OceanGate Inc. is an American privately owned company based in Everett, Washington, that provided crewed submersibles for tourism, industry, research, and exploration. The company was founded in 2009 by Stockton Rush and Guillermo Söhnlein. The company acquired a submersible vessel, Antipodes, and later built two of its own: Cyclops 1 and Titan. In 2021, OceanGate began taking paying tourists in Titan to visit the wreck of the Titanic. In 2022, the price to be a passenger on an OceanGate expedition to the Titanic shipwreck was $250,000 per person. On June 18, 2023, Titan imploded during a voyage to the Titanic wreck site, killing all five occupants on board, including Rush. An international search and rescue operation was launched, and on June 22 the wreckage was found on the seabed about 500 meters (1,600 ft) from the Titanic wreck site. Although OceanGate claimed to have “partnered with aerospace experts at the University of Washington, NASA and Boeing on the design of our hull,” all three denied any part in Titan’s design or construction in the wake of the loss of the submersible. On June 21, 2023, it was announced that OceanGate's Everett office was closed indefinitely, and on July 6, 2023, OceanGate suspended all operations. Since August 2023, Gordon Gardiner has served as the company's CEO. Gardiner was appointed "to lead OceanGate through the ongoing investigations and closure of the company's operations," as the company still exists as a legal entity; however, Gardiner has stated that OceanGate has "permanently" ceased all business operations.
Background
Stockton Rush had an interest in aviation and space travel as a child, and obtained a commercial pilot's license when he was 18 years old. As an adult, his interests pivoted to undersea exploration. Rush built a fortune by investing his inheritance in technological businesses and decided to purchase a submarine, but discovered that he was unable to, as there were fewer than 100 privately owned submarines worldwide. He instead built one from plans in 2006, a Kittredge K-350, which he named Suds. Rush believed that undersea exploration was an underserved market, due to, in his opinion, an unwarranted reputation of submersibles as dangerous vehicles. He criticized the Passenger Vessel Safety Act of 1993 as "needlessly prioritiz[ing] passenger safety over commercial innovation". In an address before The Explorers Club in 2017, he termed submersibles "the safest vehicles on the planet". Non-certified vehicles were more dangerous, as demonstrated by at least one fatality involving a homemade submersible in 1990. Rush commissioned a marketing study that concluded there was sufficient demand for underwater ocean tourism.
History
2009–2013: Founding and acquisition of Antipodes
OceanGate was initiated by Guillermo Söhnlein and Stockton Rush in Seattle in 2009. According to Söhnlein, the company was founded with the intention of creating a small fleet of 5-person commercial submersibles that could be leased by any organization or group of individuals. In 2023 he told Sky News, "The whole intent was to create a small fleet of work submersibles. And in that way, as our tagline was in the early days, 'Open the oceans for all of humanity'." The company's first submersible was Antipodes, a used 5-person vessel with a steel hull. Between 2010 and 2013 the company performed an estimated 130 dives with Antipodes. The company's business model involved renting out its submersible to researchers, and taking tourists—whom the company referred to as "citizen scientists"—on underwater excursions. Söhnlein estimated in 2012 that passengers typically paid between $7,500 and $40,000 per person, depending on the excursion. OceanGate's first tourist excursion was conducted in 2010 when the company began transporting paying customers. The company took tourist groups to Catalina Island off the coast of California. To improve the experience, the company began bringing expert guides aboard the dives. According to Rush, "People would ask me about a fish, and I wouldn't know anything about it." The company first included marine biologists as expert guides and, according to Rush, "The difference was night and day. Their excitement permeated the sub." In 2010, OceanGate worked with the University of Washington for the first time. The university utilized Antipodes to perform trials of novel sonar equipment and robotic arms. The following year, Antipodes was used to survey and map the wreckage of the SS Governor, a ship that had sunk in Puget Sound in 1921. In 2012 and 2013, OceanGate operated for a year in Miami, Florida. Collaborating with Miami-Dade Artificial Reefs Program, researchers aboard Antipodes investigated the spread of lionfish.
2013–2016: Construction of Cyclops and Söhnlein's departure In 2013, the company began to design its own submersibles with unique designs that were allegedly cost effective. Söhnlein quit the company that same year, saying that OceanGate had transitioned from its initial phase to Rush's specialty of engineering. Söhnlein retained a minority stake. OceanGate worked on the design of its first custom-built submersible Cyclops, later named Cyclops 1, in collaboration with the University of Washington and Boeing. The hull was planned to be a carbon fiber hull, but OceanGate instead acquired a 12-year-old vessel, Lula, from a company in the Azores. It extracted the cylindrical steel hull of the Lula and used it to create Cyclops 1. Cyclops was unveiled in 2015. The same year, the company relocated its headquarters to the Port of Everett's Waterfront Center office space in Everett, Washington.
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