26 Jun 2025, Thu

Ex-OceanGate staff member claims CEO dismissed warnings before Titan sub tragedy for shocking reason

A new Netflix documentary on the 2023 ordeal debuted on the streaming platform on June 11

More information is coming to light about the Titan sub disaster following a tell-all Netflix documentary’s release.

On Wednesday (June 11), the streamer released it’s highly anticipated documentary titled Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster which looks at the 2023 in more depth.

People who have viewed the new doc have branded it as ‘traumatizing’ due to one part specifically — that being the concerning ‘popping’ sounds passengers will have heard the sub make before it imploded.

The tourist sub was carrying OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, Paul-Henry Nargeolet, as well as Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman.

Following the devastating event, an investigation into the matter concluded that the implosion happened because of a catastrophic structural failure regarding the vessel’s the carbon fiber hull.

See the trailer for the documentary here:

Elsewhere in the documentary is an interview with ex OceanGate human resources and finance director Bonnie Carl, someone who has been very vocal about the issues the sub had before that ill-fated descent on June 18, 2023.

In the documentary — which boasts a 69 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing — Carl made a surprising claim about late OceanGate CEO Rush and why he supposedly ignored all the warning signs about the Titan sub.

She argued that the trip ‘should have never happened’, adding of her former boss: “In my opinion, he clearly wanted fame. Stockton had his mind set. He was going to do this no matter what.”

According to Carl, Rush looked up to billionaires like SpaceX founder Elon Musk and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and he was keen to become the next successful innovator.

Submersibles company OceanGate was founded by Stockton Rush in 2009 (Ahmet Okur/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Submersibles company OceanGate was founded by Stockton Rush in 2009 (Ahmet Okur/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

“He referred to those guys as ‘big swingin’ d*cks’ and he loved that term and used it all the time,” Carl said of Rush’s admiration of the two business moguls.

Backing Carl’s claims that Rush was going to set sail in the Titan sub ‘not matter what’, engineering project manager Emily Hammermeister said that Rush was ‘so set on getting to the Titanic that nothing that anybody said made much of a difference’.

Elsewhere, fellow former OceanGate engineer Tony Nissen said in the bombshell show, per New York Post: “I worked for somebody that is probably [a] borderline clinical psychopath.”