Did you know that James Cameron came close to giving up filmmaking entirely after making Titanic? He came close to having a second career as a deep-sea explorer. He followed his passion for years, a passion for developing deep-sea submersibles, a passion for the engineering of deep-sea exploration and for actually exploring the ocean. Not only has he explored the Titanic wreckage more than 30 times, he also did a solo mission to the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean. He knows his sh-t, basically. Throughout the week, James Cameron stayed publicly silent on the “missing” OceanGate submersible and he only spoke out on Thursday, after the Coast Guard announced that they found debris near the Titanic and that the five men on board the submersible were (most likely) dead. Cameron immediately placed the blame on OceanGate:
James Cameron is reacting to the presumed deaths of the five passengers on board the Titan. The director of the Titanic movie told ABC News Thursday that the diving community was “deeply concerned” about the submersible’s safety even before Sunday’s expedition.
“A number of the top players in the deep submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that it needed to be certified,” he claimed.
After reports discovered Titan debris was found, indicating the crew inside was dead, Cameron said he couldn’t help but connect the circumstances of the presumed catastrophe to that of the Titanic.
“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,” he said. “For us, it’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded. To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”
Cameron, 68, is not only a filmmaker but an experienced diver, reportedly completing 33 trips to the ship’s wreckage site in his life.
Yes, he’s correct – everything we’ve learned this week about OceanGate’s operations and the actual science and engineering of deep-sea submersibles has shown that OceanGate should have never put that submersible in the water, much less charged people $250K for a ride in a tin can which would inevitably implode underwater. That wasn’t the only news Cameron broke – he also has contacts in the Navy (obvs) and he heard, from his Navy contacts, that a secretive Navy sonar had picked up the sound of the OceanGate implosion on Sunday, but the Navy didn’t tell anyone. Military sources confirmed as much on Thursday.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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But wasn’t Titanic safe at the speed at which it was intended to travel? And weren’t most of the passengers poor emigres seeking a better life? But yes greed and idiocy are commonalities.
The Titanic’s captain was warned about the ice ahead. He thought he’d have time to slow down and correct course if needed.
At that point though weren’t they traveling faster than the ship’s turning capacity had been tested at? eg the ship itself wasn’t the danger. It was stupidity and hubris that brought it down.
There was a bunch of rich people on the Titanic too. That John Jacob Astor guy was worth like $150M IIRC.
But the rich people mostly survived? The history channel had a series that focused in the Irish emigres. Absolutely heart breaking.
Yeah something like 60% of first class passengers survived so you’re right there. But we did lose some of the richest people in the world on that boat–Macy’s CEO, Molly Brown, the Grand Trunk Railway dude…
We recently did a boat tour in Casco Bay and I was surprised to learn that two people who lived in some of the huge houses on Peak Island were on the Titanic–one died but one was saved.
Molly Brown survived which is why she’s called “unsinkable”.
That’s right. She lived but she married a rich guy..not born wealthy.
Forgive me for having gotten bored part of the way through it, but I read the first few chapters of “Titanic: Why She Collided, Why She Sank, Why She Should Never Have Sailed“ by Senan Molony and no, that ship was not remotely safe. Those poor people were almost dead the minute they left Ireland. There had been a large number of safety issues, they had to use sub-par coal due to a coal strike, there had been a long simmering coal fire that may have burned intensely enough to weaken the ship, etc. There’s more I know I’m forgetting, but it was not a safe vessel.
There was an interesting article years ago about how the White Star Line used poor quality rivets to save money.
IIRC, the Titanic was designed more for luxury than safety. It needed the wealthy to make it a habit to be remotely profitable–therefore a lot of corners got cut.
That’s a very strange comparison to make. I suppose if you want to find synchronicity between unrelated events and try hard enough, you’ll find a link.
Sounds pretty accurate to me.
Seems accurate to me too. There’s a throughline in both incidents of hubris.
Yes, one is a misjudgment about navigation and the other is an entire company ignoring engineering warnings. For me a similarity would be with the Challenger shuttle disaster and the many warnings about the O-rings. The pressure to launch caused NASA officials to ignore the warnings.
As much as I hate Cameron’s later movies (Avatar), he did a lot of research on Titanic before making that movie. He’s been highly involved in the submersible community for years since he made The Abyss (great movie). He’s been detailing his trips down to the Titanic wreckage were with a Russian company and there were two submersibles on every dive, in case one ran into problems.
Apparently that community has been trying to sound the alarm about Ocean Gate for years. Cameron also stated that he was highly skeptical of the carbon fiber that made up the hull of the submersible. I think he said his own submersible where he went to the Mariana Trench was made up of steel and titanium? Cameron is considered an expert in this field.
I thought his analogy of both captains was spot on. Hubris and ego both played a deciding factor in what happened to each ship.
How are they unrelated? They are absolutely related. Despite engineering issues and warnings, the captains pushed ahead. And also the second wreck was on its way to the first. It’s like how they say history doesn’t exactly repeat itself, but it does rhyme. (Cue Shirley Bassey)
Unrelated? They were exploring the actual original wreck. They wouldn’t have been there if not. This was totally related. Straight up cause and effect. It can even be said that if not for the hubris of the original captain that these people would never have had reason to go there. 100% connected and related.
You just know a movie about this is coming less than a decade. I guess he would be perfect to direct.
The movie better be about the search efforts and the massive waste of time, money, and energy while another maritime tragedy had just occurred resulting in unimaginable loss of innocent life.
It’s one thing to think that any accident at sea is worthy of the resources necessary to try and save lives (it is), but please keep in mind that everyone on board this submersible was a human being with family members who love them, and it’s not a waste to try to bring them home safely. Both this and the boat carrying refugees resulted in unimaginable loss — it isn’t a competition.
The Law of the Sea is that if someone is in trouble, you have to help. Even cruise ships will alter course to aid in rescues. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
The search effort was not wrong. What was wrong was that the Greek Coast Guard failed to uphold the Law of the Sea and let all those people – many of them children – drown.
If there is anything positive about this mess, it is that it shone a light on the disparity.
Personally I’d much rather see the film about the 4 children who crashed in the Amazon and survived.
Their story is far more hopeful and of use to humanity.
Did you watch the TMZ documentary about the Amazon crash victims? It was on last night…so much more to the story than what I thought !
There’s another Amazon survival story, from 50 years ago. A 17 year old woman, Juliane Koepcke (Diller), was with her mother on Flight 508 when the plane was destroyed by a lightning strike. She fell two miles, still strapped to her seat. Her parents were research scientists who worked in the area, so she at least had some survival knowledge, though the way back to civilization was harrowing. Filmaker Werner Herzog almost took the same flight to do some location scouting, and 25 years later she agreed to work with him on a documentary, Wings of Hope. NYT had a good article about her experience on the 50th anniversary of the flight two years ago.
@ME I’m based in the UK so not sure I can get access 🙁
UK Channel 5 had a documentary about the Oceangate sub called “Titanic Sub: Lost at Sea” which was to be aired last night but was pulled at the last minute after receiving much backlash and after news about the implosion/deaths was released. Talk about too soon. Can’t believe they filmed and were ready to release a doc about it that fast. Sheesh
More like Dateline, 20/20, or NOVA episodes about this disaster.
Tragic that we never learn. And it’s surreal that 111 years after the Titanic disaster we are still captured by this story.
Just like the next pandemic will catch us off guard and the same mistakes will be made. Humans never f*cking learn.
The 19 year old’s aunt was on the news yesterday. She said he was terrified of going but went because he wanted to spend time with his dad. How incredibly sad is that?
Was very interested to hear Bob Ballard (who first discovered the Titanic’s location) emphasize that since the technology became available circa 1960 to do these deep sea submersible dives, there have been thousands done by people from different nations, and never been a loss of a vehicle, until now. An exceptional track record indicating those people involved took the risks seriously.
But, typical human nature for someone to pop up who assumes, because something had never happened, somehow it wouldn’t/couldn’t.
As far as the pandemic goes, on the one hand, given the effectiveness of decades of vaccination programs, many people these days take a certain base level of health for granted, and don’t understand the prevalence in previous generations of things like diphtheria. Even the global epidemic of the Spanish flu is too far in the past for it to really register. On the other hand, the Obama administration created a detailed written plan for how the federal government should proceed in the event of a pandemic, which the following administration ignored.
The passengers would have been better off doing the expedition with James Cameron.
Considering it’s been done successfully at least 33 times, why did the passengers opt to do it with experimental ocean gate and not however James did it before?
Because I believe the way he did it was with actual engineers, historians, and scientists. The Titan was for civilians who could pay the money.
Exactly, he is doing this for a much different reason. He’s not just a tourist.
Cameron spent millions of dollars to build his own submersible. He says it’s for research purposes, not tourism. He doesn’t take paying customers.
I think he has taken Pierre-Henri Nageolet with him a few times, he was considered to be the most knowledgeful person in the world about the Titanic. Perhaps he went on the doomed sub because there was no other opportunity.
Ocean Gate promised that each trip included an expert, so my guess is that Nageolet was the expert being paid by the company.
Most subs can only carry two or three people. Carrying five meant there was space for three paying tourists. That was the big difference. That, and that most subs are legit used for research, so there’s no tourism attached.
I’m unclear on the implosion sound. Did the navy tell no one or did they tell the coast guard? And when?
They definitely wouldn’t have told them immediately bc ocean gate didn’t even notify anyone until 8 hrs after they lost the ship. That being said, I’m confused about this too. Did they really tell no one? Or not the public?
They told the Coast Guard at some point. People.smarter than I have pointed out that there are lots of noises in the ocean so the Navy may have not known it was the ocean gate sub at first.
The Navy probably had no idea the Titan was diving to the Titanic. The ship was in international waters. All kinds of sounds come through those sensors. The Navy wouldn’t have matched the Titan’s implosion to the sound it heard. That possibility probably increased as no sign of them was found after the extensive search. At that point, they were all looking for an intact submersible, not for an imploded one.
I suspect the Navy notified the CG night before last about the possibility of an implosion, which is why the ROVs began their search down near Titanic.
My dad was a sonar tech for the navy for 15 years (3 more years working at a nuclear station and another 4 teaching new recruits). I’ve seen what it actually looks like down there, but I was a kid and it’s been a long time. I’m going to ask him for his professional take and come back hopefully with a better answer to this question.
Finally spoke with my dad TODAY, he’s been busy at work and juggling the little grand babies for my brothers etc.
Anyway here is what he said:
1. The USN has had more or less the same sonar tech since the 1970s, and most of it is done with visual for confirmation, NOT audio
2. An object must have some sort of electricity in order to be picked up on sonar. This means animals, even large whales, will not appear on sonar
3. Because this sub was not listed on any government logs, the USN would not have necessarily known prior to the dive unless OceanGate volunteered the information to the USN
4. The sub therefore would have shown up on sonar BUT not being expected would be logged as an anomaly. This is what the sonar is for: tracking anomalies. But the sub in question was so small it would not have been considered significant – the USN is looking for weaponized anomalies and this would have been too small to be considered a threat
5. The implosion would have registered, but it would have taken them a couple of days to sort out what it was, like putting together a puzzle.
6. Even at 100 feet below water, you have a very small survival chance if something goes wrong, even in a legitimate sub, due to water pressure
7. It is his opinion that Stockton Rush was a reckless adrenaline junkie who had a track record of doing whatever it took to get what he wanted and didn’t care about how it could affect others – that sub was never seaworthy, and Rush had been a very lucky man most of his life, his luck finally ran out
8. Fun cute fact: there is an underwater phone in the sonar room. If you are close enough to whales/dolphins/etc. you can pick it up and hear them calling. I remembered this phone after he mentioned it from when I was little and went on a ship tour. I just forgot what it was.
The Navy probably didn’t want foreign entities to know they had developed underwater listening devices that could pick up ship sounds from the range of this disaster.
But now the entire world knows so good job OceanGate, you reckless asshat of a company.
Exactly this – on both counts.
they did tell the Coast Guard, but the Coast Guard needed more conclusive evidence before stopping the search and rescue mission. Check out the AP and reputable newspaper reports.
As per my post in the other thread – there is going to be a huge fallout from this.
OceanGate are potentially looking at corporate manslaughter charges. Lawmakers love making examples of companies like this so that this kind of wild west behaviour does not become the norm.
The main actor however has died so it will be interesting how much OceanGate blame him given that he was the face of the company and appeared in all their marketing videos, which clearly showed he was a main driver for decisions being made.
His wife is also part of OceanGate management, and is the great great granddaughter of a wealthy couple who perished on the Titanic. I imagine the lawyers will be questioning her role, involvement, knowledge and complicity.
There’s also a surviving cofounder. Whose shoes I would not want to be in today!
Narcissism. Hubris. The CEO of OceanGate played footloose with safety regulations and paid with his and his customers’ lives. I know their families are angry. Rightfully so. I feel horrible for the son, who had his reservations, and went anyway because his dad wanted to do it. Such a sad waste of life because of morbid curiosity. Titanic is a mass grave site. It needs to be respected and left alone.
And everyone who knew anything about this sort of thing was warning this CEO, but like too many of his ilk, they think they’re too clever by far and know everything. Cost him his life and those four other innocent people and all for greed and egotism.
Even Josh Gates was saying he had an opportunity to ride on it and they didn’t like what they saw about the whole operation and backed out.
My first thought when listening to James Cameron is shut up already. Let the people trying to find the submarine and investigate what happen do their work. I’ll wait for their final assessment on what happened. Cameron, like every other ocean/diving pundit on cable news right now, giving their take on what could have happened is just macabre. This tragedy is horrifying enough without the running “I told you so” commentary from bystanders.
Really?
It’s not “I told you so”. It’s “making machines is not a game, physics is important, stop making stupid decisions just because you have money, don’t ignore the engineers!”
Yep! OceanGate ignored sound advice and physics. It was only a matter of time before disaster struck. There were plenty of warning signs. They were ignored or hushed up.
I was very interested in what he had to say, given that his knowledge in this area is actually significant. He’s not just some vox pop. He’s considered an expert in the area of deep sea exploration.
Yes. Besides the loss of life and the immense cost for the rescue mission, Ocean Gate has a lot to answer for.
I was in the Navy, I did sonar and radar. There are so many things that civilians don’t know and shouldn’t know because most of them are classified. Thanks to that narcissist CEO of Ocean Gate, now America’s enemies know exactly what the US Navy is capable of listening to underwater.
@mireille I found Cameron fascinating. He’s an expert who has built these things. I also thought his tact was amazing. He but the blame exactly where it belonged without being disrespectful of the dead CEO. Myself, I would have went the brutally honest route and called him an irresponsible, selfish asshole.
I have a general dislike for him, but he does know what he’s talking about here.
He’s not a bystander saying “I told you so”; he’s someone who built a submersible that went three times as deep as the OceanGate sub and came back and whose specs and innovations are available online, for about a decade now. He gets to say “I told you so” because the sub community quite literally told OceanGate so. OceanGate was warned several times by several different people (employees, open letters, direct phone calls) and chose not to 1. build a better vehicle and 2. get their vehicle certified and tested by any of the certifying agencies available. There’s also no question about what happened: James Cameron mentions in the interview that the weights were found separately, implying that they had warning their system was failing, tried to rise, and couldn’t do so quickly enough before the implosion. I don’t think we’re going to find any more facts. It’s a modern day Icarus story.
I’ll listen to James Cameron over any if the talking heads on tv anyday!
He is clear, concise, and knows what he is talking about.
I only wish he would come right out and say There Are No Remains to be gathered!
I am also unconvinced that pieces need to be recovered to know what happened. It would be easier to remake the thing and reverse engineer the disaster.
I question just why there isn’t a camera there to “see” the Titanic being reclaimed by the sea instead of all these “tours”. I know at that depth it would be quite a feat, but we seem to be able to put ” cams” in other inhospitable places so someone, somewhere should be able to figure out how to do it. (Perhaps powered by all those undersea cables?)
I had a similar response at first–who needs to hear James Cameron tell everyone he knew days ago what happened? Just shut up dude you’re being gross! But after the emotional distaste subsided, I realized it’s actually very important to hear from the people who do dives like this, to hear them speak frankly about it and how it was clear to the entire community what had happened, and how that company should have known better. He is extremely knowledgeable about the Titanic, the site, its dangers, the precautions, and the equipment required to be safe. So… sorry James, I was wrong. Please go on.
As others on here have said Cameron has done a LOT of dives down to the wreckage and has years of experience in this area. He has also been very critical of this type of tourism so I wouldn’t dismiss what he says. He’s a douche but a knowledgable one.
I can imagine the former passengers of the Titan are breathing a huge sigh of relief it didn’t implode during their trip. With all the information coming out about the dangers of the Titan, it sounds like playing Russian roulette a bit.
Mike Reiss, a writer for the Simpsons, went on several dives with the company and signed up for the Titanic expedition.
From USA Today (forgot if we could link here or not):
“It was a real struggle to get to the Titanic. Our time was very, very short because on top of the danger of being two and a half miles down, there was a hurricane coming down at sea level,” said Reiss. “We really had this tight window. You sort of land at the bottom of the ocean and then go ‘all right, where’s the Titanic? We know it’s around here somewhere.’”
They sent them out in a hurricane, apparently.
Cameron’s submersible was the type of vessel that was constructed to actually withstand pressures with a failsafe backup system. He more than likely tested it to be a tried and true piece of machinery. Rush’s TIN CAN is one that he actually RUSHED the building of it and knew that the parameters of this machine were FAULTY AF. Further, the controls from the LOGITECH Company looked like a broken-down X-BOX; one–which was laughable from some of my younger/tech-savvy grandnieces’, grandnephews’, and cousins’ points of view! This component was certainly an INSULT as far as technology for this expedition was concerned!
I am sorry that this happened to those passengers–particularly the 19-year-old Dawood–but Rush, due to his EGO and GREED, dove everyone involved to their deaths and the 19-year-old to an early grave. R.I.P. 🙏🏼
There’s a fascinating twitter thread if you can find it detailing the specifics of Cameron’s submersible that he piloted to the Mariana Trench and contrasting it with Oceangate’s Titan. Really and truly amazing how much precise thought and failsafe upon failsafe went into the design of Cameron’s submersible. From four or five different ways to communicate to four different ways to trigger ascent to repeated testing of pressure withstanding capability. I thought prior to yesterday that he was just a decent filmmaker but now I am pretty impressed.
I am as well. I really enjoyed his commentary, both for his expertise and insights into the community and his ability to explain complex matters of physics and engineering in plain language. The whole thing reminded me of the James Cameron raising the bar episode of South Park.
The twitter user who created that thread is (at)LadyDoctorSays. It’s an incredible thread, and really hammers home just how recklessly the OceanGate craft was made. Especially considering that the Deepsea Challenger (Cameron’s submersible) was created in 2012! All of the knowledge that OceanGate needed to make a safe sub was out there, and they ignored it.
Correction: the CNN link in the article clearly says (in the HEADLINE) that they contacted rescuers on Sunday, the day the Titan began its descent. Here’s a quote from the article as well:
“The Navy immediately relayed that information to on-scene commanders leading the search effort, and it was used to narrow down the area of the search, the official said Thursday.”
I wish Cameron would shut up. He is such a pompous ass. Why the need to insert himself in this tragedy and lodge criticisms (which he has done)? Stop centering yourself in all things Titanic, James. There are many, many experts who know far more than you historically and scientifically. He annoys the hell out of me.
I mean, he is a pompous ass but he does have very solid credentials on the topic. I don’t see a problem with him making a statement. It’s not like he did it before the outcome was known and announced.
Cameron IS among the experts in deep sea diving and sub building.
Because he’s been there multiple times and knows the risks? News agencies likely approached him about it because of his background with it.
Interestingly, a friend of mine who is a really talented astrologer specialising in horary did charts for the submersible and the titanic and they both had the same trine happening so there was something in common.. And in regular astrology had someone asked, she said they’d have said no to the trip because too many negative aspects things signifying catastrophe, floods /shipwrecks, endings, etc (I’m no astrologer so this is my general retelling).