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“I believe it’s pretty much invulnerable”. So declared OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush of his new deep-sea submersible, Titan, to CBS News in 2017. Six years later, the vessel would implode on an expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five people aboard, including Rush.
The now-ominous clip of Rush’s claim reappears in Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, a grimly captivating Netflix documentary about an avoidable tragedy that was foreseen by almost everyone — except the man in charge.
While the incident provoked a global media frenzy in June 2023 — and was recently the subject of a BBC documentary — this new film offers perhaps the most informed, comprehensive account of what went wrong. Not just aboard the vessel during the fatal descent, but at OceanGate in the decade leading up to the final expedition.
A story defined by serious mismanagement and reckless misjudgment, it is predominantly told by those who were in the room as decisions were made — or else in the submersible as alarming faults became apparent. Among the contributing former OceanGate employees, industry experts and investigators, who share their often enraging insights, are one-time director of marine operations turned whistleblower David Lochridge and ex-chief engineer Tony Nissen. Both describe being shut down by Rush as they flagged safety issues years before the accident. Both claim they lost their jobs shortly after doing so.
Collectively, the testimonies of those who worked for Rush give an impression of a deep-sea Icarus: undone by hubris, indifferent to warnings. But the documentary also supports these character references with revealing recordings of the man himself. “This is how we’re doing it. Period,” he snaps at Lockridge in an audio clip from a 2018 meeting in which we hear the latter voice his concerns about Titan’s structural flaws. “I don’t want anybody in this company who is uncomfortable with what we’re doing.”
In another video, we see Rush on board the submersible during a 2018 test, making light of the horrifying popcorn-like sound of the lightweight, carbon-fibre hull cracking under the sea pressure. Emerging from the damaged vessel later, he boasts that he could have gone deeper.
For all the intriguing and terrifying insights about deep-sea adventuring that have drawn people to this story, the Titan disaster might be seen as a timely cautionary tale about what can happen when unchecked ambition and ego win out over expertise and evidence.
★★★★☆
On Netflix from June 11
