Hollywood Director James Cameron, the man behind the 1997 blockbuster movie ‘Titanic’ has called out OceanGate Expedition for their “fundamentally flawed” Titan expedition. The submersible, which imploded on its way to the Titanic wreckage, resulted in death of all the five crew members onboard the vessel.
How did James Cameron react to the Titan tragedy?
Cameron, who himself is a submersible designer, in an interview with ABC News said that he is “struck” by the similarity of the Titanic disaster to this particular tragedy. Raising concerns on the design and safety of the submersible, Cameron said that OceanGate Expeditions had been warned. He said many people in the deep submergence engineering community were “very concerned” about the submersible. Many wrote to the firm saying what they were doing was “too experimental to carry passengers” and that they needed to be certified. Cameron also called the carbon fiber construction of the submersible “fundamentally flawed”.
Discussing his thought about OceanGate’s submersible design, Cameron told Reuters, “I thought it was a horrible idea. I wish I’d spoken up, but I assumed somebody was smarter than me, you know, because I never experimented with that technology, but it just sounded bad on its face.”
How did he link the tragedy to Titanic
Recalling the Titanic tragedy, Cameron said, “The captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet, he steamed up full speed into an ice field on a moonless night.” He said the fact that this tragedy happened at the same site as the Titanic was “astonishing” and “surreal”.
Cameron’s first reaction to the Titan tragedy
The Titanic Director said he did not hear about Titan missing until Monday as he was on a ship on Sunday. In an interaction with the BBC, Cameron said he immediately suspected a disaster when he heard the vessel lost both its navigation and communication at the same time.
“I felt in my bones what had happened,” he added. He said the first thing that hit was the probability of an implosion.
Right after he heard the news, he contacted some people in the deep submergence community and learned that Titan was at 3500 metres, heading for the bottom at 3800 metres, when it went missing.
“I knew that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position. That’s exactly where they found it,” Cameron told BBC.
The Titanic wreck site
Cameron, who himself has gone to the site 33 times, said in his interview with ABC News, the Titanic wreck site is a “very hostile place” and a “dangerous site” to dive. It has an eight to ten storey structure with overhanging metal structure which is a “twisted mess”. He added that entanglement was always a concern of the diving teams.
The tragedy took five lives. Among those on board was OceanGate’s CEO Stockton Rush.