The key facts
- Expert Karl Stanley claims Stockton Rush was willing to sacrifice himself and his passengers for fame.
- In 2019, Stanley heard loud sounds during a dive near the Bahamas and warned Rush in writing about the danger.
- The Titan imploded in June 2023, killing all five people on board.
Claims in a new book
Submersible expert Karl Stanley claims that the creator of the Titan submersible, Stockton Rush, deliberately sent the vessel on a deadly dive in order to go down in history alongside the Titanic. Stanley makes these claims in Matthew Gavin Frank's book 'Submersed: Wonder, Obsession and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines', which is cited by the Daily Mail. According to Stanley, Rush was willing to sacrifice himself and four passengers for fame: he understood the danger of the expeditions but sought to prove that he was capable of organizing a dive to the liner's wreck.
The 2019 warnings
In 2019, Stanley took part in a test dive of the Titan near the Bahamas. During the descent, he heard loud sounds, which he considered a sign of hull damage under pressure. The expert warned Rush in writing about the danger and urged him to suspend the expeditions, but Rush rejected the criticism of the vessel's design.
The implosion and the name theory
In June 2023, OceanGate's Titan imploded during a dive to the Titanic; all five people on board died — Hamish Harding, Stockton Rush, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, as well as businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son. During the search, underwater acoustic signals were detected, which could initially have been interpreted as attempts to signal for help, but experts' final conclusions point to the instantaneous death of the crew due to the hull's destruction. Stanley also drew attention to the vessel's name: in Morgan Robertson's 1898 novella 'Futility', the fictional liner Titan sinks in the North Atlantic after colliding with an iceberg. In the expert's view, Rush wanted to link his name to the story of the famous shipwreck.
