A LEADING deep sea diver who warned Stockton Rush over Titan sub’s catastrophic safety risks says victims were “deceived”.

Expedition expert Rob McCallum successfully dissuaded nearly 40 individuals from embarking on the ill-fated submersible journey that ended in tragedy, claiming five lives when it imploded two years ago.

McCallum, who has led seven dives to the Titanic, implored OceanGate boss Rush to let an independent agency test his vessel.

But his warnings over the sub’s critical safety failings fell on deaf ears and “intolerant” Rush simply brushed aside cautions from experts.

The world was put in a chokehold when the unclassed sub vanished from radar during a 12,500ft dive down to the Titanic wreckage.

Five days after it disappeared on June 18, 2023, a piece of debris was found on the ocean floor – confirming fears it had imploded.

All five on board, including Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, renowned French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son Suleman, lost their lives.

Disturbing email exchanges reveal McCallum’s attempts to alert Rush about the dangers associated with Titan, only to receive a reply from the OceanGate CEO expressing fatigue with industry critics who he felt used safety concerns to hinder innovation.

Rush wrote: “We have heard the baseless cries of ‘you are going to kill someone’ way too often. I take this as a serious personal insult.”

McCallum said their tense email exchange ended after OceanGate’s lawyers threatened legal action, and so he focussed on limiting the number of people who boarded Titan.

He told The Sun: “I’d written to him three or four times, and he wasn’t going to change.

“I’d run out of options. I thought the sub would not survive sea trials and so I just focused on trying to limit the number of people that got into that thing.

“I probably talked three dozen people out of going on Titan, and I wouldn’t get melodramatic about it, because I didn’t want to over dramatise it.

“Both because I wanted them to keep listening to what I was saying, but also I didn’t want to become a drama queen and sort of written off as hysterical.

“And so my simple answer was always, I would never get in an unclassed vehicle and nor should you.”

McCallum said he spoke to both Harding and Nargeolet, who both decided to take the risk.

But he said Dawood and his son Suleman would have had “no idea” about the danger they were putting themselves in on the £195,000 dive as OceanGate downplayed the risk.

McCallum said: “Hamish and Paul-Henri knew it was risky, but not the level of risk that they were taking.

“The other two had no idea at all. And the reason that there’s that uncertainty is because I think there was a concerted effort of deception.

“If you look at the culture of OceanGate, they weren’t willing to take outside commentary, and anyone inside the camp that spoke out got fired or worse.

“And so you’ve got this diminishing group of people that are only listening to themselves and they just tuned out the talk of the risk.

“The risk was still there. But they just weren’t talking about it anymore.”

McCallum, who founded expedition company EYOS, said all of those who he successfully advised not to board Titan realise they had a “close call”.

He added: “Within 48 hours of the implosion one rang up in tears and said, ‘I owe you my life. I was going to get into that sub, and I couldn’t get your voice out of my head, and so I turned around and came home’.

“He lost his deposit but he said ‘I just couldn’t get your voice out of my head’, and he was in tears.

“People are very conscious that they had a close call.”

McCallum said on the fateful day of the sub’s disappearance from radar he “just felt sick”.

After the sub lost contact with its support ship Polar Prince rescue crews worked around the clock in what was thought to be a race against time to save the crew.

But McCallum said it was clear the sub had imploded.

“I knew immediately what had happened,” he said.

“There were two or three days when everyone was going through the search and rescue.

“I didn’t understand that because we knew it had imploded.

“I was sad to lose some friends and shipmates. But I was grateful for small mercies that it would have been instantaneous.”

Engineer Rush, who co-founded OceanGate in 2009, created Titan with an experimental design made up of a carbon-fiber pod with titanium rings bolted on.

McCallum said carbon fiber material is not fit for submerging so deep underwater.

But McCallum’s warning that carbon fiber would not withstand such pressure, Rush informed him he was “going to carry on regardless”.

In 2018, OceanGate’s then chief pilot David Lochridge was fired after his inspection report laid bare a series of safety risks.

A report from the Marine Board of Investigation is expected to be released in the coming weeks.

McCallum said: “The report will be comprehensive and should cover all of the attributing elements that led to the disaster.  

“It will also indicate who is responsible and who might be subject to prosecution.”

How the Titan tragedy unfolded

By Katie Davis, Chief Foreign Reporter (Digital)

FIVE men plunged beneath the surface of the North Atlantic in a homemade sub in a bid to explore the Titanic wreckage.

Four passengers paid £195,000 each to go on the sub, with the fifth member of the trip being a crew member.

But what was supposed to be a short trip spiralled into days of agony as the doomed Titan vanished without a trace on June 18, 2023.

The daring mission had been months in the making – and almost didn’t happen at the hands of harsh weather conditions in Newfoundland, Canada.

In a now chilling Facebook post, passenger Hamish Harding wrote: “Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023.

“A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow.”

It would be his final Facebook post.

The following morning, he and four others – led by Stockton Rush – began the 12,5000ft descent towards the bottom of the Atlantic.

But as it made its way down into the depths, the vessel lost all contact with its mother ship on the surface, the Polar Prince.

It sparked a frantic four-day search for signs of life, with the hunt gripping the entire world.

There was hope that by some miracle, the crew was alive and desperately waiting to be saved.

But that sparked fears rescue teams faced a race against time as the passengers only had a 96-hour oxygen supply when they set out, which would be quickly dwindling.

Then, when audio of banging sounds was detected under the water, it inspired hope that the victims were trapped and signalling to be rescued.

It heartbreakingly turned out that the banging noises were likely either ocean noises or from other search ships, the US Navy determined.

Countries around the world deployed their resources to aid the search, and within days the Odysseus remote-operated vehicle (ROV) was sent down to where the ghostly wreck of the Titanic sits.

The plan was for the ROV to hook onto the sub and bring it up 10,000ft, where it would meet another ROV before heading to the surface.

But any hopes of a phenomenal rescue were dashed when Odysseus came across a piece of debris from the sub around 1,600ft from the Titanic.

The rescue mission tragically turned into a salvage task, and the heartbroken families of those on board were told the devastating news.

It was confirmed by the US Coast Guard that the sub had suffered a “catastrophic implosion”.