Wendy Rush, who is OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush’s spouse, is the great-great-granddaughter of retail tycoons Isidor and Ida Strauss who were two of 1,500 passengers that died on the ship in 1912.
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The couple was immortalized in a scene from James Cameron’s Titanic where an elderly man and woman held each other in the sinking shit while water crept up around them, CNN reports.
According to survivors, the scene strayed a bit from reality as those on the ship watched in horror while Isidor and Isa were swept off the ship by a wave while clutching hands on the deck, the UK government’s National Archives note.
They had boarded the Titanic to return back to the States after a trip home to Germany.
The two normally took a regular cruise line but were tempted by the grandeur of an Olympic-class liner’s maiden voyage.
The tragedy now continues as their descendant Wendy is without a husband after he took his modern state-of-the-art technology to see the Titanic’s wreckage early Sunday morning.
Five passengers are dead after their OceanGate sub suffered a catastrophic implosion while descending 13,000 feet, hundreds of miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, the company confirmed.
Stockton Rush, Brit billionaire Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood, and his 19-year-old son Suleman were deemed “true explorers” after they died in the tiny sub.
The statement released by OceanGate this afternoon confirmed the five crew were dead.
It read: “We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost.
“These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans.
“Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.”
The deaths were confirmed after the US Coast Guard discovered a debris field in the search area and determined it belonged to the sub.
Rear Admiral of the US Coast Guard John Mauger – who is leading the search for the remains of the Titan – said the sub suffered a “catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber”.
Asked about recovering the bodies, he admitted the sea floor was an “incredibly unforgiving, incredibly complex environment”.
He added: “We will continue to work and search the area down there but I don’t have an answer for prospects at this time.”
THE STRAUSS’S STORY
Isidor and Ida were directed to lifeboat eight after the Titanic struck an iceberg on April 14.
But the aging retail executive refused to get on the boat and saved his spot for a younger man.
Ida agreed with her husband, saying, “Where you go, I go,” surviving witnesses say.
She put her maidservant Ellen Bird in the boat and wrapped her in a fur coat as she no longer needed it.
Isidor’s body was recovered and he was buried at the Mackay-Bennett in New York’s Woodlawn Cemetery. Ida’s body was never found.
