Titanic Director, James Cameron Blames OceanGate For Ill-Fated Submersible Vovage

Hollywood film director, James Cameron, known for directing the acclaimed movie Titanic in 1997, has broken his silence about the failed Titan Submersible expedition.

KanyiDaily had reported how a Titan submersible with five people on board embarked on a mission on June 18, to explore the wreckage of the Titanic, resting 13,000 feet below sea level in the North Atlantic Ocean.

After one hour and 45 minutes into the dive, communication with the mother ship was lost, and the submersible failed to resurface as expected. Since then, no further contact was established.

On Thursday, June 22, the US Coast Guard announced that they had detected “an acoustic anomaly consistent with an implosion” shortly after the Titan submersible lost contact with the surface.

US Coast Guard Rear, Admiral John Mauger, who made the announcement after days of intensive search efforts, confirmed that all the five people on board the submersible had died due to the vessel’s implosion.

Mauger, who revealed that an immediate notification was provided to the victims’ families, expressed his sympathy, acknowledging the heart-wrenching experience they must be going through.

James Cameron Says “OceanGate Were Warned”

Speaking with BBC, the film director said that he warned OceanGate, the company responsible for the ill-fated submersible expedition, about an impending disaster, stressing that he felt the loss of the Titan “in his bones.”

Cameron, a deep-sea explorer who has completed 33 dives to the wreck of the Titanic, revealed that he was on a ship when the submersible went missing and only learned about it on Monday.

Upon discovering that the Titanic submersible had lost both navigation and communication simultaneously, James Cameron said he immediately suspected a disaster.

“I felt in my bones what had happened. For the sub’s electronics to fail and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously – the sub is gone,” he told the BBC.

The filmmaker said he quickly contacted the deep submersible community and received crucial information within an hour that the submersible was descending to a depth of 3,500 meters, aiming for the bottom at 3,800 meters when their communication and navigation systems were lost.

Cameron said he instantly knew that such a simultaneous failure could only occur due to an extremely catastrophic event or implosion. He said:

“I immediately got on the phone to some of my contacts in the deep submersible community. Within about an hour I had the following facts. They were on descent. They were at 3500 metres, heading for the bottom at 3800 metres.

“Their comms were lost, and navigation was lost – and I said instantly, you can’t lose comms and navigation together without an extreme catastrophic event or high, highly energetic catastrophic event. And the first thing that popped to mind was an implosion.”

He said the past week had “felt like a prolonged and nightmarish charade where people are running around talking about banging noises and talking about oxygen and all this other stuff”.

“I knew that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position. That’s exactly where they found it,” he continued.

He added that once a remotely controlled underwater vehicle was deployed on Thursday, searchers had “found it within hours, probably within minutes”.

Cameron expressed a “terrible irony” in the loss of the Titan and its crew,  likening it to the loss of the Titanic itself back in 1912.

The movie director noted that the company OceanGate had been warned, mentioning internal resignations without providing specific details.

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

He revealed that individuals within the deep submergence community, excluding himself directly, had sent a letter to OceanGate, expressing their belief that the company was heading toward a catastrophic outcome.

Also, court documents from the US reveal that a former employee of OceanGate had raised concerns about potential safety issues with the vessel as early as 2018.

KanyiDaily had also reported how a major search was launched for a Malaysian Airlines jet with 239 people on board that is feared to have crashed after it lost contact flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.