Missing Titanic submarine: OceanGate CEO wouldn’t hire ‘old white guys’

Stockton Rush, 61, made the comments in a newly resurfaced Zoom interview with technology company Teledyne Marine.

“When I started the business, one of the things you’ll find, there are other sub-operators out there, but they typically have, uh, gentlemen who are ex-military submariners, and they — you’ll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old white guys,” he said in the undated clip.

“I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational and I’m not going to inspire a 16-year-old to go pursue marine technology, but a 25-year-old, uh, you know, who’s a sub pilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational. So we’ve really tried to get, um, very intelligent, motivated, younger individuals involved because we’re doing things that are completely new.

“We’re taking approaches that are used largely in the aerospace industry, as related to safety and uh, some of the preponderance of checklists, things we do for risk assessment and things like that that are more aviation-related than ocean-related. We can train people to do that, we can train someone to pilot the sub — we use a game controller.

“Um, so, anybody can drive the sub. And we also want our team to have a variety of different backgrounds. You’re going to go to The Titanic, you’re going to be spending eight days on a boat, you don’t want every person to have the same experience of having been on a US nuclear sub, or worked for Atlantis Submarines and they all have the same background.

“But really get people who have a diverse background and then train them, and train and train, so that it does come off as a polished and safe operation. But really looking beyond that experience in the sub and what’s the time on the boat going to be like with these people. And that makes for a great team.

“You know, we’re selling to our clients a really enjoyable, participatory environment, and that means everybody in our team, in our company, needs to be an engaging, you know, kind, fun, but kind of competent individual.”

Rush’s Everett, Washington-based company has made two previous trips to the 1912 wreckage of the “unsinkable” ship, which is 3800 metres underwater at the bottom of the Atlantic some 600 kilometres off the coast of Canada.

The founder and CEO has been trapped on the tiny vessel since Sunday with four wealthy adventurers who paid $US250,000 apiece for the tour.

“We’re doing everything we can do to locate the submersible and rescue those on board,” Rear Adm. John Mauger told reporters. “In terms of the hours, we understood that was 96 hours of emergency capability from the operator.

Coast Guard officials said they are currently focusing all their efforts on locating the sub first before deploying any vessel capable of reaching as far below as 3800 metres where the Titanic wreck is located.

While the Coast Guard has no submarine capable of reaching those depths, officials are working around the clock to make sure such a vessel is ready if and when the Titan sub is located.

As of Tuesday afternoon, officials said there was only 40 hours of oxygen left on the Titan.

Mauger, first district commander and leader of the search-and-rescue mission, said the US was co-ordinating with Canada on the operation.

A frantic Coast Guard rescue operation was underway to locate the tiny vessel and save the marooned team — who had less than one day’s worth of oxygen as of Wednesday morning, officials said.

One of OceanGate’s previous Titanic expeditions had also gotten lost for several hours, because there is no GPS underwater, according to CBS News correspondent David Pogue, who was along for the harrowing ride.

Company officials were criticised for waiting eight hours after they lost communication with the Titan to alert authorities about the missing vessel on Sunday. The entire journey to the shipwreck was only supposed to take 10 hours.

This article originally appeared on NY Post and was reproduced with permission