- OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush was "blinded by his own hubris," a former passenger told Insider.
- Documentary camera operator Brian Weed took a rocky test-dive on Rush's doomed sub in 2021.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush — the creator behind the deep-sea submersible that imploded on an expedition to the RMS Titanic, leaving him and all four others on board dead — was a wildly convincing man who was "blinded by his own hubris," said a former passenger who took a rocky ride aboard the doomed vessel.
Veteran documentary camera operator Brian Weed was working for the Discovery Channel's "Expedition Unknown" TV show when he and his colleague got the opportunity in May 2021 to take a test dive on OceanGate's Titan sub with Rush at the helm of the mission.
The test dive to a shipwreck in Washington state's Puget Sound was supposed to be a "precursor" to a dive on the sub later that summer to the famed shipwreck site of the Titanic in the depths of the North Atlantic where the crew had planned to film for a special episode.
However, Weed told Insider, "Things did not go as planned on our test dive," and it ultimately led him to bow out of the project over safety concerns.
"That whole dive made me very uncomfortable with the idea of going down to Titanic depths in that submersible," Weed said, adding that it just didn't "feel safe."
During the dive, the thruster system malfunctioned, the computers needed to be recalibrated, and there were nonstop communications issues with the team at the surface, according to Weed.
The first 'red flag' came after being deadbolted inside the sub
Weed said his first "red flag" about the experience came shortly after Weed, "Expedition Unknown" host Josh Gates and Rush were deadbolted into the sub.
Weed questioned Rush about what would happen if the sub had to suddenly make an ascent in an emergency situation and was nowhere near its mothership.
"[Rush] says, 'Well there's four or five days of oxygen on board, and I said, 'What if they don't find you?' And he said, 'Well, you're dead anyway,'" Weed recalled.
Weed said he found Rush's response to his question "bizarre."
"It seemed to almost be a nihilistic attitude toward life or death out in the middle of the ocean," Weed said.
Rush's apparent "cavalier attitude" towards what Weed considered to be "basic safety" made him feel "uneasy" from the start, he said.
Problems occurred on the test dive even before the sub made it off the launch pad and the launch "proved to be a pretty clunky procedure," Weed said.
"I'm hearing banging, cracking, and clanking from the outside," said Weed, explaining that Rush was "trying to communicate with the team on the outside" and that there was an apparent issue with the platform.
"We were thinking if this isn't going well, you know, we're supposed to go on a dive to Titanic within the next couple of months. It feels like we're not ready to go," Weed said.
Rush assured them "everything would be done and smooth" by the time they were ready to go on the Titanic expedition, according to Weed.
After getting the green-light to finally go, "We do our systems check and we attempt to start maneuvering out with our thrusters and that's pretty much when everything started to go wrong," said Weed.
Quickly, at least one thruster failed and there was a "major malfunction" with the whole thruster system, he said.
"We sort of became sitting ducks in water without the ability to go anywhere," said Weed, explaining that the sub never got below 100 feet in the water.
Rush had to 'sheepishly confess' that the dive had to be aborted
The sub spent more than two hours in the water "going nowhere" before Rush "had to sheepishly confess we had to abort the dive because there was no way for the vessel to get down to the target," said Weed.
"The whole time I'm in the water locked in this [submersible] and thinking this is supposed to go to the Titanic in two months," said Weed. "We can't get below 100 feet and this is supposed to go 12,000 feet under the ocean."
During the ordeal, Weed said that Rush seemed "flustered" and "nervous," but always had "an excuse or a reason for whatever was going on."
"He made it seem like everything was a minor issue, although in my mind an aborted dive means that's not a minor issue," said Weed.
Weed called Rush "very convincing," "charismatic," "smart," and someone you "want to trust," but he didn't trust him.
"He's a great salesman. He's committed. He fully believes in what he's doing. And he fully believes in his innovation and his technology and what he is capable of creating," Weed said of Rush.
"But when I met him, I didn't trust him," he said.
"Stockton believes so much in his own creation and innovation that he wasn't willing to even consider that he might be wrong about something," said Weed.
Weed, who spent three days with Rush, said Rush "was blinded by his own hubris, for lack of better word — blinded by his own confidence."
His attitude "to me was this works until it doesn't."
"It showed me a side of Stockton that meant, I am 100% all in on this and this is a hill, for a lack of a better phrase, I am willing to die on," said Weed.
Weed said his decision to pull out of the project was "solidified" after his production company hired a consultant with the US Navy to evaluate the Titan sub weeks later.
Overall, the consultant had a "positive" report, said Weed, but that there were concerns about the carbon-fiber hull of the Titan.
An expert previously told Insider that photos of the Titan sub wreckage suggest that the most likely explanation for the vessel's implosion was that the hull collapsed under the immense pressure of the ocean.
After reading the report, Weed said he thought "going down on this submersible is playing Russian roulette because there's no way to know when it's going to give out."
About a month later, the entire production for the "Expedition Unknown" episode was canceled "due to the same concerns over safety and unknowns," said Weed.
When Weed saw the headlines on June 18 that the Titan had gone missing, he felt "sick to my stomach."
"I've never regretted making that choice" to not go back on the Titan, said Weed.