TheQuartering [6/22/2023]
The OceanGate CEO who is trapped on a 22-foot submersible on an ill-fated voyage to see the Titanic wreck once explained how he didn’t hire “50-year-old white guys” with military experience to captain his vessels because they weren’t “inspirational.”
Stockton Rush, 61, added that such expertise was unnecessary because “anybody can drive the sub” with a $30 video game controller.
“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,” Rush told Teledyne Marine in a newly resurfaced undated Zoom interview.
“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,” he continued.
“So we’ve really tried to get, um, very intelligent, motivated, younger individuals involved because we’re doing things that are completely new.”
Rush’s Everett, Wash.-based company has made two previous trips to the 1912 wreckage of the “unsinkable” ship, which is 12,500 feet underwater at the bottom of the Atlantic some 370 miles off the coast of Canada.
The founder and CEO — who navigates the missing Titan submersible with a cheap Amazon video game joystick — has been trapped on the tiny vessel since Sunday with four wealthy adventurers who paid $250,000 apiece for the tour.
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.