James Cameron has compared the tragic loss of the submersible Titan to the very thing that may have led the Titanic to its own demise.
Renowned Hollywood director and Titanic researcher James Cameron has compared the tragic loss of the submersible Titan to the very thing that may have led the Titanic to its own demise, overconfidence that led to disaster.
Cameron, who famously directed the Oscar-winning blockbuster “Titanic,” on Thursday he noticed parallels between the 1912 sinking of the British passenger liner and the demise of the submersible designed specifically to visit what remains of the sunken ship.
“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 up full speed into an ice field on a moonless night,” Cameron said. “And many people died as a result and for us very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded to take place at the same exact site.”
Cameron, who is a submersible designer himself and has designed vessels that can dive to depths three times deeper than where the Titanic rests, called the carbon fiber construction of the Titan as “fundamentally flawed.”
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was among the five passengers killed on the submersible, had previously defended the decision to manufacture the Titan with the material, saying he believed a sub made with carbon fiber would have a better strength-to-buoyancy ratio than titanium.
Cameron said he is especially surprised how the modern-day tragedy unfolded, given how much diving occurs all over the world with no incident.
The safety global standard for submersibles is the “gold standard,” especially given that no one has ever died in a submersible until now, Cameron said. While there were some accidents in the 1960s, there had been no major incidents since, and standards have improved drastically since then, he added.
The Russian submersibles that Cameron traveled on to see the Titanic were built with “very well understood design methodologies” and were operated by pilots with “flawless operating record,” Cameron said, adding that he always had “great confidence” in those vessels, despite the hostile environment surrounding the Titanic.
