Jay Bloom, a Las Vegas financier, and his son, Sean Bloom, were given the opportunity of a lifetime when OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush invited them on the Titan submersible. It would’ve cost them a fortune, but it would’ve awarded the father-son duo an up-close view of the infamous Titanic wreckage.
The interest was there, but the Bloom family started doing its research to ensure the trip was safe enough to justify the large price tag. During their research, the father-son duo uncovered a number of ‘red flags’ that questioned the submersible’s ability to survive the pressure as you travel that deep in the ocean.
“That is a small submarine, with five people crammed inside. It just felt super unsafe. Something was telling me this was not the move,” Sean told PEOPLE of the submersible. “The whole reason my dad didn’t go was because I told him, ‘Dude, this submarine cannot survive going that deep in the ocean.’”
On June 19, the day after Titan was reported missing, Jay Bloom took to his Facebook page to talk about his close call with his son. He expressed how ‘crazy’ it was that he and his son got invited onto the deep sea dive and if he would’ve accepted that invitation, he and his son would be one of the five passengers.
He wrote about how he met Stockton Rush at the Luxor Hotel & Casino, where they visited the Titanic Exhibition together. At the time, Bloom was holding onto hope that the passengers were okay, but acknowledged that they had already been missing for 48 hours – it was supposed to be an 8-hour dive.
In a separate Facebook post, Jay Bloom shared photos of Stockton Rush and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, one of the other four passengers aboard the Titan. He also shared a photo of a book that was gifted to him by Rush – who also signed the book, along with Nargeolet. He was hoping for a positive outcome to this.
Unfortunately, it was later discovered that all five passengers were killed due to a ‘catastrophic implosion’ – the very thing Jay Bloom and his son feared from the very beginning. “At least it would have happened quickly and they didn’t suffer,” Jay said in a Facebook post as he paid tribute to the lives that were lost.
Jay Bloom Details Safety Concerns With the Titan
On Thursday (June 22), Jay Bloom shared several text messages between him and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush. In one of the messages, which was sent on February 3, Bloom discussed some of the concerns his son had about the danger involved and ‘what could go wrong’ with the Titan submersible.
Stockton called his son ‘uninformed’ and implied his son’s concerns could be ‘imagined.’ He went on to describe the dive as ‘safer than flying in a helicopter or even scuba diving.’ Stockton continued to ask Jay if he was interested in the trip, but Jay continued to delay in his response before finally saying no.
“I am sure he really believed what he was saying. But he was very wrong. He passionately believed in what he was doing,” Bloom said of Stockton’s claims that the vessel was safe – adding that the father-son duo had plans to go next year. “He was absolutely convinced that it was safer than crossing the street.”
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Jay Bloom and his son, Sean Bloom, ended up not going. Instead, their tickets were handed to Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood. Jay vowed to ‘take a minute to stop and smell the roses’ with his son, considering they very well could’ve been inside the Titan submersible had things gone differently.
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