- Karl Stanley, a submersible expert and friend of Stockton Rush, expressed concerns about the Titan.
- In response, Rush told him he would prioritize the safety of the submersible over his company.
Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate who died last week when his Titan submersible catastrophically imploded on a dive to the Titanic shipwreck, told a friend in 2019 he would shut down his company before operating an unsafe vessel, according to emails obtained by Insider.
Rush was emailing his friend Karl Stanley, an expert in submersibles who had expressed serious concerns to him about the integrity of the Titan after hearing cracking noises on a dive in the Bahamas that year.
"I think that hull has a defect near that flange, that will only get worse. The only question in my mind is will it fail catastrophically or not," Stanley said in an email to Rush.
On June 18, less than two hours into a dive to the Titanic, the Titan submersible lost communication with its surface ship and went missing, kicking off a major search and rescue mission. Four days later, the Coast Guard announced pieces of the sub had been discovered, suggesting the Titan had catastrophically imploded. All five people on board, including Rush, were declared dead.
"I made it clear after our dive that I will not take nonessential crew, clients or media in the sub until I am confident that the hull is safe," Rush insisted in his response to Stanley. "As I told you before, I cancelled last year's expedition and will cancel this year's, or even shut down the company, before I will operate an unsafe sub."
OceanGate did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on the email.
Rush and OceanGate have come under scrutiny for ignoring safety concerns expressed by other experts in the industry. But some who had met Rush said he seemed to truly believe his sub was safe, as evidenced by the fact that he himself was participating in the dives.
CBS reporter David Pogue, who took a dive on the Titan and interviewed Rush for a segment last year, told Insider Rush was "cocky" and that he "cherry-picked the opinions of his experts."
"But I don't think Rush was a con man. He genuinely believed in his design — enough to trust it with his own life many times over," Pogue wrote in a story for New York magazine.
Mike Reiss, a writer and producer for "The Simpsons," who took several dives in the Titan, has also said he believed OceanGate took safety seriously and genuinely believed in their submersible.
"There was one dive we took — as soon as communication went out, we went right back to the surface," Reiss said, adding: "So they're not hot dogs. They're not daredevils here. They take this very seriously."
Still, Reiss said Rush and every passenger on the Titan understood there were risks, noting the waiver he had to sign beforehand mentioned he could die several times.
"They made it as safe as they could make it. They trusted their own lives to it," Reiss said, "but they knew it could end this way."