A '60 Minutes Australia' investigation into the Titan submersible has revealed some shocking details about the ill-fated tourist submersible that dominated headlines at the end of June. Five people were on board the sub, including four tourists who had paid to see the sunken wreckage of the legendary Titanic. Operating the submersible was Oceangate co-founder and CEO Stockton Rush.
“I think Stockton was designing a mousetrap for billionaires,” Carl Stanley told '60 Minutes'. Stanley is a tourist submarine operator and considered Rush a friend. He was also one of the first people to undergo one of Titan's test dives in 2019.
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Hearing him describe the experience is enough to make anyone cringe. “I would say every three to four minutes there [were] loud gunshot-like noises. It's a heck of a sound to hear when you're that far under the ocean. And [in] a craft that has only been down that deep once before.”
Stanley believed the loud noises were a cause for concern -- but when he raised the alarm, Stanley says his exchange with Rush became heated. Stanley's concerns revolved around the carbon-fiber hull, writing to Rush that the problem would only get worse. He also felt that Rush didn't have enough operating experience.
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“I literally painted a picture of his wrecked sub at the bottom [of the ocean] and even that wasn't enough," Stanley told '60 Minutes'.
Stanley wasn't the only person in the maritime community concerned about Rush's undertaking -- according to the investigation, the opposition wasn't exactly scarce. But according to Rob McCallum, who previously led a Titanic submersible expedition in the early 2000s, said that he experienced something unusual in his field.
“If someone raised a safety concern[...] they were not only not listened to, they were silenced," he tells '60 Minutes'. "That is such a toxic culture when it comes to safety and it's the reverse of everything else I know and the maritime industry.”
But Carl Stanley went one step further, saying that he believed Rush had a death wish. “He was risking his life and his customers’ lives to go down in history. He's more famous now [for this] than anything else he would have ever done.”
Oceangate co-founder Guillermo Söhnlein also appeared in the interview, characterizing his business partner as "risk-averse."
"I feel like as co-founder I do have to stand up for the fact that I feel that what we were doing was right and was heading in the right direction.”
