James Cameron has responded to the news that all lives were lost in the catastrophic implosion of the OceanGate Titan submersible.
The Titanic director, who has built his own submersible and has made 33 trips to the wreckage site himself, told ABC News that the implosion is “quite surreal.”
Cameron says he is “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.”
This similarity, Cameron says, is significant because those in charge of this OceanGate deep exploration received letters of warning ahead of time and still chose to proceed.
Cameron was also critical of OceanGate’s use of a carbon-fiber hull, calling it “fundamentally flawed.”
Five people were aboard the submersible when it imploded, including Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who Cameron considered a friend.
“For him to have died tragically in this way is almost impossible for me to process,” Cameron said.
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