‘Titanic’ director James Cameron says OceanGate was “warned” about Titan sub

23 June, 2023

James Cameron

James Cameron has addressed the fact that OceanGate, the company behind the Titan sub tragedy, was “warned” about safety.

The Titanic (1997) director, who has completed 33 dives to the wreck of the 19th century ship, said in a new interview that he immediately suspected that disaster had struck when he received news about the missing Titan sub on Monday (June 19).

Yesterday (June 22) it was confirmed that the five men aboard the submersible on a tourist expedition to view the wreckage of the Titanic died in a suspected catastrophic implosion. Five pieces of debris from the sub were discovered in a search and rescue operation.

Cameron told BBC News: “We now have another wreck that is based on unfortunately the same principles of not heeding warnings. OceanGate were warned.”

He added that there was “terrible irony” in the loss of Titan and its crew, likening it to the loss of the Titanic itself in 1912.

James Cameron
James Cameron

When he learned a day later on Monday – thanks to being on a ship himself – that the sub had on Sunday (June 18) lost both its navigation and communication at the same time, he said that 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 – sub’s gone,” Cameron said.

He continued: “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.”

The filmmaker, who helms the Avatar movie franchise, said that OceanGate previously had people working internally who quit the company, although he didn’t specify why.

Cameron went on to say that some within the deep submergence community, not including himself directly, had written a letter to OceanGate saying they believed, in his words, “you are going on a path to catastrophe”.

A letter sent to OceanGate by the Marine Technology Society (MTS) in March 2018 and obtained by The New York Times stated that “the current ‘experimental’ approach adopted by OceanGate… could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic)”.

In a separate matter, US court documents [via BBC] show that a former employee of OceanGate warned of potential safety problems with the sub as far back as 2018.

The company’s director of marine operations at the time, David Lochridge, raised concerns in an inspection report.
A spokesman for OceanGate declined to comment to the BBC on the safety issues raised by Mr Lochridge and the MTS.
Elsewhere, a Discovery Channel presenter has said that he passed on the opportunity to film on the Titan sub over safety concerns, while the stepson of the then-missing billionaire Hamish Harding onboard the Titan made headlines earlier this week by attending a Blink-182 concert amid the submarine’s disappearance.

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