Person attributes
Stockton Rush was the founder and CEO of OceanGate, who rose to public consciousness in the wake of the Titan submersible search and eventual discovery. This interest led to discoveries of Stockton Rush's attitude toward discovery, innovation, and safety, which in hindsight, have provided potential insight into the Titan accident. He trained as a pilot and became one of the youngest jet transport pilots (at the age of nineteen), and fell in love with the ocean and ocean exploration.
Born Richard Stockton Rush III, Stockton Rush was born in Seattle in 1962 and was a descendant of two of the Founding Fathers of the United States: Richard Stockton and Benjamin Rush. His maternal grandfather was Philip K. Davies, a San Francisco shipping magnate, and he was born into relative wealth as the youngest of five children of Richard Stockton Rush Jr. and Ellen Rush (née Davies).
From a young age, Stockton Rush had a professed dream of becoming an astronaut and being the first person on Mars. However, due to relatively poor eyesight, he was unable to realize his dream. Stockton Rush's attempt to realize that dream, however, drove many of his young choices. These choices included attending and graduating from the United Airlines Jet Training Institute in 1981, at the age of nineteen, becoming the youngest person at the time to graduate from that institute. He would serve as a DC-8 first officer on flights to Europe and the Middle East during his college summers.
For college, Stockton Rush attended Princeton University with a Bachelor of Science in aerospace, aeronautical, and astronautical engineering. He later graduated from University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business with a Master's of Business Administration in 1989.
After graduating from Princeton, Stockton Rush joined the McDonnell Douglas Corporation as a flight test engineer on the F-15 program, spending two years at Edwards Air Force Base on its APG-63 radar test and anti-missile program. After graduating from UC Berkeley, Stockton Rush built a Glasair III experimental aircraft and then constructed and heavily modified a Kittridge K-350 two-man submarine in which he would conduct more than thirty dives.
Between 2003 and 2007, Rush served on the Museum of Flight's Board of Trustees in Seattle, Washington, where he chaired the institution's development committee for a year during his tenure. Rush also served on the board of directors for Seattle's BlueView Technologies, which made high-frequency sonar systems, and in 2012, Rush was involved in the company's acquisition by Teledyne Inc., a developer and provider of subsea technologies.
In 2009, with a shift in Stockton Rush's focus from air and space to the ocean, Rush founded OceanGate Expeditions. During interviews, Rush often said the founding of OceanGate was part of a vision Rush had to revolutionize underwater travel. This came after Rush had come to love deep sea travel, telling interviewers from 2019 to 2021 about the unique experience of deep sea travel. The descriptions of the experience were also to sell expeditions to the wreck of the Titanic.
Stockton Rush in one of the earlier OceanGate submersibles.
In part, OceanGate was founded based on what Rush saw as an opportunity in the industry of small-craft submersibles, where existing submersibles after a descent would have to be refurbished, and Rush wanted to develop and manufacture small-craft submersibles capable of multiple trips without requiring refurbishing. This would need to be a resilient craft with necessary safety mechanisms, which Rush turned to new materials (including carbon fiber) and innovative technologies (such as sensor systems to monitor hull integrity) to achieve this.
These craft were intended for 4,000- and 6,000-meter dives while being crewed by a small four- to five-person crew. And each craft was intended to have a partner launch and recovery platform, which would limit the necessary life support and technology on the individual craft. The achievement of this led to OceanGate establishing itself as a leading provider of crewed submersibles for chartered exploration and scientific research.
After the June 2023 Titan accident, which took Stockton Rush's life, along with the other passengers on the craft, many reports surfaced in reference to Rush's attitude towards safety. Many comments emerged during the search for the missing Titan submersible that suggested Rush had a dismissive attitude toward safety, with reports highlighting a comment of Rush's in which he said, "At some point, safety is just a pure waste... At some point, you're going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question."
However, others who knew and worked with Rush noted they had faith in his commitment to safety, calling Rush a level-headed individual who knew what needed to be done. Rush was a pilot on many, if not most, of the dives of the submersibles due, at least in part, to his trust in the safety of the craft. Rush saw the use of advanced materials to craft a new sub that would be capable of a better strength-to-buoyancy ratio than traditional metals. And he piloted several early prototypes and shallower diving submersibles, such as the Cyclops 1, which was used to take scientists on research expeditions and to bring nautical archeologists to the remains of Roman merchant ships. A former employee noted, some of these materials would crackle and pop when strained under pressure, which OceanGate's sensitive acoustic monitoring could detect before failure.
Stockton Rush and wife Wendy Rush.
In 1986, Stockton Rush married Wendy Hollings Weil, a licensed pilot and substitute teacher. Wendy Rush is also the great-great-grandaughter of Isidor and Ida Straus, two of the wealthiest passengers on the Titanic who were noted to be seen standing on the deck as the ship sank and were portrayed in James Cameron's 1997 film. Wendy Rush has also worked as the director of communication for OceanGate and as an expedition team leader, where she has helped guide the submersibles from a launch and recovery vehicle. Together, Stockton and Wendy Rush were parents to two children, Richard and Quincy Rush.
