James Cameron reveals how he knew submersible had imploded days ago

Simon Kelly

“I felt in my bones what had happened.”

As news of the death of five men aboard the Titan submersible was announced yesterday after days of searching, Titanic director and submersible expert James Cameron has revealed he knew of their fate days before.

Speaking to the BBC, Cameron spoke of how specific information gathered within the submersible community informed him of what had happened without the need for confirmation.

Once the news of the missing sub broke, Cameron said “I immediately got on the phone to some of my other contacts in the deep submersible community.

“Within about an hour I had the following facts; they were on descent, they were at 3,500 metres, heading for the bottom at 3,800 metres. The comms was lost and navigation was lost.

“I said instantly you can’t lose comms and navigation together without an extreme catastrophic event, a highly energetic catastrophic event. The first thing that popped to mind was an implosion.”

Titanic film director James Cameron has told the BBC he felt the loss of the Titan submersible “in my bones”.

Cameron has completed 33 dives to the wreck of the Titanic and said warnings were ignoredhttps://t.co/78aRjqIaNI pic.twitter.com/sn1tQ650be

— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) June 23, 2023

James Cameron on how he knew of the submersible crew’s fate days ago.

In a press conference that began on Thursday (22 June) at around 8pm Irish time, Rear Adm John Mauger stated that the debris discovered hours earlier by search teams was pieces of the Titan and that this discovery was consistent with “the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber”.

The announcement came after days of speculation over whether the men on board the sub were still alive, with the depleting oxygen levels a major talking point.

“I felt in my bones what had happened,” continued Cameron. “This entire week has 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 that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position. That’s exactly where they found it.”

Cameron has completed 33 dives to the wreck of the Titanic. In 2012, he reached the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench and spent more than three hours exploring the ocean floor, becoming the first to accomplish the trip alone.

The director also revealed that many in the deep sub community, not including himself, wrote a letter to OceanGate calling for them to certify before taking people down to the wreckage.

Talking of the “terrible irony”, the 68-year-old likened the incident to the Titanic disaster of 1912.

“We now have another wreck that is based on unfortunately the same principles of not heeding warnings,” he said. “OceanGate were warned.”

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