Titan passenger recalls how sub battery went ‘kaput’ on way to Titanic

A videographer who once traveled to the Titanic aboard the doomed OceanGate submersible has claimed that CEO Stockton Rush shamelessly suggested that the passengers “sleep” after the battery went “kaput.”

Jaden Pan said on the BBC’s “The Travel Show” in 2022 that a battery died about two hours into the Titan’s dive to the famed shipwreck in 2021.

The five-person tourist vessel was a distance of about two football fields from the ship’s remains when Rush informed the passengers that they’d have to return to the surface.

“At first, I thought he was joking because we were over two hours into our expedition and so close to the bottom,” Pan said on the show.

“But then he explained that one of the batteries went kaput and we were having trouble using the electronic drops for the weights, so it would be hard for us to get back up to the surface,” he said.

Rush then suggested that his passengers go to sleep as the Titan’s weights dissolved, a process that required some 24 hours, allowing it to rise.

Half the crew, including Rush, had no problem with snoozing in the abyss, Pan explained, but the other half refused so the CEO managed to use hydraulics to drop the weight and the Titan returned to the surface.

Pan’s account is the latest to emerge about the late Rush’s actions as OceanGate CEO.

Rush, who used cost-effective shortcuts to build the Titan, has faced intense criticism after the disaster for seemingly ignoring major safety concerns while charging wealthy customers  $250,000 each for the trip to the iconic wreck.

New video has emerged of him saying the submersible had been severely damaged by a lightning strike during a 2018 test dive in the Bahamas.

Rush, 61, was piloting the Titan when it imploded on Jan. 18, killing him along with British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, 48-year-old Pakistani tycoon Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Sulaiman.

OceanGate has declined to comment to the media since the tragedy but Rush said in 2021 that he would “like to be remembered as an innovator.”

“I think it was General MacArthur who said, ‘You’re remembered for the rules you break.’ And I’ve broken some rules to make this,” the CEO said, adding: “The carbon fiber and titanium? There’s a rule you don’t do that. Well, I did,” referring to the controversial carbon-fiber design of the Titan’s hull.