James Cameron says many were ‘very concerned’ about Titan: ‘struck by the similarity of the Titanic’

The world has been captivated since it was revealed that on June 18, the submersible Titan operated by OceanGate Expeditions went missing. As people watched the countdown for the Titan’s breathing air supply, deep-sea robots searched the ocean.

© GettyImages / OCEANGATE/ HANDOUT

On Thursday morning, it was reported that a debris field was discovered near the shipwreck, before confirmation that all five passengers were dead following the vessel’s catastrophic implosion in the North Atlantic. With the submarine on a quest to see the Titanic, there is curiosity as to what filmmaker James Cameron thinks about the situation. The director has completed 33 dives to the Titanic wreckage and spent countless hours researching the tragedy for his film.

As footage and interviews regarding the Titan came to the forefront, obvious red flags and safety concerns were evident. Speaking to ABC News, Cameron said, “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 at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night, and many people died as a result.”

Cameron, an avid diver and submarine designer, said many people in the community were “very concerned” about the sub. “Some of the top players in the deep submergence engineer community even wrote letters to the company saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and it needed to be certified,” he said.

The Avatar director is also mourning the loss of his friend, French Navy veteran Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who he called a “legendary sub dive pilot,” was aboard the submarine. “I’ve known PH for 25 years, and for him to have died tragically in this way is almost impossible for me to process,” he said.

The victims aboard with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush were Nargeolet, British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, and his son Suleman, who was just 19.