Titanic director James Cameron has revealed he has been "struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself" after Oceangate's submersible Titan "catastrophically imploded" and left five passengers dead.
"I am struck by the similarities to 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," James told ABC News on Thursday afternoon, claiming that "a number of the top players in the deep submergence engineering community wrote letters to the company saying what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers".
Titanic sank in April 1912 after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic on its maiden voyage and killing approximately 1,500 passengers and crew. Contact with Titan was lost an hour and 45 minutes after it left the mother ship on Sunday June 18 as it embarked on a dive to observe the wreckage.
"I understand the engineering problems associated with building this type of vehicle and all the safety protocols that you have to go through," said James. "And I think [it] is absolutely critical for people to really get the take home message from this [that] deep submergence diving is a mature art from the early ’60s… and nobody was killed in the deep submergence until now."
© Anadolu AgencyHe continued: "The safety record is the gold standard, and not only [have there been] no fatalities but no major incidents requiring all of these assets to converge on a site. But it is the nightmare we all live with, we live with it in the back of our minds, but because [of the threat of] implosion… the pressure boundary - what they call the hull of the sub - is first and foremost in our minds as engineers and we spend so much time and energy on that.
"We worked on our sphere for over three years just on the computer before we made the thing."
© CBS Photo ArchiveJames, 68, was friends with one of the passengers, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and he said it is "almost impossible for me to process" that the explorer "died this way".
The director and producer has become an expert in deep-sea exploration and once joked that he made the 1998 film Titanic simply in order to be allowed to dive to the wreck and explore. Titanic starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, won 11 Oscars and grossed more than $2.26 billion worldwide.
© JOEL SAGETIn 2012 James dove five miles to the bottom of the New Britain Trench inside the 7.3-metre Deepsea Challenger, and 19 days later reached the Challenger Deep, the deepest known point of the seabed on Earth.
There he spent three hours exploring the floor. becoming the first man to accomplish the trip solo. He discovered several new species of creature, including a sea cucumber, squid worm and a giant single-celled amoeba.
© Jason LaVerisA statement released Thursday June 22 from Oceangate read: "We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost."
It continued: "These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world's oceans. Our hearts are with these five souls and every member of their families during this tragic time. We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew."
The news came after the US Coast Guard, who had been helping to search the Atlantic ocean for the missing explorers, said it found a "debris field" in the search area. The debris was located on the ocean floor, roughly 500 meters off of the bow of the Titanic, and was "consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber".
