Filmmaker James Cameron is 'struck by the similarity' of Titanic disaster and Titan sub

The legendary Hollywood filmmaker and ocean-diving enthusiast, James Cameron pointed out the similarities between the Titanic disaster itself and the tourist Titan submersible which went missing earlier this week on a voyage to the Titanic wreck at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean.

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In an exclusive conversation with an international news network, ‘Titanic’ filmmaker and submersible designer, James Cameron who has completed 33 dives to the shipwreck himself, confirmed that OceanGate was repeatedly warned about the risk to carry the passengers on the non-certified sub.

“Many people in the [deep-submergence engineering] community were very concerned about this sub, and a number of you know of the top players in the community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and needed to be certified and so on,” he said.

‘Titanic’ director James Cameron on the ‘catastrophic implosion’ of Titan submersible: “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.” pic.twitter.com/vO8JkCXS5f

— ABC News (@ABC) June 22, 2023

Given his experience of close to three-dozen dives and the time spent on the Titanic, which is longer than what the captain of the ship stayed, back in the day, the veteran added, “As a submersible designer myself, I designed and built us up to go to the deepest place in the ocean, three times deeper than Titanic. So I understand the engineering problems associated with building this type of vehicle and all the safety protocols that you have to go through. And I think [it] is absolutely critical to really get the take-home message from our effort … [that] deep submergence diving is a mature art.”

“From the early 60s, where there were a few accidents, nobody was killed in the deep submergence until now. [That’s] more time than between Kitty Hawk and the flight of the first 747.”

Cameron continued, “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 and 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.”

In the conversation, the filmmaker also remembered one of the passengers killed in the catastrophic implosion, Paul-Henri (PH) Nargeolet, who happened to be a friend. “For him to have died tragically in this way is almost impossible for me to process,” Cameron said.

Meanwhile, all five men on board the missing Titan sub were declared dead after it was found that the craft imploded near the site of the shipwreck, confirmed authorities on Thursday.

OceanGate Expeditions founder and CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, renowned French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman were all aboard the tourist submersible.

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