A yacht salesman who has listed a submersible once owned by OceanGate for five years now doubts that it will ever sell after the company's Titan disaster.
OceanGate, once a player in the deep-sea exploration tourism industry, suspended all operations in late June after its Titan submersible imploded hundreds of meters below sea level on a voyage to see the wreckage of the RMS Titanic. The craft first went missing on June 18, prompting an intense search effort that garnered widespread public attention. The wreckage of the submersible was located five days later on the seabed, along with presumed human remains.
Among those killed in the implosion were Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate who was piloting the craft; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, an expert on the Titanic; Hamish Harding, a British billionaire known for exotic adventuring pursuit; Shahzada Dawood, a Pakistani-British billionaire; and Suleman Dawood, his 19-year-old son, who had reportedly expressed fear about going on the voyage.
The highly publicized disaster has cast a shadow over OceanGate and its practices, as well as the deep-sea tourism industry as a whole. Steve Reoch, a veteran expedition-yacht salesman, told Insider that he has been attempting to sell one of OceanGate's earliest crafts for years and now doesn't "want to have anything to do with it."
The craft, dubbed Antipodes, was put up for sale after OceanGate began building its own submersible, the Cyclops. It has been listed for sale for the last five years, with a $795,000 price tag, though Reoch said that he is working to take the listing down in the coming weeks.
Antipodes was first constructed in 1973 by Perry Submersibles. Over the years, Reoch said that it went through "several people and several owners" before ultimately being purchased by Rush in 2010 for use as OceanGate's first submersible.
The craft is capable of reaching depths of up to 1,000 feet and was used on several voyages by OceanGate. All of these trips, Reoch said, were successful. Notably, the Antipodes was classified by the American Bureau of Shipping, a non-governmental entity that works to establish technical standards for the maritime industry.
The Titan was not held to such standards, with Rush previously calling safety regulations an unnecessary burden in past interviews. He told CBS in 2022 that "at some point, safety just is pure waste."
Newsweek reached out to the American Bureau of Shipping via email for comment.
"We're in the process of disassociating ourselves from the vessel because it won't sell," Reoch told Insider. "Nobody's going to be able to sell the submersible for years because of litigation—it's a waste of my time and has been for five years."
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Thomas Kika is a Newsweek weekend reporter based in upstate New York. His focus is reporting on crime and national ... Read more
