James Cameron says Titan sub implosion like sinking of Titanic itself: ‘Nightmarish charade’

Article content

Titanic director James Cameron is comparing the Titan tragedy to the arrogance that led to the Titanic sinking in 1912.

Article content

“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result,” Cameron said in an interview with ABC News. “For us, it’s 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.”

Article content

OceanGate’s Titan submersible was carrying five passengers on a deep-sea descent to view the Titanic’s remains when it was reported missing on Sunday.

The Titan dropped into the Atlantic Ocean at 6 a.m. with Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, at the controls. His fellow travellers paid an upwards of US$250,000 to visit the wreck, and included British adventurer Hamish Harding, two members of a Pakistani business family and a Titanic expert.

Article content

Article content

With its mode of communications with the surface being conducted via text messages and its operations guided by a $29.99 video game controller, the Titan lost contact with the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince an hour and 45 minutes into its journey.

U.S. Coast Guard officials said Thursday afternoon the search for the Titan had uncovered parts of the ship consistent with an implosion — which would have killed all five journeymen instantly.

Debris found was “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” Rear Adm. John Mauger, the First Coast Guard District commander, said during a press briefing.

Cameron said in a separate interview with the BBC that he “felt in my bones” that the ship had suffered a calamity moments after losing contact with the surface. He went on to describe the ensuing media coverage — in which news reports focused on the Titan’s limited oxygen supply and possible sounds of banging heard underwater — as a “nightmarish charade.”

Article content

“That was just a cruel, slow turn of the screw for four days as far as I’m concerned,” Cameron told the British broadcaster. “Because I knew the truth on Monday morning.”

In 2012, Cameron helmed the Deepsea Challenger submersible to the ocean’s deepest point on the planet in the Mariana Trench, which sits 35,876 feet below the surface in the Pacific Ocean. The Oscar winner has also visited the Titanic wreckage more than 30 times.

In his chat with ABC, Cameron said that OceanGate’s Rush should have listened to safety concerns that had been raised about the integrity of his vessel.

In 2018, a former OceanGate employee pointed out issues that could impact the safety of the vessel’s hull. The company’s director of marine operations, David Lochridge, warned of “potential dangers to passengers of the Titan as the submersible reached extreme depths.”

Industry leaders, deep-sea explorers and oceanographers also cautioned Rush over his decision to not have his submersible certified for use at deep-sea levels.

“This is a mature art, and many people in the community were very concerned about this sub,” Cameron said. “And 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.”

Article content

After the Titan was reported missing, Cameron said he was certain it had suffered an “extreme catastrophic event.”

“For the sub’s electronics to fail and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously — sub’s gone,” he told the BBBC.

“For me, there was no doubt. I knew that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position, and that’s exactly where they found it. There was no search. When they finally got an ROV down there that could make the depth, they found it within hours. Probably within minutes.”

Cameron said the disaster echoes the Titanic’s maiden voyage, in which the ship’s captain ignored repeated iceberg sightings.

“We now have another wreck that is based on, unfortunately, the same principles of not heeding warnings,” he said.

[email protected]

Twitter: @markhdaniell

Article content