OceanGate founder reflects on Titan disaster a year on

A year ago today the US Coast Guard confirmed the Titan submersible had suffered a “catastrophic implosion” an hour and 45 minutes into its dive to the Titanic wreck site. This week the co-founder of the company behind the disaster, Guillermo Söhnlein, admitted a day has not passed since 22 June last year where he has not thought about the five men who lost their lives.

- EMMA GUINNESS

This included his friend Stockton Rush, who he co-founded OceanGate with in 2009 before Mr Söhnlein left the company in 2013. The Argentine-American entrepreneur, 58, wrote on LinkedIn: “Last 18 June 2023, my co-founder and friend, Stockton Rush, was killed in a tragic accident at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. One year later, we are all still coping with the loss.

“The implosion of my old company’s research submersible near the wreck of the Titanic not only took the lives of the five explorers in its crew, but the week-long search and rescue effort became a global media frenzy.” Mr Söhnlein, who claimed earlier this year that humanity has the capacity to “safely” send humans to Venus, said the global publicity generated by the disaster made it harder to process his grief.

He added: “I have spent every one of the past 365 days thinking about Stockton and his family, the other four crew members and their families, the current and former OceanGate employees, and all of the mission specialists and other guests who joined the various OceanGate expeditions – Titanic and otherwise – over the company’s 14-year history.

“Every one of them suffered a terrible loss, and every one of them has been coping with that loss in their own private way.”