'Titanic' director says Titan submarine accident was 'unmanageable'

After OceanGate released a statement on June 23 confirming that five tourists aboard the Titan submersible are presumed dead, James Cameron offered his thoughts on the tragedy as a longtime member of the diving community who has made 33 trips to the Titanic himself.

James Cameron talks about the Titan submersible accident

James Cameron said: "People in the community were very concerned about this ship. Some in the diving community even wrote to the company, saying that the submarine they were building was too experimental to carry passengers and that it needed to be certified. I was struck by the similarity to the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned of ice ahead of his ship, but he still sailed full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result. For us, it was a similar tragedy where warnings were not heeded. It was incredible."

In 2018, the Marine Technology Association's Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee wrote to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush warning about the development of the Titan submarine, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times.

Titanic wreck

James Cameron also spoke about how he had known Titanic explorer Paul-Henri "PH" Nargeolet for 25 years and mourned the death of his friend who was now on the Titan.

"PH - the legendary French submariner - was a friend of mine. It was a very small community. I had known PH for 25 years and for him to die so tragically in this way was almost unacceptable to me," said James Cameron.

International search teams from the United States, Canada, France and the United Kingdom have joined efforts this week to locate and salvage the vessel.

A breakthrough came on June 20 when a Canadian plane picked up sounds from the underwater search area. But on May 22, the US Coast Guard said debris from the Titan submersible had been spotted by a remotely operated vehicle on the seabed around the Titanic.

Within hours, it was confirmed that those aboard the Titan were presumed dead in a "catastrophic explosion" of the ship.

In February 2023, James Cameron posted footage of the first discovery of the Titanic wreck in 1986.

In 2012, Cameron piloted a submersible called the Deepsea Challenger to the deepest point in the ocean, about 11 kilometers deep in the Mariana Trench. There, Cameron collected samples and filmed the experience for a documentary for Nat Geo.

Paul-Henry Nargeolet, Stockton Rush (top), Shahzada Dawood and Suleman, Hamish Harding (bottom)

Parks Stephenson — a Titanic expert who consulted on James Cameron and Bill Paxton's 2003 documentary Ghosts of the Abyss — posted a public Facebook post on June 19 about the search for the Titan.

“No matter what you may read over the next few hours, all that is really known at this point is that communication with the submersible has been lost,” Stephenson wrote.

Those on board the Titan submersible included Nargeolet; British businessman Hamish Harding; British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman; and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was piloting the vessel.

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