In an interview with the BBC, James Cameron, the director of the 1997 Hollywood film Titanic, stated that the team building the submersible that imploded, killing five people, had taken “cut corners.”
The Titan sub’s parent company, OceanGate, “didn’t get certified because they knew they wouldn’t pass,” according to the statement.
“I had serious doubts about the technology they were using. I wouldn’t have boarded that submarine, he declared. James Cameron has completed 33 submersible dives to the Titanic wreck. Titan was built from carbon fibre and titanium.
In 2012 Cameron used a different technology for the Deepsea Challenger submersible expedition in the Pacific, which took him down to 10,912m (35,800ft), the deepest known oceanic trench. The Titanic wreck is 3,810m (12,500ft) down.
Cameron said that when he learned the sub had lost both its navigation and communication at the same time he immediately suspected a disaster.
“I felt in my bones what had happened. For the sub’s electronics to fail and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously – sub’s gone.”
He said that on Monday, when he heard the sub had gone missing, “I immediately got on the phone to some of my 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 (11,483ft), heading for the bottom at 3,800 metres.