Titanic film-maker James Cameron blasts creators of Titan sub for taking passengers into the deep
TITANIC film-maker James Cameron has blasted the creators of the doomed Titan tourist sub for taking passengers into the deep.
Cameron — also a submersibles firm boss — said others within the industry had raised concerns to tour operator OceanGate over its vessel.
He said he was sceptical about the firm creating the 22ft sub with a carbon fibre and titanium hull, which it is feared could have led to cracks and water ingress.
Titanic obsessive Cameron has been on 30 dives to the wreck and made 2003 documentary film Ghosts of the Abyss about one expedition with the late actor Bill Paxton.
Cameron said it was “only a matter of time” before a tragedy like this happened.
He had used a ceramic sub on his visits to the ship wreckage, as it is more resistant to underwater pressure.
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The Canadian, 68, who directed the hit 1997 movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, said of Titan’s design: “I thought it was a horrible idea.
“I wish I’d spoken up, but I assumed somebody was smarter than me, you know, because I never experimented with that technology, but it just sounded bad.”
He added: “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 needed to be certified and so on.”
A 2021 video of OceanGate chief Stockton Rush, who died in the implosion, showed him saying he “broke rules” to make the trips possible.
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He says: “The carbon fibre and titanium, there’s a rule you don’t do that, well I did.”
On US TV yesterday, Cameron said: “The weakest link, if I had to put money on the findings, was the composite cylinder, the main hull that people were inside.”