James Cameron says he knew about the sinking of the submarine days before any of us did. In an interview published on Thursday, Titanic filmmaker James Cameron revealed that he had correctly predicted what had happened to the Titan submersible less than 24 hours after it disappeared on Sunday but had watched the “futile” search unfold “hoping against hope that I was wrong.”
In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Cameron, a prolific deep-sea explorer in his own right, said that he had missed the first news of OceanGate Expeditions losing touch with its submersible because he had been on a ship at the time. However, by Monday morning, he had established communication with his peers in “the deep submergence community.”
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When they told him that tracking, a backup system with its own fail-safes, had also been disabled, Cameron said he began to fear an implosion, “a shockwave of events so powerful that it actually took out” tracking.
“I got on the horn again with some other people, tracked down some intel that was probably of a military origin, although it could have been research—because there are hydrophones all over the Atlantic—and got confirmation that there was some kind of loud noise consistent with an implosion event,” the director said.
To me, that was sufficient evidence. I informed everyone in my inner group that we had lost some of our buddies. On Monday, I suggested that everyone toast to them.
Cameron claimed he learned this from “reliable sources” and that this was a factor in his decision-making. There was no other way a submarine could get lost when its communications and navigation systems failed at the same moment, and it remained under without making contact or coming to the surface.
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According to his interview with BBC News, the following days “felt like a prolonged and nightmarish charade where people are running around talking about banging noises and talking about oxygen and all this other stuff.”
I knew the submarine was waiting for us at the precise depth and position where it had been last seen, he continued. They unearthed it at that precise spot.
USCG officials held a news conference on Thursday to affirm that debris recovered near the Titanic catastrophe pointed to a “catastrophic implosion” as the likely cause of the ship’s five fatalities.
Cameron said he knew it to be true “in [his] bones” long before the news was made. “So today’s news wasn’t exactly shocking.”
Cameron told CNN that he and his fellow passengers “had some warning, that they heard some acoustic signature of the hull beginning to delaminate.” According to Cameron, “with their ears, not through the sensor system in the last moments of their lives, and that’s quite a horrifying prospect.” delamination occurs when water begins to push layers of fibers apart.
He called OceanGate, the corporation in charge of the submersible mission to the Titanic, “unconscionable” for failing to implement proper safety precautions. He admitted that he had never done business with OceanGate and that he had never tried to notify CEO Stockton Rush of his safety worries because he figured “maybe they’ve solved it.”
A few of his deep submergence peers had already warned OceanGate authorities in letters that their submersible was too experimental, he told ABC News in an interview on Thursday.Cameron remarked, “I’m struck by system,milarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly ,arned 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.”
To us, it’s a tragedy not unlike others where warnings were ignored. It’s incredible that this is happening at the same place where divers from all over the world are descending. This whole thing seems unreal.
Cameron, a seasoned diver who has participated in over 30 missions to the depths of the ocean, set a new world record in 2012 by navigating an experimental vessel of his own design to an underwater valley in the Mariana Trench.
On Thursday, he told The New York Times that he “knowingly” did not seek authorization for his vessel because the mission was scientific and he was flying solo.
Never in my life would I plan to transport people in a car without first getting it certified, he said.
