‘I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself’: James Cameron weighs in on Titan submersible tragedy

The tragic poetic irony of the recent Titan submersible disaster — which presumably killed all five people exploring the ruins of the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean — was not lost on director James Cameron.

Cameron has explored the Titanic ruins himself and created the titular movie about the famous shipwreck starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. He said the submersible disaster that has been gripping headlines recently had some striking similarities to the 1912 North Atlantic Ocean iceberg collision that was the focus of his blockbuster 1997 movie.

“I’m 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,” Cameron told ABC News.

People who explore the ruins of Titanic turn out to be a rather niche group, it turns out, so it wasn’t surprising to hear that one of Cameron’s own friends, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, is assumed to be dead in the missing submersible incident.

“For him to have died tragically in this way is almost impossible for me to process,” the director said.

Although the submersible Titan has not been located, some debris was found that the Coast Guard claimed is “consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” according to the report. As a result of the discovery of the debris of the 21-foot vessel, all five passengers are now presumed dead. Officials are describing the incident as a probable implosion, according to MSNBC.

The people aboard the Titan, who are officially missing but presumed deceased, include:

• Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, a British Pakistani businessman and his son 
• Hamish Harding, a British business man and space tourist
• Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a Titanic researcher and diver
• Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate and owner of the vessel

Parks Stephenson, another friend of Cameron’s and Titanic technical advisor as well as a deep ocean explorer, predicted the outcome for the Titan’s missing status would most likely result in tragedy, due to the loss of the vessel’s communications.

There were arguably some red flags in the months leading up to the disaster, as well. For instance, it was reported by CBS News late last year that the Titan vessel was built from “off-the-shelf components, was guided by text messages from the surface, and is piloted using a third-party Xbox controller,” as We Got This Covered previously reported. If that weren’t enough, the OceanGate company was warned of “catastrophic safety problems” during development of the Titan, something we have pointed out in the past has a striking similarity to the Titanic itself.