New video has emerged of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush saying the Titan submersible that killed him and four other people last month had been severely damaged by a lightning strike during a test dive.
Rush, who was piloting the vessel when it imploded en route to the Titanic shipwreck, disclosed the 2018 incident in the Bahamas during an interview with undersea tech firm Teledyne Marine, Insider reported.
“Fortunately, it was not a direct strike. A direct strike to the carbon fiber probably would have taken us totally out,” he said in the now-deleted interview, copies of which have been posted on YouTube.
The original video was posted in August 2020, according to metadata reviewed by Insider.
In a May 16, 2018, post on its Instagram account, OceanGate said the Titan had undergone deep-sea testing a month earlier near Marsh Harbour in the Bahamas.
“Upon arrival the sub’s electronics sustained lightning damage that affected over 70% of its internal systems,” OceanGate said in the post. “Combined with uncharacteristically stormy and windy conditions in the Bahamas the team was unable to complete the first 4000-meter dive at least 45 days prior to the Titanic Survey Expedition.”
Rush said in a statement that he was disappointed by the delay, but added that “we are not willing to short cut the testing process due to a condensed timeline. We are 100% committed to safety and want to fully test the sub and validate all operational and emergency procedures before launching any expedition.”
In the interview with Teledyne Marine, Rush said his company replaced the sub’s faulty parts quickly.
“Fortunately, we are using commercial off-the-shelf and line-replaceable items. So in a matter of a couple of days, we were able to replace all those components,” said Rush, who piloted the Titan with a Logitech video game controller.
“But we continue to have issues on connectors, penetrators, wiring. Lightning can do weird things. That pushed our testing back and we ended up having to cancel that,” he added.
Rush, 61, British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, 48-year-old Pakistani tycoon Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Sulaiman, were all killed when the Titan imploded on June 18.
Rush, who used cost-effective shortcuts to build the Titan, has faced intense criticism after the disaster for seemingly ignoring major safety concerns while charging the wealthy tourists $250,000 each for the voyage to the iconic wreck 12,500 feet below the Atlantic Ocean surface.
OceanGate has declined to comment to media since the tragedy but Rush said in a 2021 interview that he would “like to be remembered as an innovator.
“I think it was General MacArthur who said, ‘You’re remembered for the rules you break.’ And I’ve broken some rules to make this,” he said, adding: “The carbon fiber and titanium? There’s a rule you don’t do that. Well, I did,” referring to the controversial carbon-fiber design of the vessel’s hull.
