The multi-millionaire who owns OceanGate, the company behind the missing Titan sub, is a descendant of two U.S. Founding Fathers.
On Sunday, a submersible owned by OceanGate departed for a deep-sea tour of the Titanic shipwreck. However, just one hour and 45 minutes into the trip, the crew on the transportation ship lost contact with the submersible below in the depths of the sea.
The sub was carrying five passengers, who will all run out of oxygen if not found soon, as. the sub was only supplied with enough oxygen for approximately four days.
The founder and CEO of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, 61, is one of the five passengers on the lost submarine
Rush, at the age of 19, was the youngest jet transport-rated pilot in the world and flew for Saudi Arabian Airlines. He then went on to graduate from Princeton with a degree in aerospace engineering.
While his initial dream was to become the first man on Mars, by the age of 44, Rush’s interests had shifted away from space and to the ocean. In 2017, Rush spoke about his change in focus, saying, “I realized that what I really wanted to do was explore. I wanted to be Captain Kirk and in our lifetime, the final frontier is he ocean.”
In 2009, Rush founded OceanGate and eventually began his famous Titanic expeditions.
According to the Daily Mail, Founding Fathers Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton are both ancestors of Rush.
Other notable ancestors include U.S. Attorney General Richard Rush and U.S. Civil War commander Richard Henry Rush.
Some years prior to the recent disappearance of the Titan submersible, Rush had reportedly been warned that his company was ignoring safety concerns that could lead to a potentially “catastrophic” outcome.
David Lochridge, a former OceanGate employee, actually filed a lawsuit against the company in 2018, claiming that passengers on the submersible were subject to “potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible” due to “OceanGate’s refusal to conduct critical, non-destructive testing of the experimental design of the hull.”
This suit was ultimately settled out of court.
In addition to Rush, the other passengers on the missing submersible include British businessman and famed explorer Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, and French diver Paul-Henry Nargeolet.
