Titanic director James Cameron weighs in on Titan submersible tragedy

The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed today that the debris field discovered near the wreckage of the Titanic was from the Titan submersible. The occupants of the sub, Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, are feared dead after a “catastrophic implosion.” Titanic filmmaker James Cameron has weighed in on the loss of the Titan, commenting to ABC News that he was struck by the similarity to the Titanic disaster itself.

“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself,” James Cameron said. “Where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field.” Cameron has been to the site of the Titanic wreckage many times to capture footage, and he commented that he had “spent more time on the [Titanic] than the captain did back in the day.“

Many experts had raised concerns about the safety of the Titan even before this tragedy occurred, which apparently went unheeded. “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,” James Cameron said. “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 here is [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.“

James Cameron made sure to note that the Titan tragedy is the exception rather than the rule. “The safety record is the gold standard, absolutely, not only no fatalities but no major accidents,” Cameron said. “Of course [what happened to the Titan is] the nightmare that we’ve all lived with since all of us entered this field of deep exploration, we’ve lived with it in the back of our minds.” I’d imagine that there will be quite an investigation into what caused the incident.