OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, one of the five passengers killed after an “instantaneous implosion” of the Titan submersible tour to the Titanic, once said that he has “broken some rules” to make the deep-sea submarine.
In comments to Mexican travel vlogger Alan Estrada in 2021, Rush evoked US General Douglas MacArthur as saying, “You’re remembered for the rules you break.”
“I’ve broken some rules to make this (Titan). I think I’ve broken them with logic and good engineering behind me,” Rush was quoted as saying in the video that has now surfaced on social media after the tragedy.
Rush said that deep-sea submersibles “as a rule” should not be made with carbon fibre and titanium but he did anyway, reports Fox Business.
“It’s picking the rules that you break that are the ones that will add value to others and add value to society,” Rush said in the video.
In another old clip of Rush, he is seen explaining that he preferred not to hire “50-year-old White guys” with military experience to pilot his company’s vessels.
Rush valued captains who were “inspirational” over experience, noting that “anybody can drive the sub,” which is controlled with a $30 video game controller.
“When I started the business, one of the things you’ll find, there are other sub operators out there, but they typically have gentlemen who are ex-military submariners, and you’ll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old White guys,” Rush told Teledyne Marine in a 2020 interview over Zoom.
Meanwhile, the US Coast Guard has announced that a debris field found by searchers near the Titanic is wreckage from the missing Titan submersible, with all the five people on board declared dead.
US Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger said that a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) discovered the tail cone of the Titan submersible about half a kilometre from the bow of the Titanic on the seafloor.
“I offer my deepest condolences to the families,” he said.
Shortly before the announcement, OceanGate Expeditions, the US-based company that owned and operated the submersible, said in a statement that it believed the five passengers of the Titanic-bound submersible have “sadly been lost”.
The five passengers included Hamish Harding, a billionaire and explorer; Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a French explorer; Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman Dawood, members of a prominent Pakistani family; and OceanGate CEO Rush.
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