James Cameron: Titan Sub Tragedy Is Similar to the Titanic Disaster Itself

James Cameron: Titan Sub Tragedy Is Similar to the Titanic Disaster Itself

The Oscar-winning 'Titanic' director weighs in on the "nightmare" tragedy that cost four explorers and a pilot their lives.

Oscar-winning Titanic director James Cameron has weighed in on the Titan submersible tragedy that now appears to have claimed the lives of four passengers and its pilot.

Cameron told ABC News on Thursday: “Many people in the community were concerned about this sub and even wrote letters to the company saying that what they were doing was too experimental and what they were doing needed to be certified,” Cameron said. “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 died as a result. It’s a very similar tragedy at the exact same site. It’s astonishing and really quite surreal.”

Cameron noted that he’s a submersible designer himself and that he understands the challenges of making such a craft work safely and successfully. He defended the practice of deep-sea dives as a whole.

“It’s absolutely critical for people to get the take-home message that deep submersible diving is a mature art,” Cameron said. “The safety record is the gold standard, absolutely, not only fatalities but no accidents. … Of course [what happened to the Titan is] the nightmare that we’ve all lived with, we’ve lived with it in the back of our minds.”

Speaking to BBC News, Cameron added that he knew the sub was doomed soon after the news of it vanishing first broke. “I felt in my bones what had happened,” Cameron said. “For the sub’s electronics to fail and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously — sub’s gone. I knew that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position. That’s exactly where they found it. [It] 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.”