Stockton Rush and the four passengers of the submersible he piloted to the Titanic wreckage died after the vessel imploded. The OceanGate Expeditions founder had stated that the submersible was safe, despite its rule-defying construction. “At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question,” Stockton said on CBS News Sunday Morning. “I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.”

Stockton Rush’s son, Richard, is a pilot in Washington, and his daughter, Quincy, is a law clerk in California

Stockton Rush and his wife, Wendy, shared two children, Richard ‘Ben’ and Quincy, who appear in a photo on Wendy’s Facebook page. 

Richard, like his father, mother, grandfather, and great-grandfather, attended Princeton University. Per The Daily Princetonian, Richard graduated in 2011, building a robotic arm for submersible vehicles for his thesis. 

“I love creating things,” Richard writes on his website, Ben Rush’s Blog. “Pottery in my spare time, subsea robots in my early career, and now companies with the awesome team at PSL.” Pioneer Square Labs (PSL) is a Seattle-based company that creates and launches technology startups. 

The Daily Mail reports that Richard works as a pilot in Washington. The outlet reports that Richard inherited his father’s enthusiasm for deep-sea expeditions and has posted social media photos of himself investigating underwater wrecks. 

Ben’s younger sister Quincy is a Judicial law clerk in the United States District Court in the Central District of California. Quincy earned her Juris Doctor degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 2020, per her LinkedIn page.

The family is no stranger to tragedy at sea. The New York Times reports that Quincy and Ben’s maternal ancestors – Isidor Straus and his wife, Ida – were among the people who died when the Titanic sank in 1912.