(NewsNation) — The “Titan: The OceanGate Disaster” documentary director is pointing fingers at OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, blaming him for the fatal implosion.
“It comes down to Stockton Rush,” Mark Monroe said in the Netflix documentary. “The decisions he made led to this. It was a cult of personality. If you went against him, you were likely to be out.”
The implosion, which happened during the sub’s sixth descent to the wreckage of the Titanic, killed five people, including Rush. The Netflix documentary examines Rush’s background and “his quest to become the next billionaire innovator.”
In the documentary, Bonnie Carl, the company’s ex-bookkeeper, said that Rush “wanted to be a Jeff Bezos or an Elon Musk.”
Titan submersible safety concerns allegedly ignored by CEO Stockton Rush
Rush wanted to reduce the weight and cost of the vessel by using carbon fiber instead of heavy titanium, according to Variety. The carbon fibers allegedly started snapping way before the implosion in 2023. Colleagues and experts warned Rush during the time that it was unsafe, but the documentary claimed he didn’t listen.
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Matthew McCoy, at left, a former OceanGate employee, talks with the Coast Guard’s Thomas Whalen after testimony ended during the final day of the Coast Guard investigatory hearing on the causes of the implosion of an experimental submersible headed for the wreck of the Titanic, Friday, Sept. 27, 2024, in North Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/Mic Smith) -
The Titan Marine Board listens to testimony from Amber Bay, Former OceanGate Director of Administration at the Titan marine board of investigation hearing inside the Charleston County Council Chambers Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in North Charleston, S.C. (Corey Connor via AP, Pool) -
Amber Bay, Former OceanGate Director of Administration breaks down into tears while giving a final statement at the Titan marine board of investigation hearing inside the Charleston County Council Chambers Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024, in North Charleston, S.C. (Corey Connor via AP, Pool) -
FILE – This undated image provided by OceanGate Expeditions in June 2021 shows the company’s Titan submersible. (OceanGate Expeditions via AP, File) -
The logo for OceanGate Expeditions is seen on a boat parked near the offices of the company at a marine industrial warehouse office door in Everett, Wash., Tuesday, June 20, 2023. (AP Photo/Ed Komenda) -
This photo provided by Travel Weekly shows OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush on May 27, 2023. Rush was piloting the Titan submersible when it imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five people on board, the U.S. Coast Guard announced Thursday, June 22, 2023. (Arnie Weissmann/Travel Weekly via AP) -
FILE – Submersible pilot Randy Holt, right, communicates with the support boat as he and Stockton Rush, left, CEO and Co-Founder of OceanGate, dive in the company’s submersible, “Antipodes,” about three miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., June 28, 2013. Rescuers are racing against time to find the missing submersible carrying five people, who were reported overdue Sunday night, June 18, 2023. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)
“When they found the wreckage, it gutted me. It still does,” Carl said. “I’m angry. This shouldn’t have happened.”
David Lochridge, the former Oceangate director of marine operations, said that his safety concerns were “always met with resistance,” according to PEOPLE. The vessel’s end caps, which were made of titanium, were allegedly glued to the hull.
“Four guys… were applying it with spatulas… There was nobody verifying there were no voids. It was like somebody putting icing on a birthday cake,” Lochride claimed. He also said Rush wouldn’t get the sub safety inspected by a third party.
“It would have cost a lot of money,” Lochridge explained.
‘Deeper story’ to Titan sub implosion
The head of documentary and nonfiction for the production company Story Syndicate, along with Monroe, spoke with Variety. Jon Bardin said that the company had to do a lot of research before deciding to start the project.
“With any story like this, we ask the question, ‘Is there a deeper story to tell? Is there more to this than the headlines, social media reaction, and just the horror of what took place that day?’ That’s the sort of research and digging that we did from the beginning, and we found out that the answer to our question was yes.”
The larger story? Monroe believes it’s about people who don’t believe rules apply to them. “There is a culture of people who exist in our society who believe that the rules don’t apply to them. That actually it is an advantage to, as they say, break stuff and move fast. In this story, we saw that again and again.”
Titan submersible implosion items that survived
Nearly two years after the implosion, the U.S. Coast Guard revealed at the end of May that some items did survive the disaster. Officials found a still-intact ink pen and other items while going through the remains of the implosion.
In a TikTok video by Discovery, a Coast Guard member talked about the recovery process and revealed how the pen was found. The pen allegedly belonged to Rush. Investigators also found business cards, Titanic-themed stickers, remnants of clothing and human remains.
“We were all just kind of getting all-hands-in and separating what needed to be considered as human remains and what was just other wreckage pieces. As we were pulling it apart, that is how we realized it was Mr. Rush’s clothing,” the Coast Guard official said.
All of these items have been cataloged by the Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation.
Titan submersible implosion audio
In February, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released the audio recording of what the agency believes is the moment the sub imploded. The agency said the sound came from a moored passive acoustic recorder that was around 900 miles away from the implosion site.
The sound of static can be heard in the recording, followed by a boom, then more static.
The Titan lost contact with those on land after nearly two hours. Officials spent four days searching for the sub until they found evidence of the implosion on the ocean floor.
Rush, along with Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman Dawood, were killed. OceanGate stopped operations after the incident, and a Wired investigation showed that Rush had overstated the timeline of the project and lied about issues with the hull of the vessel.
The Netflix documentary releases on June 11.
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