How tragic Titanic family link ‘inspired’ gung-ho Titan boss’s deadly mission despite safety warnings & crashing sub

HAVING chosen to stay with her husband of 41 years rather than flee to safety on a lifeboat, Isa Straus lay in bed cuddled by her true love as icy water flooded their dorm aboard the doomed Titanic cruise liner. 

It’s a tearjerking moment, forever immortalised in James Cameron’s 1997 film about the ‘unsinkable ship’ – but the tragic real-life tale may also have inspired another tragedy more than 100 years later.

Because Isa and Isidor Straus are the great-great-grandparents of Wendy Weil, the wife of Stockton Rush, OceanGate founder and pilot of the now-notorious Titan submersible, whose obsession with the Titanic led to the loss of five lives.

Last year, during a deep-sea voyage to the world’s most famous shipwreck the vessel imploded, killing Rush – reportedly worth £19.5million – and four others on board including a teenager. 

Damning details about the disaster 3,500-metres below sea level, in the waters off Newfoundland, Canada, and particularly the vessel’s captain are currently coming to light in a public hearing.

It’s part of a two-week inquiry by the US Coast Guard that will hear testimony from 24 witnesses including up to 10 former OceanGate employees – many of whom lay the blame at Rush’s door.

Among the whistleblowers is David Lochridge, former operations director, who said the tragedy was “inevitable” due to safety procedures being largely ignored and the CEO’s “arrogance”.

Previously, he expressed concern that Rush “kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego” and said the nearly £200,000-per-head Titanic expedition was “to make money… that’s it”.

Lochridge told the inquiry he feared a “catastrophic implosion” due to how the vessel was built, adding: “There was very little in the way of science.”

He’s not alone in making scathing claims. Former engineering director Tony Nissen said he was canned for raising concern about the Titanic trip and the submersible.

“I was [saying] no, you can’t … what we’re doing has never been done before,” Nissen said. 

“We don’t know what ‘good’ is supposed to look like. But what I do know is it shouldn’t look like that… I wouldn’t sign off on it so I got terminated.”

Nissen described Rush as “difficult”, someone who “wouldn’t give an inch” in arguments and said it was “almost death by a thousand cuts in most things” for those who challenged him.

The hearings are painting a damning picture of father-of-two Rush, who was born into a wealthy family in San Francisco named after two signers of the Declaration of Independence, Richard Stockton and Benjamin Rush, both his ancestors.

‘I’ll buy way into space’

He grew up with lofty ambitions, curious about the world and how things worked. 

As a child, he took apart a stuffed bear as a child to study how it could talk and by 19, built a fibreglass plane from a 600-page manual in his mum’s garage that he continued to fly into adulthood. 

Rush longed for adventure and was inspired by his fictional heroes Star Trek’s Captain Spock and later Star Wars’ Han Solo. 

As a teen, the maths whizz dreamed of being an astronaut and after meeting Pete Conrad, commander of Apollo 12, was advised to get his pilot’s licence.  

At 18, he became one of the youngest commercial pilots in the world but later was told his 20/25 eyesight wasn’t good enough for him to join the US fighter programme.

As Rush grew older, he worked as a venture capitalist and longed “to make enough money to buy my way into space” until he had an epiphany. 

He recalled: “I wanted to be the first person on Mars and then I realized all the undiscovered species are here, in the ocean.

“In the vacuum of Space, by definition there is nothing. That means a great view but the final frontier for new life forms and discovery is undersea – for the next 200-300 years at least.”

It took one of the paying clients to turn around and shout at Stockton to give me the f***ing controller, she had tears in her eyes

David Lochridge, ex employee

Rush had been a scuba diver from the age of 12. Within two years of first trying it, he became fully certified but whenever he was deep beneath the waves, there was one pet peeve.

He longed to be able to stay on the ocean floor for longer than a full tank of oxygen would permit and without having to equalise. 

“I wanted to sit in a submarine and watch crabs fighting to the sound of Mozart for two hours,” Rush said. 

‘Bending the rules’

In the early 2000s, he looked into renting a submarine but discovered there were only 100 privately owned in the world and few were available for charter. 

Unable to buy one despite multiple attempts. This would eventually contribute to his decision to build his own submersibles. 

By 2009, he co-founded OceanGate believing underwater tourism could be incredibly profitable and help to fund the development of deep-diving vessels.

At the same time, Rush was growing frustrated with the submersibles industry – especially the ‘strict rules’ that had been put in place for people’s safety. 

He once complained that concerns were “understandable but illogical” and forced businesses to be so “obscenely safe” that the industry “hasn’t innovated or grown because they have all these regulations”. 

This included criticising the 1993 Passenger Vessel Safety Act, which regulates construction of subs, that he felt “needlessly prioritised passenger safety over commercial innovation”.

He went through unusual concepts for his submersibles – with design collaborator Bob Miyamoto, complaining “he wants to put wings on it and stuff”.

There were 25 designs including one that was ‘a handbag shape’ and ‘winged designs’ but they “got thrown out pretty quickly”, according to Rush.

One unlikely addition to his vessels was the decision to use video game controllers that former colleague Mr Lochridge told the hearing was to allow guests to pilot the sub.

“Stockton’s vision was give somebody this PlayStation controller and within an hour they’re going to be a pilot – it’s not the way it works,” he said. 

Rush’s vessels would be from a mixture of carbon fibre and titanium, which are used in ships and planes, but were feared too unsafe by experts for reaching depths.

While he dismissed this “great fear about using new materials”, Mr Lochridge insisted Rush had a “total disregard for safety” and “no experience building submersibles”.

Even Rush himself would boast about “bending the rules” when it came to submersible construction – including hauntingly while discussing Titan in 2021.

Sub crash panic

The CEO’s behaviour was also of concern, with Lochridge recalling how his employer would regularly “fly off the handle” including during a 2016 underwater trip. 

On Titan’s predecessor Cyclops I, he took four paying guests to explore the sunken Andrea Doria cruiseliner, which sunk off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, in 1951.

Lochridge says the CEO insisted on piloting the vessel “to please himself” even though he wasn’t “the most experienced” team member on board.

After quizzing his decision, Rush allegedly yelled: “Just remember I’m the CEO, you’re just an employee.” Later, when things went wrong he would state: “Don’t tell me what to do”.

It followed Rush ignoring the instruction to stay a safe distance from the shipwreck and crashing Cyclops “full speed into the port side of the bow” before it “smashed straight down on the bottom”.

“It was unprofessional behaviour from him, he started to panic, it went on and on and on, there was debris everywhere,” Lochridge said.

“It took one of the paying clients to turn around and shout at Stockton to give me the f***ing controller, she had tears in her eyes.”

Lochridge claims his boss panicked, yelling “we’re stuck” three times before throwing the PlayStation controller used to pilot the ship right at him. 

I don’t want to be seen as a Tattle tale but I’m so worried he kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego

David Lochridge

“He clattered it off the right side of my head,” he recalled. Around 15 minutes later, Lochridge freed them of the wreck.

‘Mousetrap for billionaires’

It’s part of a pattern of behaviour according to Lochridge, who was fired in 2018 after raising concerns about the safety of carbon fibre being used for Titan and Rush’s actions.

In emails obtained by the New Yorker, Lochridge wrote: “I don’t want to be seen as a tattle tale but I’m so worried he kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego.

“I would consider myself pretty ballsy when it comes to doing things that are dangerous but that sub is an accident waiting to happen.

“There’s no way on earth you could have paid me to dive the thing.”

Rush earned a reputation for his trips, claiming to have taken Everest climbers, moviemakers and archaeologists – who ranged from 12 years old to 92 – on his expeditions.

When it came to visiting Titanic, which some insist was a money-making venture, he had a personal link – his wife’s relatives were the tragic Straus couple, who died aboard.

But for Rush, his motivation related to the Titanic appeared simple. He said: “There is only one thing underwater that billions of people know… and lots of people want to go there.” 

He lured guests in with talk of the “deep sub disease” and insisted “shallow dives equal shallow experience”, touting adrenaline-filled trips that were like “paddling yourself through the Grand Canyon” rather than a “Disneyland ride”. 

The CEO’s pal Karl Stanley claimed he was “designing a mousetrap for billionaires” and believed the vessel was dangerous adding: “I definitely knew it was going to end like this.”

Warned hours before

The disaster would claim the lives of all aboard Titan including Rush and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, who led the expedition with him, alongside passengers British space tourist Hamish Harding, 58, billionaire businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Sulaiman, 19, who paid £200,000 each to go on the tour.

“All good here” was one of the haunting final messages before the sub passed 2,305 metres. The deadly implosion occurred around 30 minutes later. 

The people in there had no idea this was coming… nobody was suffering in there

Tym Catterson, ex employee

It was noted that during 12 dives to the Titanic between 2021 and 2022, the submersible suffered 118 equipment issues including batteries dying – leaving passengers trapped inside for 27 hours. 

Lochridge was concerned the vessel’s carbon fibre frame would deteriorate the more dives it was used in and revealed Rush’s “arrogance” meant he refused to work with experts at the University of Washington to improve Titan’s safety. 

On the day of the fatal expedition, Tym Catterson – a submersibles expert hired by OceanGate warned Titan wasn’t up to the job, but says Rush insisted: “I have several engineers working on this and they say otherwise.”

Catterson helped to launch the sub after concluding “we agree to disagree” and watched with horror from above as the disaster unfolded.

Five days later, Catterson was working among the search and recovery vessels when they discovered shattered pieces of the sub and human remains in such a bad state they had to be identified through their DNA.

He explained his one relief was that “the people in there had no idea this was coming” and wanted the public to know “nobody was suffering in there”.

Catterson said: “As a matter of fact, they were probably all happy. They were all waiting to see the Titanic.”