LONDON – Film director and submersible expert James Cameron said he predicted Titan’s fate days before the debris of the missing submersible was found, reported German news agency (dpa).
All five people onboard the submersible died in the vessel’s catastrophic implosion.
Cameron, who directed the 1997 disaster film Titanic, has told BBC News he predicted the outcome of the ill-fated submersible days before the news was confirmed.
“I felt in my bones what had happened,” Cameron said.
“For the sub’s electronics to fail and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously – sub’s gone.
“I knew that the sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position. That’s exactly where they found it.”
He added: “(It) 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 immediately got on the phone to some of my contacts in the deep submersible community. Within an hour, I had the following facts. They were on descent. They were at 3,500m, heading for the bottom at 3,800m.
“We now have another wreck that is based on unfortunately the same principles of not heeding warnings.”
The US Coast Guard confirmed the tail cone of the deep-sea vessel was discovered around 490m from the bow of the Titanic wreckage during a press conference in Boston.
The Coast Guard’s John Mauger said further debris was also found, in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland, that was “consistent with a catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber”. – Bernama, June 23, 2023
