The wife of Stockton Rush, the submarine pilot, and CEO of the tour company who own the submarine believed to have imploded at the bottom of the Atlantic is descended from a Jewish politician who died on the Titanic.
Isidor Straus - a wealthy Bavarian-born businessman who co-owned iconic New York department store Macy's - went down alongside his wife, Ida, when the legendary ship sank in 1912.
According to Titanic survivor, Colonel Archibald Gracie IV, Straus refused to get on a lifeboat while women and children were left on board.
Ida would not leave her husband, saying, "I will not be separated from my husband. As we have lived, so will we die, together."
She reportedly handed her fur coat to her maid and insisted that she save herself. The couple was last seen on deck holding onto each other.
In a fictionalised version of this scene immortalised by James Cameron blockbuster Titanic, Ida and Isidor embrace on a bed as the waters rise about them.
A couple in the film Titanic believed to be a fictionalised version of the Strauses
121 years later, Straus’s great-great granddaughter’s husband is in a similarly stricken predicament.
Stockton Rush - the chief executive and founder of OceanGate, who operate the lost submersible vehicle - married Wendy Rush, nee Weil, in 1986, the New York Times reported.
Straus's descendent has participated in three expeditions to the Titanic wreckage and previously served as the company’s communications director, according to her LinkedIn.
The sinking of the Titanic reported in Yiddish language newspapers at the time (Wikimedia commons)
Rush and four other passengers are now trapped in a submarine that lost contact with its support ship after attempting to descend to the Titanic’s wreck on Sunday.
The underwater vessel was equipped with enough oxygen to last until 10am on Thursday morning.
Also on the submarine is British billionaire Hamish Harding, French navy veteran Paul-Henri Nargeolet and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, who is just 19.
While noises have been detected from the area in which the craft was lost, it is unclear if they were created by its passengers.
One deep-water robot submarine has now descended 12,500 feet to the ocean floor to search for the OceanGate crew, while another is said to be en route.
The trip to the Titanic cost $250,000 for every passenger on board and has been completed safely on several previous occasions over the last couple of years.
