Stockton Rush (links in Build). Wilfred Lee/AP
Stockton Rush once said he preferred hiring a young team to veteran submarine pilots.
Rush noted in 2020 that OceanGate’s competitors typically hire “former military submarine operators” and technicians.
But the CEO said he wanted team members from a variety of backgrounds, such as a varsity athlete or a surfer.
We’re currently testing machine translations of articles by our US colleagues at Insider. This article has been automatically translated and checked by a real editor. We welcome feedback at the end of the article
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush said in an old interview that he preferred not to hire veteran submarine pilots or technicians and instead wanted to make his team “younger” and “more inspiring”.
The CEO who died aboard a submarine, the Titan, in June, spoke to executives at Teledyne Marine, a marine equipment manufacturer. While the interview was undated, a recording of Teledyne’s August 2020 video meeting was released, according to metadata viewed by Business Insider.
The recording has since been deleted, but Business Insider viewed an archived version of it.
read too
I was on a Titan dive that got aborted – feels like I played Russian Roulette and won
In the video, Matt Burdyny, a Teledyne executive, told Rush that he accompanied OceanGate on a dive in Puget Sound and commented that many OceanGate employees were fresh graduates but appeared professional.
“You know, the tenure of a lot of these people obviously wasn’t very long, a lot of young people just out of school, but everyone knew their role and they performed it flawlessly,” Burdyny said.
Rush agreed.
“I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspiring”
“When I started the company, there were other submarine operators, but they were usually ex-military submarine men, and you saw a fair number of 50-year-old white men,” he said. “I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspiring.”
“I’m not going to inspire a 16-year-old to be interested in marine engineering,” the CEO said. “But a 25-year-old who is a submarine pilot or platform operator or one of our technicians can be inspiring.”
Rush said OceanGate strives to hire “smart, motivated, younger people” in part because the company is “doing things that are completely new.”
The entrepreneur added that he wanted a team with diverse backgrounds because he believed it would make Titanic expeditions more enjoyable for his clients.
“You go to Titanic, you spend eight days on a boat and you don’t want everyone to have the same experience like being on a US nuclear submarine or working for Atlantis Submarines and everyone having the same background,” he said rush
read too
The Titan submarine’s electrical system was apparently designed by college-age interns
He said that one of his team members was a varsity hammer thrower and that another person on his team “surfs in Iceland in the winter.” Anyone who works for OceanGate has to be a “friendly, fun but very confident person”.
“We need people who have a diverse background”
“We need people who come from diverse backgrounds, and then we have to educate and educate and educate and educate them to make it look like a polished and safe operation,” Rush said.
Rush also said OceanGate’s safety standards, work processes and checklists are more in line with the aerospace industry than the ocean industry.
“We can train people for it. We can train someone to use the sub with a Game-Controller to steer so that anyone can drive the submarine,” he said. Rush earned an Aerospace Engineering degree from Princeton University and was a certified airline pilot.
According to the OceanGate-Website the Titan was equipped with a 2D sonar system from Teledyne .
Rush’s handling of OceanGate’s security standards has come under criticism after documents surfaced showing he repeatedly ignored warnings from other experts.
On June 23, authorities found debris from the Titan on the sea floor. It is highly likely that the ship’s hull ruptured, killing the five people making their way to the wreckage of the Titanic at 13,000 feet (about 4 kilometers) down on the spot.
If Rush and Teledyne taped the interview in 2020, it was likely filmed during the years when OceanGate was preparing Titanic for commercial tours of Titanic. The annual expeditions began in 2021.
read too
The Titanic submersible is said to have attempted to reach the surface – suggesting the occupants knew something was going wrong
OceanGate advertised for young talents on Instagram
A team photo taken in December 2019 on the OceanGate Instagram account posted appears to show 27 people – including Rush and his wife Wendy Rush – of various ages in corporate attire.
The Instagram account frequently promoted young pilots on the team, at least one of whom was described as “one of the youngest female pilots in the industry.”
OceanGate also hired engineers who were in their teens and paid some of them $15 an hour, according to an unnamed company executive who said “The New Yorker“. According to a Washington State University graduate student, the company also hired student interns to design electrical systems for the Titan.
Teledyne and OceanGate did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside of regular business hours.
External content not available
Your privacy settings prevent the loading and display of all external content (e.g. graphics or tables) and social networks (e.g. Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc.). To display, please activate the settings for social networks and external content in the privacy settings .
Change privacy settings