Cameron also said he was “struck by the similarity” between the implosion of the submersible and the 1912 wreck of the Titanic the submersible was exploring.
Topline
One day after the Coast Guard confirmed the five passengers aboard OceanGate’s Titan submersible had perished from a “catastrophic” implosion, director James Cameron—who also descended to the wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic for his 1997 blockbuster by the same name—said he never would have boarded the submersible, and criticized the company behind it for cutting corners.Key Facts
Cameron—who has descended to the wreck of the Titanic more than 30 times and has plunged to the deepest part of the Pacific, known as the Challenger Deep—told the BBC he was “very suspect of the technology” used to create the submersible, which relied on a gaming controller and just one button to descend to the seafloor.
Cameron criticized the company, whose late CEO Stockton Rush was one of the five passengers aboard the submersible, for failing to certify the Titan, saying they didn’t do so because “they knew they wouldn’t pass.”
OceanGate refused to comment on Cameron’s statement, telling Forbes the company has “no additional information to share” beyond a statement on Thursday saying the five passengers have “sadly been lost”—OceanGate had previously defended its submersible in a 2019 blog post, claiming a certification would not ensure passengers’ safety because “innovation often falls outside of the existing industry paradigm.
