Deep End (OceanGate and the Race to the Bottom of the Sea)

In June 2023, OceanGate’s experimental Titan submersible went missing on a dive to the wreck of the Titanic. Millions of people around the world were transfixed, waiting in excruciating suspense for word of the sub’s five passengers: its charismatic pilot, a legendary explorer, a billionaire businessman, and a father with his teenage son. Days later the horrifying news came: The sub had imploded, killing all five on board. Investigative journalist Mark Ellis Harris, who had dived with OceanGate years earlier, set out to discover what had gone wrong.

In Deep End, he weaves together heart-stopping narrative, rigorous reporting, and interviews with engineers and company insiders to tell for the first time the full story of the catastrophe, its preventable origins, and its ongoing aftermath. We meet Stockton Rush, the maverick CEO of OceanGate and creator of Titan, and follow him as he tries to shoulder his way into the deep-sea diving industry with almost no experience. We discover how deeply he defied experts to develop his experimental carbon fiber submersible, wowing investors with the promise that these subs would unlock the ocean depths for all. And we witness how Rush continually prioritized thrift over safety, press over process, and glory over survival. In doing so, he sacrificed lives and endangered the future of exploration in the ocean’s depths, a realm less explored than even the surface of Mars.

A tightly coiled drama that exposes the fatal flaws in a start-up culture that rewards risk rather than responsibility, Deep End is an unforgettable tale of high-seas adventure, technological folly, and innovation gone wrong.