‘Mousetrap for billionaires’: OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush planned to die during Titanic wreck dive,…

Ocean Gate CEO Stockton Rush wanted his name tied to the Titanic disaster and was prepared to die during a deep-sea expedition to achieve that, according to his longtime friend Karl Stanley, who described the Titan submersible as a “mousetrap for billionaires”, The New York Post reported. Stanley, a commercial submersible expert who knew Rush for more than a decade, alleged that the businessman knowingly designed a vessel that would implode during a dive to the Titanic wreck.

Stanley made the claims to author Matthew Gavin Frank for his book, Submersed: Wonder, Obsession and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines.“He was in fact a good engineer, and that machine did exactly what he designed it to do … He set a new standard for going out with a bang,” Stanley told Frank. Stanley alleged that Rush's ambition to become part of the Titanic's history outweighed the risks to himself and his passengers.

“Rush’s ego was so big he was willing to die and kill to be the pivotal character of this story. He wanted to go [die] at the wreck [of Titanic],” he said, speaking to Frank days after the submersible imploded.

The Titan disaster occurred in June 2023, killing all five people aboard, including Rush. The passengers were French Titanic explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, British adventurer Hamish Harding, and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood.

They had paid as much as $250,000 for the expedition, as per the newspaper. Stanley, who testified during the US Coast Guard's inquiry into the disaster, maintained that Rush knew the dive would be fatal.

He accused the Ocean Gate chief of deliberately building a vessel that would fail, describing it as a weapon intended to make Rush part of the Titanic's legacy. Author Frank also drew a connection between the submersible's name and Futility, an 1898 novel by Morgan Robertson.

The book features a fictional ocean liner, the Titan, that sinks after striking an iceberg, a plot that bears similarities to the Titanic disaster in 1912. Stanley had joined Rush on a test dive in 2019 and recalled hearing loud cracking sounds during the expedition.

He said he raised concerns, but Rush dismissed them. Despite the experience, Stanley told Frank he did not regret taking part in the dive.

He also described the response among Ocean Gate employees after the 2023 implosion, saying some were frightened by what had happened. Stanley suggested that portraying Rush as a reckless figure who manipulated colleagues could help explain their actions.

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Key quotes

• “mousetrap for billionaires”

• “He was in fact a good engineer, and that machine did exactly what he designed it to do … He set a new standard for going out with a bang,”

• “Rush’s ego was so big he was willing to die and kill to be the pivotal character of this story. He wanted to go [die] at the wreck [of Titanic],”