James Cameron says Titanic sub warnings ‘went unheeded’

LOS ANGELES — “Titanic” director and renowned deep-sea explorer James Cameron said many warnings were ignored about the safety of the tourist submersible that imploded near the famous shipwreck, killing five people.

Cameron said the sub, dubbed Titan, had been the source of widespread concern in the close-knit ocean exploration community, and drew parallels to the 1912 ocean liner sinking in which around 1,500 people died.

“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,” Cameron told ABC News.

“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.”

The US Coast Guard confirmed Thursday that the small sub, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, had suffered a “catastrophic implosion” in the ocean depths, ending a multinational search-and-rescue operation that captivated the world.

Art school students give final touches to a painting depicting five people aboard a submersible named Titan, that went missing near the wreck of the Titanic, in Mumbai on June 22, 2023. The five were later said to have died in a ‘catastrophic implosion.’ (Indranil Mukherjee/AFP)

Cameron — who in 2012 became the first person to make a solo dive to the very deepest part of the ocean, in a submersible he designed and built — said the risk of a sub imploding under pressure was always “first and foremost” in engineers’ minds.

“That’s the nightmare that we’ve all lived with” since entering the field of deep exploration, he said, pointing to the sector’s very strong safety record over recent decades.

But “many people in the community were very concerned about this sub,” he said.

“A number of the top players in the deep-submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers, and that it needed to be certified.”

The Hollywood director added that he had personally known one of the lost submersible passengers, French ocean explorer Paul-Henri “PH” Nargeolet.

“It’s a very small community. I’ve known PH for 25 years. For him to have died tragically in this way is almost impossible for me to process.”

This undated photo provided by OceanGate Expeditions shows the company’s Titan submersible, which went missing in June 2023 on its way to document the wreckage of the Titanic. (OceanGate Expeditions via AP)

Cameron has visited the Titanic shipwreck many times in the course of — and since — directing his 1997 epic starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, which won a joint-record 11 Oscars.

“I know the wreck site very well… I actually calculated that I spent more time on the ship than the captain did back in the day,” he said.

Cameron has also directed underwater disaster movie “The Abyss,” and multiple deep-sea documentaries.

The Titan was reported overdue Sunday afternoon about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, as it was on its way to where the iconic ocean liner sank more than a century ago. OceanGate Expeditions, which led the trip, has been chronicling the Titanic’s decay and the underwater ecosystem around it via yearly voyages since 2021.

After a multi-day search, OceanGate Expeditions announced in a statement Thursday that all five people on board the Titan, including company CEO Stockton Rush, are believed to be dead. Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet “have sadly been lost,” OceanGate said in a statement.

US Rear Adm. John Mauger, the First Coast Guard District commander, speaks at a press conference at the US Coast Guard Base Boston in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 22, 2023. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP)

OceanGate did not provide details when the company announced the “loss of life” in a statement or how officials knew the crew members perished. The Titan’s 96-hour oxygen supply would have likely ended early Thursday.

Rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to the site of the disappearance.

Authorities had detected underwater sounds Tuesday and Wednesday, which gave some hope that the submersible might still be intact.

The search area covered thousands of square miles — twice the size of Connecticut and in waters 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) deep.

This undated photo provided by OceanGate Expeditions shows a submersible vessel named Titan, which went missing in June 2023 on its way to document the wreckage of the Titanic. (OceanGate Expeditions via AP)

At least 46 people successfully traveled on OceanGate’s submersible to the Titanic wreck site in 2021 and 2022, according to letters the company filed with a US District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, that oversees matters involving the Titanic shipwreck.

Newly uncovered allegations suggest there had been significant warnings made about vessel safety during the submersible’s development. One of the company’s first customers characterized a dive he made to the site two years ago as a “kamikaze operation.”