James Cameron On Titan Submarine Loss: “Struck By The Similarity Of The Titanic Disaster Itself”

Erik Pedersen
·4 min read
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UPDATED: Titanic filmmaker James Cameron spoke out Thursday about the loss of the Titan submarine that had dived to explore the historic shipwreck.

“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 told ABC News in an exclusive interview. “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.”

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Cameron added: “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.”

Watch his interview below.

The multiple Oscar winner and longtime ocean-diving enthusiast has made nearly three dozen dives to the Titanic wreckage. He was commenting on today’s news from the Coast Guard that “a debris field was discovered within the search area by an ROV near the Titanic” and that all five souls aboard are feared dead after a “catastrophic explosion.”

RELATED: NewsNation Criticized For “Oxygen Remaining” Countdown Clock Featured In Coverage Of Missing Titanic Sub

Cameron also addressed the concerns voiced by experts about the safety of the 21-foot Titan.

“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.”

RELATED: ‘The Simpsons’ Writer And Former Showrunner Mike Reiss Talks About His Trips On The Missing Titanic Submarine

Cameron told ABC News that he “actually calculated that I spent more time on the [Titanic] than the captain did back in the day.”

Titanic sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912 after hitting an iceberg, killing about 1,500 passengers and crew. The wreckage was found in 1985 and inspired diving enthusiast Cameron to make Titanic. The epic went on to win 11 Oscars and gross more than $2.26 billion worldwide. For a while it was the top-grossing film of all time and remains among the Top 10 both domestically and worldwide, ranking No. 4 on the latter list.

On Good Morning America on Friday, Cameron and Bob Ballard, the explorer who discovered the Titanic wreckage, were interviewed by George Stephanopoulos. Cameron said that the “achilles heel of the sub was the composite cylinder,” made of carbon fiber. “It is pretty clear that is what failed. The question is, was that the primary failure or secondary failure?” He said that the use of composites was “aviation thinking for a deep submergence engineering problem.”

RELATED: CBS Story On Missing Titanic Sub Goes Viral After Reporter Got Jitters Over Its “Jerry-Rigged” Design

“I made Titanic because I wanted to dive to the shipwreck, not because I particularly wanted to make the movie,” Cameron told Playboy in 2009. “The Titanic was the Mount Everest of shipwrecks, and as a diver I wanted to do it right. When I learned some other guys had dived to the Titanic to make an Imax movie, I said, ‘I’ll make a Hollywood movie to pay for an expedition and do the same thing.’ I loved that first taste, and I wanted more.”

RELATED: Quickie Titanic Sub Documentary Set On British TV Just Hours After Air Onboard The Craft Is Expected To Run Out

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