A billionaire has revealed how he gave up the opportunity to take his son on the Titanic sub that imploded in the Atlantic Ocean.

Jay Bloom has shared a number of text messages he exchanged with Stockton Rush, the CEO of the Titan vessel’s operating company, who was one of five killed in the tragedy.

The Las Vegas tycoon turned down cut-price seats offered to him by OceanGate boss Mr Rush after raising concerns over the safety of Titan.

During their conversations, Mr Rush told Mr Bloom that the voyage to the sunken ocean liner 12,500ft below the surface was ‘safer than crossing the street’.

Despite the ‘last-minute’ price of £120,000 each being quoted to Mr Bloom and his son Sean – instead of the usual £195,000 fee – they decided against going on the trip.

Businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman went in their place and tragically died alongside British explorer Hamish Harding and French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

In a post on Facebook, Mr Bloom shared screenshots of the chats he’d had with Mr Rush, who insisted there was nothing to worry about.

Mr Bloom wrote: ‘In February Stockton asked me and my son, Sean, to go with him on the dive to Titanic in May. 

‘Both May dives were postponed due to weather and the dive got delayed until June 18th, the date of this trip.  

‘I expressed safety concerns and Stockton told me: “While there’s obviously risk it’s way safer than flying in a helicopter or even scuba diving. There hasn’t been even an injury in 35 years in a non-military subs.” 

‘I am sure he really believed what he was saying. But he was very wrong. He passionately believed in what he was doing.’

Mr Bloom said that he last saw Mr Rush in person on March 1 this year when the pair went for lunch at the Titanic exhibition at the Luxor Las Vegas hotel.

He continued: ‘At lunch in the Luxor food court we talked about the dive, including safety. He was absolutely convinced that it was safer than crossing the street. 

‘He gave me a book of photos (1 of 324 produced) signed by him and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, two of the five onboard the sub. I told him that due to scheduling we couldn’t go until next year.  

‘Our seats went to Shahzada Dawood and his 19 year old son, Suleman Dawood, two of the other three who lost their lives on this excursion.’

Mr Rush even told Mr Bloom that he was happy to ‘have a video call’ with his son Sean to discuss his safety fears.

In a text, he said: ‘Curious what the uninformed would say the danger is and whether it’s real or imagined.’

Following the fatal disaster, a number of experts have condemned the expedition’s lack of safety, including Titanic movie director James Cameron.

Mr Cameron, who has himself visited the famous shipwreck 30 times, criticised the operation and ‘terribly irony’ likening it to the Titanic’s demise in 1912, which cost 1,500 people their lives.

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He told ABC News: ‘We now have another wreck that is based on unfortunately the same principles of not heeding warnings. OceanGate were warned. People in the community were very concerned about this sub.

‘A number of the top players in the deep-submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that needed to be certified and so on.

‘For a very similar tragedy, where warnings went unheeded, to take place at the same exact site, with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.’

US Coast Guard officials confirmed yesterday that the Titan submersible was destroyed by a ‘catastrophic implosion’ that was ‘consistent with a loss of the pressure chamber’.

A large debris field was found around 1,600ft from the bow of the Titanic wreckage, including the sub’s nose cone.

Undersea expert Paul Hankin said: ‘We found five different major pieces of debris that told us that it was the remains of the Titan.

‘The initial thing we found was the nose cone which was outside of the pressure hull. We then found a large debris field.

‘Within that large debris field we found the front-end bell of the pressure hull. That was the first indication that there was a catastrophic event.

‘Shortly thereafter we found a second smaller debris field. Within that debris field we found the other end of the pressure hull – the aft end bell – which basically comprises the totality of that pressure vessel.

‘We continue to map out the debris field, and as the admiral said, we will do the best we can to fully map out what’s down there.’

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