Las Vegas financier Jay Bloom has revealed that he turned down cut-price tickets for him and his son on the doomed Titanic submersible after texting OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush about 'safety concerns'.
Hours after the US Coast Guard confirmed the doomed Titanic submersible, which went missing on Sunday, suffered a 'catastrophic implosion', Las Vegas tycoon, Jay Bloom, has revealed turning down cheap seats in OceanGates' Titan for him and his son after raising safety concerns with CEO Stockton Rush. The businessman further stated that he was fobbed off by Rush, who believed that descending to the bottom of the Atlantic 'was safer than crossing the street'.
The OceanGate founder was among the five people who lost their lives in the tragic expedition to the Titanic wreckage. Apart from Rush, Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, British billionaire Hamish Harding, and French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet were among those declared dead in the tragic incident.
A 'last minute pricing' of $150,000 per head, or $100,000 less than the customary $250,000 fee, was made to Jay Bloom, according to messages between him and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush. Bloom, a Democrat supporter who has been photographed with US President Joe Biden, also expressed grief over the tragic death of Rush in the doomed Titanic submersible. He also expressed sadness that Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, who was just 19, had gone on his place and perished in the tragic incident.
In a Facebook post Bloom said, "I expressed safety concerns and Stockton told me: 'While there's obviously risk - it's way safer than flying in a helicopter or even scuba diving'. He was absolutely convinced that it was safer than crossing the street. I am sure he really believed what he was saying. But he was very wrong."
Stockton Rush persuaded Jay Bloom and his son Sean to join him on the dive to the Titanic in May this year in February. Due to bad weather, the dive got pushed back till June 18, which was the day of the tragic excursion.
Also read: All 5 people onboard missing Titanic submersible have sadly been lost, confirms OceanGate
"I told him that due to scheduling we couldn’t go until next year. Our seats went to Shahzada Dawood and his 19 year old son, Suleman Dawood, two of the other three who lost their lives on this excursion, the fifth being Hamish Harding," Bloom added in his Facebook post.
"RIP Stockton and crew. As for Sean and I.. we are going to take a minute to stop and smell the roses. Tomorrow is never promised. Make the most of today," he stated.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush: “By the time we’re done testing it, I believe it’s pretty much invulnerable.”
Interviewer: “And that’s pretty much what they said about the Titanic.”pic.twitter.com/WZWy5TTtgR
OceanGate CEO Rush had frequently sought to persuade Bloom in texts that the Titan was secure and that they were headed to the Titanic's ruin. He said his son was very worried about the risks after speaking with a friend.
Rush had said, "I'm happy to have a video call with him. Curious what the uninformed would say the danger is and whether it's real or imagined."
They talked about how the hull would fare under pressure or even if a whale or squid came into contact with it.
"While there's obviously risk it's way safer than flying in a helicopter or even scuba diving, There hasn't even been an injury in 35 years in non-military subs," said Rush in his response.
James Cameron, the filmmaker of Titanic and an expert on submersibles, claimed that he foresaw Titan's collapse days before the remains of the lost submersible were discovered, and he called the search a "prolonged nightmarish charade."
Cameron, who has made 30 trips to the most well-known shipwreck in the world, compared this week's catastrophe to the Titanic accident, in which the captain repeatedly disregarded warnings about an approaching iceberg but continued to sail at maximum speed.
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UPDATE: Director James Cameron weighs in:
"The safety certification protocols of all other submersibles, other than this one, is the gold standard… Experts warned [Stockton Rush] repeatedly."
"Similar to the Titanic disaster...Warnings went unheeded." pic.twitter.com/m37g0kZ7xM
The submersible had a "catastrophic implosion" just 1,600 feet from the bow of the sunken ocean liner, killing the Titanic Five instantly, the US Coast Guard reported. Debris on the ocean floor was discovered by a remote-controlled submarine from a Canadian ship.
However, according to search and rescue personnel, the men most likely passed away on Sunday, before military aircraft using sonar buoys heard what they believed to be SOS 'banging' sounds in the ocean. The US Navy claimed that when communications were lost around two hours after they dove, they heard a sound resembling an implosion.
Cameron told BBC News that the Coast Guard search 'felt like a prolonged and nightmarish charade where people are running around talking about banging noises and talking about oxygen and all this other stuff'. "I knew that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position. That's exactly where they found it," the Academy Award-winning director added.
Court records state that a former OceanGate employee had previously voiced safety concerns regarding the Titan submersible. Former OceanGate director of marine operations David Lochridge filed a wrongful termination lawsuit after raising concerns about the firm's purported "refusal to conduct critical, non-destructive testing of the experimental design."
Old video from inside the Titan sub with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush shows the $33 Logitech game controller that was used to pilot the sub to depths of 12,500ft. pic.twitter.com/F8wHhsGUi7
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV)"A number of the top players in the deep-submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that needed to be certified and so on," Cameron said.
"I'm struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night, and many people died as a result It's a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded — to take place at the same exact site with all the diving that's going around all around the world. I think it's just astonishing, it's really quite surreal," the Titanic director added.
Also read: All about Odysseus 6K, the ROV that found Titanic submersible
"I felt in my bones what had happened. I immediately got on the phone to some of my contacts in the deep submersible community. Within about an hour I had the following facts. They were on descent. They were at 3500 metres, heading for the bottom at 3800 metres. For the sub's electronics to fail and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously - sub's gone. We now have another wreck that is based on unfortunately the same principles of not heeding warnings," he concluded.
James Cameron's direct message follows the revelation that OceanGate CEO Rush had been told years earlier that his "experimental approach" could result in a catastrophe. In another interview, Rush also discussed "breaking rules" to create the submarine.
CEO Stockton Rush: "I have broken some rules to make this. (…) The carbon fibre and titanium there is a rule that you don’t do that. Well, I did.“ pic.twitter.com/XuUAMuCJ2v
— stonking.com (@stonking)The Titan submersible
“we have clients that are Titanic enthusiasts, we have people who have mortgage their home we have people who don't think twice about a trip of this cost, we had one gentleman who had won the lottery” CEO Stockton Rush pic.twitter.com/5JCPgMAOVU
The men, some of whom had paid $250,000 apiece to view the renowned shipwreck, would have perished in an instant. There is minimal chance of recovering any of their remains, which is a heartbreaking blow for their families.
"This is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there. The debris is consistent of a catastrophic implosion of the vessel.. we'll continue to work and search the area down there - but I don't have an answer for prospects at this time," Paul Hankin, a deep sea expert involved in the search, said.