The Titanic’s sinking in 1912 is one the well-known disasters of the 20th century. The eponymous movie starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio caught public imagination about life on a cruise that ultimately met its end.
Memories of the fabled Titanic ship have been rekindled in recent days when the five-passenger submersible Titan went missing two hours into its journey on Sunday. The expedition, organized by Seattle-based OceanGate, was on its way to view the Titanic wreckage.
Now reports have revealed a new connection between the missing submersible and the century-old shipwreck. Wendy Rush, the wife of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was piloting the now-missing submersible, is a descendant of two passengers who were aboard the Titanic in 1912, the New York Times reported Wednesday citing archival records.
Wendy is the great-great-granddaughter of some of the wealthiest people on Titanic. Isidor Straus was the co-owner of retail chain Macy’s, and also served briefly in Congress representing New York’s 15th district between 1894 and 1895, according to government records. He was accompanied on the ship by his wife, Ida Straus.
Wendy has served as the communication director at OceanGate for over a year, according to her LinkedIn. She has also been on three different expeditions on the submersible since 2021.
Wendy has made no public statements about the missing submersible or her relationship to the Strauses.
The love story of Ida and Isidor Straus
Most film re-creations of the Titanic—whether from 1953 or 1997—include an ode to the Straus couple because of their moving love story. The pair married in 1871 and had seven children, according to Insider. Wendy’s ancestor is one of the Strauses’ daughters, Minnie, the Times reported.
National Archives reveal that on the night of Apr. 14, 1912, when the Titanic hit an iceberg, Isidor and Ida were asked to board a lifeboat. But Isidor, who was around 67 years at the time, refused to get on the board to allow younger men to go before him. Ida followed suit, saying, “Where you go, I go.” Her maid Ellen Bird was one of the survivors who got on a lifeboat and was later able to retell the encounter. The couple was last seen holding hands before the ship sank. Isidor’s body was recovered a few weeks after the Titanic shipwreck, archives show, but Ida’s has not been recovered, according to the archives.
Despite the couple’s tragic end, their memory has been captured through fiction. James Cameron’s 1997 Titanic, among the highest-grossing Hollywood films in history, depicts an elderly couple holding each other in bed as water pours into their cabin. A couple is also depicted in Roy Ward Baker’s 1958 movie A Night to Remember.
What happened with the Titan submersible?
As for the Titan, no one really knows what happened to it yet. The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed Thursday that a “debris field” has been found near the search area for the submersible, but authorities have not confirmed where that debris came from or what that means for the search operation.
A debris field was discovered within the search area by an ROV near the Titanic. Experts within the unified command are evaluating the information. 1/2
— USCGNortheast (@USCGNortheast) June 22, 2023
The search for Titan has drawn attention partly due to the high-profile tourists on board. One of them was British billionaire and adventurer Hamish Harding, who also famously flew on Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space rocket last year.
Rush, who founded OceanGate in 2009, had a reputation for being a risk taker, once telling CBS News correspondent David Pogue that “safety just is a pure waste.” An OceanGate passenger from a previous mission described the Titanic-bound expedition as a “kamikaze operation” and the CEO himself as “dubious.” Reports show that OceanGate was warned by experts previously about the dangers of using the experimental vessel.
David Concannon, an adviser to OceanGate, told the Associated Press that the submersible had 96 hours of oxygen supply starting on Sunday morning. A Canadian military aircraft heard noises underwater on Wednesday, which offered a sliver of hope on the whereabouts of the submersible and its passengers. However, the search operations have been unsuccessful so far, and the sound’s origin remains unclear.