Wife of missing submarine Titan’s pilot is descendant of couple who died on Titanic

Titan, a submarine that was taking tourists to the Titanic wreck, has gone missing

Wendy Rush, the wife of the missing Titanic tourist submarine pilot, is a descendant of a US couple who died when the gigantic ship sank in the Atlantic Ocean in 1912. The couple have been immortalised in James Cameron’s Hollywood movie ‘Titanic’ too, India Today reported.

Wendy Rush is the great-great-granddaughter of the retailing magnate Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida, who were travelling as first-class passengers on the Titanic when it hit an iceberg and sank in April 1912. Straus was born in 1845 and was a co-owner of Macy’s department store, The New York Times reported.

In 1986, Wendy Rush married Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, the company which operates the Titanic tourist submersible that lost contact on Sunday (June 18) and caught global attention. He was also piloting Titan, the submersible that was taking tourists to the Titanic and has now lost contact.

Stockton Rush is among the five on the missing submarine with rescuers racing against time to find the vessel by intensifying their search with just hours of oxygen support remaining. Wendy Rush, the descendant of the Titanic couple, is the OceanGate communications director and has participated in the company’s three expeditions to the Titanic, according to her LinkedIn profile.

THE TITANIC COUPLE IMMORTALISED IN MOVIE

According to archival records, Isidor Straus did not take a seat on a lifeboat as a large number of women and children were still aboard the Titanic that was sinking after hitting an iceberg. He was joined by his wife and remained together, standing arm-in-arm till the ship sank.

Some reports say that Ida Straus handed her mink jacket to her maid as she was being rescued in a lifeboat.

While Straus’s remains were found at sea several weeks after Titanic’s sinking, his wife’s body was never found.

The couple’s fictionalised version came into being in the 1997 Hollywood movie Titanic by James Cameron. Straus and his wife were portrayed as an elderly couple and a shot showed them embracing in bed as the cold waters of the Atlantic entered their cabin.

THE ILL-FATED TITAN

Submarine Titan, which began its journey to the Titanic wreck site, situated at a depth of 12,500 feet in the Atlantic Ocean, lost contact after nearly two hours on Sunday. The submarine is equipped with a four-day emergency oxygen support.

Meanwhile, rescuers on Wednesday (local time) rushed more ships and vessels to the area where Titan disappeared, hoping underwater sounds they detected for a second straight day might help narrow their search in an increasingly urgent mission.

Crew members were scouring an area of around 26,000 square kilometers in waters four kilometres deep, said Captain Jamie Frederick of the First Coast Guard District.

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