‘What could go wrong?’ joked OceanGate CEO before Titan sub disaster

The comment from OceanGate Exploration's late CEO Stockton Rush was featured in a new documentary entitled 'Minute by Minute: The Titan Sub Disaster.'

Only two months before the now-infamous Titan submersible disaster, OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush appeared on a Canadian radio show where he joked, “What could go wrong?”

Today, the comment is chilling, as Rush and four others were killed in an underwater implosion of the sub as it approached the Titanic shipwreck in June 2023.

Their deaths are now the subject of a new documentary entitled Minute by Minute: The Titan Sub Disaster. Rush’s interview with St John’s Radio was included in the two-part series, created by ITN Productions.

“What could go wrong?” Rush chuckled in the resurfaced clip, adding that the expedition team decided to undertake the mission in June because that was when the North Atlantic waters would be “calmest.”

The Titan submersible disappeared on June 18, 2023.

After land-based teams lost contact with the sub, the frantic search caught the attention of international audiences concerned for the fates of Rush and the Titan’s other passengers: two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, British adventurer Hamish Harding and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

Contact with the sub was lost about an hour and 45 minutes into the journey. Reports that the vessel was only equipped with 96 hours of oxygen made the search urgent and involved both U.S. and Canadian teams.

On June 22, four days after the disappearance, the U.S. Coast Guard located debris from the submersible and presumed all five passengers dead. The debris was found about 500 yards from the Titanic shipwreck.