The Last Descent

Though the world wouldn't catch on until disaster struck, a tight-knit community of seafarers, explorers, and bold submariners worried for years that Stockton Rush's OceanGate implosion was all but guaranteed. SUSAN CASEY, author of The Underworld, reveals the hardest truths about the Titan

- By Susan Casey

41.73º N, 49.95º W NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN JUNE 18, 2023

FATE CLEARED UP the weather, blew off the fog, and calmed the waves, as the submersible and its five passengers dived through the surface waters and fell into another world. They entered the deep ocean’s uppermost layer, known as the twilight zone, passing creatures glimmering with bioluminescence, tiny fish with enormous teeth. Then they entered the midnight zone, where larger creatures ghost by like alien moons. Two miles down, they entered the abyssal zone—so named because it’s the literal abyss.

Deeper means heavier: pressures of 5,000, then 6,000 pounds per square inch. As it descended, the submersible was gripped in a tightening vise. Maybe they heard a noise then, maybe they heard an alarm.

I hope they watched the abyss with awe through their viewport, because I’d like to think their last sights were magnificent ones.

AS THE WORLD now knows, Stockton Rush touted himself as a maverick, a disrupter, a breaker of rules. So far out on the visionary curve that, for him, safety regulations were mere suggestions. “If you’re not breaking things, you’re not innovating,” he declared at the 2022 GeekWire Summit. “To me, the more stuff you’ve broken, the more innovative you’ve been.”