For weeks, a parade of friends, acquaintances, business associates, and observers of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush have come forward with messages of support and praise for his adventurous spirit or called him various versions of dangerous and reckless.
In a “60 Minutes Australia” interview that aired Monday, Rush’s close friend Karl Stanley took things to an entirely new level, going scorched earth in his description of his now-deceased friend.
Stanley not only knew Rush well, but he also rode on a Titan test run in the Bahamas in 2019. When asked if he felt Rush had a “death wish,” he did not hold back.
“The only question is, ‘When?’ He was risking his life and his customers’ lives to go down in history. He’s more famous now than anything else he would’ve done.”
Stanley was just warming up.
“He quite literally and figuratively went out with the biggest bang in human history that you could go out with, and who was the last person to murder two billionaires at once and have them pay for the privilege?”
Stanley told 60 Minutes that he repeatedly warned Rush that he was doomed and risking the lives of his passengers with every mission. Part of his concern was that he was not only a submarine captain himself, but on his test run in 2019, he heard cracking noises from the hull. On that two-hour trip that went 12,000 feet, he said he heard “loud, gunshot-like noises every three to four minutes.”
Stanley said he warned Rush in multiple phone calls and emails, telling him in no uncertain terms that he was eventually going to kill his passengers. This is what he said in a 2019 email.
“There is an area of the hull that is breaking down. It will only get worse. I literally painted a picture of his wrecked sub at the bottom [of the ocean], and even that wasn’t enough.”
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