the ship went down. The Strauses were later memorialized in James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic, and a cenotaph in the Bronx bears a biblical inscription honoring their story. Rush was born on March 31, 1962 in San Francisco. Rush's father chaired Peregrine Oil and Gas in Burlingame, California, a suburb south of the city, and the Natoma Company, which managed real estate investments in the Sacramento area. His grandfather led American President Lines, a major shipping firm, and his grandmother was the namesake of Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco's Civic Center. The family's fortune originated with Ralph K. Davies, who rose from office boy to director at Standard Oil of California. Rush's father also served as president-elect of the Bohemian Club, an exclusive, all-male organization based in San Francisco known for its annual retreat at Bohemian Grove, a 2,700-acre campground about 80 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. The secret society's member rolls are notoriously private, but this was lightly referenced in Discovery's Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster documentary and also confirmed in Princeton alumni records. After college, Rush returned to the Bay Area, where he received an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989. Rush earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton in 1984. His father, grandfather, and wife also attended. Their son graduated as recently as 2011. Per the Princeton Alumni Weekly, his namesake, Richard Stockton—Class of 1748 and signer of the Declaration—was one of the school's earliest graduates, and Richard's father donated land to the university. As a student, Rush trained as a pilot and kept a private plane at the Princeton airport. He took off semesters to fly DC-8s in Saudi Arabia during the hajj pilgrimage. According to the Daily Princetonian in 2023, he was arrested during his time in college, including for drunk driving and for possession of a controlled substance. Rush originally dreamed of becoming an astronaut, but that dream was cut short when he couldn't pass the right vision tests. So he switched to engineering, with the goal of being a passenger, and began his career as a flight test engineer at McDonnell Douglas in Seattle. 'I had this epiphany that this was not at all what I wanted to do,' Rush told Smithsonian Magazine in 2019. 'I didn't want to go up into space as a tourist. I wanted to be Captain Kirk on the Enterprise. I wanted to explore.' In the Netflix documentary, it's made clear that Rush wants to be mentioned in the same conversations as the likes of Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin and Elon Musk and SpaceX, so he made deep sea exploration his frontier. He founded OceanGate in 2009. While he held an aerospace engineering degree, he was not a licensed professional engineer—an omission some experts later questioned given his involvement in designing and piloting submersibles. You Might Also Like 12 Weekend Getaway Spas For Every Type of Occasion 13 Beauty Tools to Up Your At-Home Facial Game
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
OceanGate's Titan Submersible Was Almost Featured on 'Expedition Unknown' in 2021
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." Josh Gates, host of Discovery Channel's Expedition Unknown, is no stranger to danger. Since its premiere in 2015 on the Travel Channel, Gates has been traversing the planet, exploring remote jungles, ancient ruins, and yes, deep-sea wrecks. Some of the most dangerous places he's ventured include the hazardous waters of Myanmar's Irrawaddy River and surviving fields of landmines in Cambodia. However, one of his most harrowing experiences remained unseen until just weeks ago. In the HBO documentary Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, Gates visited OceanGate's testing facilities in Washington state to take a test dive on the Titan in Puget Sound with the intent of filming a second segment on another dive down to the Titanic wreckage site. But everything went wrong on that visit. As Rush walked Gates through OceanGate's hangar, Gates described him in the present day interview as a 'car salesman,' remarking that he had a rehearsed answer for everything. But that wasn't the case when they were underwater. Even though the submersible didn't even go more than a few feet under Puget Sound, accompanied by a diver equipped with full scuba apparatus, Rush lost control of the submersible's computers, and he struggled to provide any concrete answers to either Gates or his team members, instead just scribbling around on a piece of paper. And for anyone who has watched years and years of Expedition Unknown, viewers saw something they had never seen before: Gates's face looked ashen. 'Stockton seemed completely unaware of how bad this dive had gone from our perspective,' he says. The submersible returned to the surface within a few minutes, but Gates appeared to have made up his mind about the entire venture already. Before the dive, Gates made an offhand comment to Rush about how being sealed into the submersible from the outside was a bit concerning, delivering the line with a nervous laugh that seemed meant to lighten the mood. Rush laughed too and replied, 'Yes, you're my prisoner.' In that moment, during the 2021 recording, Gates glanced toward the camera, his expression uneasy. 'Stockton just didn't see, even psychologically, the need for a way out of this sub,' Gates says. Longtime viewers of Expedition Unknown watching the documentary were likely wondering why they didn't remember this episode or immediately trying to find it online. There's a reason why they didn't remember it: The episode never aired. Gates says he recognized the implications of making a promotional documentary about Rush and OceanGate. 'So I made the really difficult decision to call up the president of the network and to fall on my sword and say, 'I'm really sorry. I know that money's been spent here. I know that this is something that was a big deal for you to sign off on, and I appreciate the opportunity, but we shouldn't do this. This is a mistake, something bad is going to happen here,'' Gates says. On June 18, 2023, the Titan submersible, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, imploded during a dive to the Titanic wreck site in the North Atlantic, killing all five aboard, including Rush. The vessel lost communication approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent. After a five-day international search, debris was found about 1,600 feet from the Titanic's bow, confirming the implosion. Investigations revealed that Titan's unconventional carbon-fiber hull had faced prior safety concerns, and the submersible lacked independent certification. The U.S. Coast Guard continues to investigate the incident. You Might Also Like 12 Weekend Getaway Spas For Every Type of Occasion 13 Beauty Tools to Up Your At-Home Facial Game
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
5 Things We Learned from ‘Titan: The OceanGate Disaster'
Stockton Rush, the late CEO of OceanGate who died along with four others when his Titan submersible imploded in June 2023, admired what he called the 'big swingin' dick' energy of fellow businessmen Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. He was obsessed with the Titanic. He had a habit of firing those who disagreed with his judgment. And he pushed forward with his fatal dive after multiple engineers and other experts warned him that his submersible was doomed to fail. These are some of the details laid out in Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, the new Netflix documentary premiering June 11. Titan covers some of the same material as the Discovery documentary Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, including extensive footage of the 2024 U.S. Coast Guard hearing investigating the tragedy. But it has an ace in the hole: David Lochridge, OceanGate's director of marine operations and a submersible pilot, who was fired after challenging Rush's safety standards and later disclosed critical information under the Whistleblower Protection Act. Together with Wired investigative journalist Mark Harris, who was also a consulting producer on Titan, Lochridge provides a barrage of damning factual heft in the new doc. More from Rolling Stone 'Too Much' Trailer: Lena Dunham Directs Semi-Autobiographical Rom-Com Starring Megan Stalter Lady Gaga Praises Queer Music Pioneer Carl Bean in Docu Clip: 'Anthems Unify People' How the Director and Stars of 'Pavements' Brought Many Stephen Malkmuses to Life Here are five things we learned from Titan: Lochridge was shown the door when he insisted that Titan wasn't ready for its big dive to see the wreckage of the Titanic. So was OceanGate director of engineering Tony Niessen. Titan paints a picture of a CEO who surrounded himself with yes men, many of them inexperienced and unqualified. Bonnie Carl, OceanGate's former finance and human resources director, says in the film that at one point Stockton was ready to make her OceanGate's new lead pilot. Her response in the film: 'Are you nuts? I'm an accountant.' Lochridge details Rush's stubborn arrogance in the film: 'He had every contact in the submersible industry telling him not to do this. But once you start down the path of doing it entirely by yourself, and you realize you've taken a wrong turn back at the beginning, then you have to admit that you were wrong.' Nobody interviewed in Titan suggests that Rush was capable of admitting that he was wrong. Niessen is blunt in assessing his experience at OceanGate: 'I worked for somebody who is probably a borderline clinical psychopath. How do you manage a person like that who owns the company?' Emily Hasmmermeister, an OceanGate engineering assistant who Rush saw as a bright young face of the company, left when she realized Titan's carbon-fiber hull was unstable. 'Stockton was so set on getting to the Titanic that nothing that anybody said made much of a difference,' she says in the film. 'I was not going to bolt anyone inside of that sub. And that was something that a lot of my coworkers at the time agreed on. None of them stayed with the company much longer.' Rush comes across as someone who was quick with a 'fuck you,' so it makes sense that he came from what might be called fuck-you money. 'Both Stockton and his wife, Wendy, came from generational wealth,' Harris, the Wired reporter, says in the film. Stockton was a Princeton graduate, even if he didn't have great grades. He traced his ancestry back to two signers of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Stockton and Benjamin Rush. In an ironic twist, Wendy Rush was the great-great granddaughter of two people who died on the Titanic: Isidor and Ida Strauss. Isidor was a co-owner of the Macy's department store. 'Stockton was definitely part of the one percent,' Harris says in the film. If you took a drink every time someone in Titan mentions carbon fiber you'd have a hard time driving home. The material is cheaper than, say, titanium or steel, and it's also less expensive to transport. These factors made it an appealing option for Rush as he built the Titan. The engineers interviewed in the doc also claim it can be highly unstable. A carbon-fiber hull had never been used for as deep a dive as Rush was attempting. In the film, Rob McCallum, who has led many expeditions to the Titanic wreckage as the co-founder of Eyos Expeditions and worked as a consultant for OceanGate, describes carbon fiber as 'essentially string made from carbon. It's coated with resin to hold it together.' He sums up the Titan structure thusly: 'There was no way of knowing when it was going to fail. But it was a mathematical certainty that it would fail.' According to the documentary, Rush refused to have the Titan 'classed,' or certified by a third party to meet industry standards. Lochridge claims that shortly after he insisted on a third-party inspection, and then wrote in a 2018 report that Titan wasn't ready for the 3,800-meter dive to the Titanic wreckage, he was fired. McCallum points out another key Rush workaround: He insisted on classifying his passengers as 'mission specialists.' This categorization was intended to provide legal protection in case something went wrong. 'It was just one of the steps that OceanGate took to make sure that they could work around U.S. legislation,' McCallum says in the film. Rush called them 'Titaniacs.' They're the people who can't get enough of anything related to the Titanic. A few were willing to fork over more than $100,000 for a seat on the Titan. In the film, Rush claims 'there are three words in the English language that are known throughout the planet: Coca-Cola, God, and Titanic.' James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster Titanic surely has something to do with this; it grossed more than $2 billion worldwide, and prompted any number of moviegoers to proclaim themselves king (or queen) of the world. But it's not just the movie that brings people back to RMS Titanic, the British ocean liner which famously sank in 1912, killing approximately 1,500 people. The disaster was due largely to the kind of structural failure that would doom the Titan, a point Titan doesn't fail to make. 'Even now, over 100 years after she sank, she just captures people,' McCallum says in the doc. Something about the combination of massive catastrophe and the dividing lines between social classes aboard the liner — First Class, Second Class, and Steerage, with survival rates declining according to economic position — has proved enthralling. Well before Titanic there was The Unsinkable Molly Brown, a 1960 stage musical (and then a 1964 movie starring Debbie Reynolds) based on the life of Titanic survivor-turned-philanthropist Margaret Brown. Rush was hardly the first gung-ho Titanic enthusiast, though he may have been the most catastrophically arrogant. Best of Rolling Stone Every Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best The United States of Weed Gaming Levels Up
Yahoo
06-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Titan Sub Disaster: Discovery Documentary Shows Wendy Rush Reacting To Fatal ‘Bang'
Newly released video footage captured when OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush's wife reacted in real-time to the Titan submersible's fatal implosion last year. Stockton and his wife both have long, storied family histories in America, which were under speculation before the submarine went viral for killing its five passengers last year. The submarine lacked many of the qualifications, certifications, and even respected design systems that previous deep-water subs all had in their pockets. From the start, even the most vocal in the deep-sea diving industry, like renowned filmmaker James Cameron, were rightfully worried about OceanGate's missions. Stockton's wife, Wendy, the daughter of the couple who founded the Macy's department store, can be seen shockingly aware in the recently released video that something went wrong on the 'Titan's' final, deadly dive. The chilling footage, obtained by the U.S. Coast Guard and featured in the Discovery documentary Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster, shows Wendy seated in front of a computer on the 'mother ship,' or launching ship of the submarine above, as the sub descended toward the Titanic's wreckage nearly 4,000 feet below on June 18, 2023. Stockton took on the job, alongside the OceanGate team, of continuing to put tourists on the faulty submarine. One documentary team even went on a short dive with the Titan and Stockton before the host of Expedition Unknown, Josh Gates, had to call his channel's executive and beg that the media team be pulled from such a liability of an assignment. In lamens terms, the submarine was already cracked in the main hull and showed signs of its weakness to even the most untrained eyes – like TV hosts. According to the newly released footage, Wendy can be seen suddenly reacting to a loud sound: the very moment the sub's carbon-fiber hull catastrophically failed, killing all five people aboard instantly. In response, she can be seen calmly asking two other OceanGate staff in the video, 'What was that bang?' At the time, the Titan was at a depth of about 3,300 meters, where the immense underwater pressure left no survivors and almost immediately killed all aboard, as confirmed by The victims included Stockton Rush, British explorer Hamish Harding, renowned French diver Paul Henri Nargeolet, and British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood with his 19-year-old son, Suleman. Suleman, at his age and lack of deep diving experience, had no reason to be on the submarine, but Stockton had decided that it was fine even in the unregulated vessel. The submarine was manned by modified PlayStation controllers, something Stockton previously bragged to the media about, per CBS News. While the tragedy officially began with the implosion, the Coast Guard's investigation revealed a dangerous flaw—delamination (a breakdown of the main hull's carbon fiber)—had been detected as early as 2022. Despite repeated warnings from engineers and fellow deep-sea explorers, OceanGate pressed forward with risky expeditions, pushing their unconventional carbon-fiber design that had never been properly certified. As seen in the documentary, the carbon fiber design had failed on previous dives, emitting loud bangs to all onboard. This forced Stockton and OceanGate to completely redesign a similar submarine, which also failed. The carbon fiber wasn't the only weird engineering choice. OceanGate also chose to build a submarine that, in the most simple of ways, mismatched previous submarine designs that successfully reached those dangerous depths. Instead of the widely accepted, in terms of modern deep-sea diving experts, a teardrop-shaped vessel that barely holds one or two passengers, Stockton demanded that his design resemble the stereotypical 'log in the water' design to carry more passengers. More unregulated passengers in an unregulated submarine started to raise concerns among many industry experts before its final tragic implosion. James Cameron's deep-sea submarine, which reached the deepest depths of the ocean floor, was shaped like that raindrop design. His successful dives can be seen in his 2014 film DeepSea Challenge. Cameron has publicly told many media outlets that Stockton and OceanGate were a red flag even before the tragic accident. After the disaster, OceanGate ceased operations and pledged cooperation with the United States Coast Guard investigation. Some engineers and 'dive experts' are now testifying to the Coast Guard about how they understood that Stockton was losing his mind and that the submarine was destined to fail. Some employees claimed to the documentary team that Stockton fired them when voicing concerns or that they were anxious about voicing concerns about retaining their jobs at OceanGate.
Montreal Gazette
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Montreal Gazette
Brownstein: Montreal producer takes deep dive in documentary Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster
By The documentary begins intriguingly enough: 'Where do you want to go in the ocean? What is the most known site in the ocean? It's clearly the Titanic.' The speaker is well-heeled, maverick American inventor Stockton Rush, whose mission it was to take paying passengers 3,800 metres into the Atlantic Ocean in his mini-sub to scope the ruins of the Titanic luxury liner that sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912 after striking an iceberg 600 kilometres off the coast of Newfoundland. More than 1,500 passengers died in that disaster. Five died, including Rush, when his submersible the Titan imploded on its way down to the Titanic wreck on June 18, 2023. The documentary Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster takes a deep and disturbing plunge into the apparent arrogance of Titan mastermind Rush, the co-founder and CEO of the OceanGate undersea exploration company. The doc, co-produced by Montreal GalaFilm boss Arnie Gelbart and directed and co-scripted by acclaimed British director Pamela Gordon, begins streaming Friday on CBC Gem. It will also be broadcast on CBC Television June 20. The production team has done a thorough job in bringing this tragedy into fuller focus, aided and abetted by insightful interviews, rare footage of the Titan's final voyage and other failed dives plus access to the U.S. Coast Guard's investigation. Experts interviewed had misgivings about the Titan's structure, particularly its carbon-fibre hull, even if Rush had pulled off some dives prior to its final descent. There were other ominous warning signs, like seeping water damage and cracking engine sounds. Mutters one skeptic: 'Everyone stepping on board the Titan was risking their life.' The feeling was that Rush was 'hell-bent' on taking the Titan to dangerous new lows under the ocean, someone seeking to 'democratize deep-sea exploration.' Rush was an engineer who initially dreamed of becoming an astronaut. But when it became apparent he was never going to make it to 'Jupiter or Mars,' he turned his sights in the opposite direction. He concluded that would require a 'special sub.' Rush had the money, vision and drive to do so. He was a patrician whose roots went way back, with two of his ancestors having signed the U.S. Declaration of Independence. History, as is often the case, repeats itself here. How's this for cruel irony? Rush's wife's great-great-grandparents, owners of the fabled Macy's department-store chain, perished on the Titanic. They were rumoured to have been the richest passengers aboard. Christine Dawood is understandably livid. Among the five who died aboard the imploded Titan were her billionaire British-Pakistani husband, Shahzada, 48, and son Suleman, 19. She blames 'ego and arrogance' for their deaths. Gelbart has long been consumed by the Titanic and Titan. He brings to the documentary a wealth of factoids about both as well as Rush's participation. 'Rush had done some 88 dives prior to his last, but not all successful ones,' Gelbart says in a phone interview. 'It went down successfully only six times.' Gelbart had been involved since 2017 when Rush had come up with a working model of the Titan, which he had initially tested in the Bahamas. Then ensued a lot of correspondence with Rush, who was to move to his company's home in Everett, Wash. before heading to his last base in St. John's. 'He was looking for publicity, and I first wanted to make an Imax film, The Return to Titanic. What he was building for us was a remote camera that would go inside the hold of the Titanic, full of cars and furniture and other stuff that no one had seen since 1912.' Gelbart's project was initially to be a four-part series, retelling the Titanic story but using Rush's submersible to examine what was left of it, including its interior. 'We were looking for a Hollywood celebrity for the project,' Gelbart says. 'I would have liked to go down there myself, but because it was something like $250,000 a seat, it was not feasible. Instead, we included that price in our budget for a celebrity, someone to tell the Titanic story by being next to it.' Amid all the experimenting, failed testing and rebuilding of the original Titan, Gelbart stayed in touch with Rush. 'He was a great salesman and really believed in the Titan. As an engineer, he could talk the talk. We trusted him. We didn't think he was creating something that was fatally flawed. He explained the technology, but what do I know about carbon fibre? 'He moved his operation to St. John's for a number of reasons, one of which was so he wouldn't need to certify it in Canada. But on the downside was the weather there. And with water freezing, then thawing on the Titan lining outside, this could have created damage. In the final report of the U.S. Coast Guard, we heard this could have been one of the mitigating factors in the disaster.' That official report has yet to be released. Why? 'When (U.S. president Donald) Trump took over this year, he fired the head of the U.S. Coast Guard. So they're not allowed to release it until they get a new head.' Gelbart was shocked like most everyone else upon learning of the implosion. 'But 24 hours later, we had the commission from the BBC, Discovery U.S.A. and the CBC to make this documentary. It was such a whirlwind turnaround for a story that much of the world had been watching and waiting for news about what happened to the Titan and its occupants, until the fate was learned.' Gelbart's GalaFilm has more than 120 film and TV credits and has won dozens of awards, including multiple Gémeaux/Geminis and one Prime Time Emmy Award for the Cirque du Soleil series Fire Within. 'But this was the first time in my life I was involved with anything as well-known as this one.'
