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OceanGate CEO Allegedly Orchestrated Fatal Titan Sub Disaster to Cement Legacy, Says Friend
Stockton Rush allegedly named the submersible “Titan” as a nod to the 1898 novella Futility by Morgan Robertson, which eerily predicted the Titanic disaster. The fictional ship in the book, also named Titan, sinks in the North Atlantic under almost identical circumstances to the real-life RMS Titanic.
A shocking new account claims the catastrophic implosion of the Titan submersible during a 2023 expedition to the Titanic wreck was not a tragic accident, but the chilling fulfillment of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush’s suicidal master plan.
In Submersed: Wonder, Obsession, and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines, author Matthew Gavin Frank uncovers explosive allegations from Karl Stanley, a longtime friend and commercial submersible expert, who says Stockton Rush deliberately designed a “futile” vessel never intended to return. According to Stanley, Rush’s goal was nothing less than to immortalize himself within the Titanic’s mythos—no matter the cost.
“Rush’s ego was so big, he was willing to die and kill to be pivotal to the character of this story,” Karl Stanley told Frank. “He wanted to go [die] at the wreck. The more high-profile, the better.”
The Titan sub imploded during its descent in June 2023, killing all five passengers, including Stockton Rush. But Karl Stanley, in the book Submersed, insists it was no accident. In his messages to Frank just days after the tragedy, Stanley accused Stockton Rush of creating a “mousetrap for billionaires”—a carbon-fibre coffin designed to fail.
Rush allegedly named the submersible “Titan” as a nod to the 1898 novella Futility by Morgan Robertson, which eerily predicted the Titanic disaster. The fictional ship in the book, also named Titan, sinks in the North Atlantic under almost identical circumstances to the real-life RMS Titanic.
“This wasn’t just about exploring the Titanic wreck. This was about embedding himself into Titanic lore,” Frank writes. “Rush needed to fabricate a vessel doomed from the start, cloaked in symbolism.”
OceanGate Titan Sub
Even years before the fatal dive, warnings were raised. Karl Stanley, who accompanied Stockton Rush on a 2019 test dive to Titanic-level depths, documented strange “gunshot-like” noises and signs of potential hull compromise. In a detailed email to Rush, he wrote, “It would indicate there is an area of the hull that is breaking down/getting spongy.”
Karl Stanley urged Stockton Rush to suspend operations until further inspection could be done. But Rush, confident in his engineering and dismissive of Stanley’s concerns, refused. “I value your experience… but not on the assessment of carbon fiber pressure hulls,” he replied sharply.
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The fatal dive took place four years later.
Stanley now believes the Titan was never meant to be a safe or sustainable vessel. “He didn’t just kill four wealthy people—he made them part of Titanic mythology,” Stanley told Frank. “He set a new standard for going out with a bang.”
As Matthew Gavin Frank’s Submersed continues to stir debate, it forces a haunting reconsideration of what many believed was an unforeseen disaster. Was Stockton Rush chasing innovation—or infamy?
