Submersible pilot’s wife is descendant of famous Titanic couple who died arm in arm

The wife of the CEO of OceanGate, who was piloting the missing Titanic tourist submersible, is descended from a wealthy New York couple who drowned on the Titanic when the famed ship hit an iceberg in 1912.

Wendy Rush is the wife of Stockton Rush, one of the five people trapped in a Titan sub that went missing Sunday after a trip to visit the Titanic wreckage.

Crews are now racing to try and find the missing sub in a massive international rescue effort.

Wendy’s great-great-grandparents, Isidor and Ida Straus, died in the 1912 disaster.

Isidor is a co-founder of Macy’s department store. He and his wife were featured in James Cameron’s 1997 film about the disaster as the two fictionalized versions were shown embraced on a better as water rushed into the ship and around them.

The pair had in real life been offered seats on a lifeboat – her as a woman, and him as a well-known former congressman and co-owner of Macy’s department store. But Isidor refused, saying he would not go until all the women and children had gone, and Ida then refused to go without her husband of 40 years.

She gave her mink coat to her maid, Ellen Bird, to keep her warm as she sailed away on the lifeboat.

Wendy Rush, born Wendy Hollings Weil, married engineer and entrepreneur Stockton Rush in 1986.

She is descended from Isidor and Ida Straus’s daughter Minnie, who married Dr. Richard Weil in 1905. 

Their son, Richard Weil Jr., later served as president of Macy’s New York, and his son, Dr. Richard Weil III, is Wendy Rush’s father, The New York Times reported. 

Wendy Rush has visited the Titanic wreckage three times with her husband’s company in the last two years, and works as OceanGate’s communications director.

Stockton Rush, 61, founded OceanGate in 2009.

The Seattle-born, Princeton-educated aeronautical engineer worked on fighter jets and initially hoped to go to Mars before switching his attention to the sea.

He tried to buy explorer Steve Fossett’s submersible after his death in 2007, but was unable to do so and began creating his own.

Rush admitted that parts of his sub were improvised – it is controlled by a video game controller, and the light inside was bought from an online camping website – but said it had been built with help from Boeing, NASA and the University of Washington.

Yet it emerged Tuesday that OceanGate’s safety record had been questioned by an industry body.

A 2018 letter to Rush, obtained by the New York Times, warned that ‘the current ‘experimental’ approach’ of the company could result in problems ‘from minor to catastrophic.’

It was sent by the Manned Underwater Vehicles committee of the Marine Technology Society, a 60-year-old trade group that aims to promote ocean technology and educate the public about it.

But it is unclear if any employee or Rush himself responded to the letter, and there was no further detail on why the approach was considered dangerous.

Officials searching for the missing sub have warned that they may not be able to rescue the missing tourist sub even if they find it.

The sub’s oxygen supply was at just 24 hours from Wednesday, giving rescue crews until Thursday morning to find it before it runs out.

Rescue crews from the US, France and Canada are still trying to find the vessel, which is understood to have last ‘pinged’ while directly above the Titanic wreck.

In addition to Rush, the passengers are British billionaire Hamish Harding; French Titanic expert PH Nargeolet; and Pakistani fathe and son Shahzada Dawood, 48, and Sulaiman Dawood, 19.

First District Response Coordinator Capt. Jamie Frederick said the Coast Guard has already searched 7,600 square miles of ocean – a search area the size of Connecticut.

At 12,500ft underwater, there are few vessels able to dive deep enough to find it.

It comes after DailyMail.com revealed that OceanGate refused to put their submersible through an independent inspection process and fired a director in 2018 after he asked for more rigorous safety tests on the craft, named Titan.

Bosses fired David Lochridge, who was Director of Marine operations for the Titan project, after disagreeing with his demand for more rigorous safety checks on the submersible, including ‘testing to prove its integrity’.

The company also opted against having the craft ‘classed’, an industry-wide practice whereby independent inspectors ensure vessels meet accepted technical standards.

OceanGate, which charges up to $250,000 for a seat on the submersible, suggested that seeking classification could take years and would be ‘anathema to rapid innovation’.

In 2019, the firm added that seeking classification for Titan would not ‘ensure that operators adhere to proper operating procedures and decision-making processes – two areas that are much more important for mitigating risks at sea’.

Classification involves recruiting an independent organization to ensure vessels like ships and submersibles meet industry-wide technical standards. It is a crucial way of ensuring a vessel is fit to operate. 

The Manned Underwater Vehicles committee of the Marine Technology Society said in a statement about the tragedy that the ‘modern commercial submarine industry’ is ‘regulated in accordance with international safety standards through classification societies.’

They added: ‘These organizations have rules and safety standards for the design and construction of systems ranging from submersible vehicles to super tankers and oil platforms.

‘The main classification organizations for submersibles include the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), Det Nortke Veritas (DNV) and Lloyds Registry (LR) among others.

‘The submarine industry has a safety record of fifty years without incident. 

‘This is due to the engineering discipline and professional approach exercised by members of the industry, and the collective observation of (and adherence to) a variety of safety standards.’