Days after four high-profile passengers along with OceanGate’s CEO Stockton Rush and the pilot of the tourist submersible ‘Titan‘, died after their sub imploded due to extreme pressure deep in the North Atlantic Ocean, it has come to the fore that Stockton Rush repeatedly ignored Titan’s safety warnings in recently uncovered emails.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush is claimed to have ignored warnings from prominent deep-sea exploration specialist Rob McCallum that he could endanger his clients.
Rush responded to one of McCallum’s emails by saying he was “tired of industry players trying to use a safety argument to stop innovation.”
McCallum said the heated exchange ended when OceanGate’s lawyers threatened legal action.
In March 2018, McCallum wrote to OceanGate’s CEO, “I believe you are potentially putting yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic. You are mirroring that famous catch cry, ‘She is unsinkable,’ in your race to [the] Titanic.”
Rush responded by expressing his frustration with the criticism of Titan’s safety measures.
“We have heard the baseless cries of ‘you are going to kill someone’ way too often,” he wrote, “I take this as a serious personal insult.”
McCallum told the BBC that he constantly asked Oceangate to seek classification for the sub before it was deployed commercially.
“Until a sub is classed, tested, and proven it should not be used for commercial deep dive operations,” he wrote in an email.
“I implore you to take every care in your testing and sea trials and to be very, very conservative. As much as I admire entrepreneurship and innovation, you may be jeopardising an entire industry,” McCallum added.
Stockton Rush responded a few days later, defending his business and credentials as he wrote, “OceanGate’s engineering focused, innovative approach… flies in the face of submersible orthodoxy, but that is the nature of innovation.”
Throughout the conversation, Rush questioned the established framework for deep sea explorations. He claimed that “industry players” were attempting to prevent “new entrants from entering their small existing market.”
“I am well qualified to understand the risks and issues associated with subsea exploration in a new vehicle,” Rush stated in his email.
“The industry has been trying for several years to persuade Stockton Rush to discontinue his program for two reasons,” McCallum, who owns his own ocean expedition company, told the BBC on Friday.
McCallum stated that carbon fibre is not a suitable material and that this was the only unclassified submersible in the world undertaking commercial work. It was not certified by an independent agency.
McCallum was one of more than a dozen top submersible experts who signed a letter to Rush in 2018 warning that OceanGate’s approach could end in “disaster.”
It is notable that submersibles, in particular, can be certified or “classed” by marine groups such as the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), DNV (a global accreditation agency based in Norway), or Lloyd’s Register.
The Titanic wreckage sits at a depth of around 3800 meters. As per reports, the implosion at a depth like that causes immediate crushing of the vessel and everything inside it. The pilot and the passengers would have died within a few milliseconds.
CEO of OceanGate was the pilot, and the 4 passengers included the billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, a British-Pakistani father-son duo named Shahzada Dawood and Suleiman Dawood, and the popular ‘Mr Titanic’ Paul-Henry Nargeolet. Nargeolet, a French Navy veteran, was part of the first expedition to visit the wreck in 1987, just two years after it was found. He has earned the moniker ‘Mr. Titanic’ as he has reportedly spent more time at the wreck than any other explorer.
