James Cameron, director of “Titanic” and noted deep-sea explorer known for his descent to the deepest depths of the Mariana Trench, has broken his silence on the disastrous implosion of the “Titan” submersible. In an interview with ABC, he spoke out about his trips to the Titanic and the eerie similarities of its destruction to the Titanic’s infamous sinking.
During the interview, Cameron noted the similarity between what happened to the Titan submersible and what happened to the Titanic, noting that in both cases, hubris and avoiding what to others was very obvious danger played substantial roles in the ships’ sinking.
Making that point, Cameron said, “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 up full speed into an ice field on a moonless night. And many people died as a result and for us very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded to take place at the same exact site.”
Continuing, Cameron, who has himself designed submersibles and used them to explore the ocean floor, said that the Titan’s carbon fiber hull design was “fundamentally flawed” because that material does not have the strength necessary to hold up to underwater pressure.
Cameron, who traveled to the Titanic’s oceaninic resting place in Russian-designed and built submersibles, noted that the accident is all the more shocking because there is a global “gold standard” safety standard for submerisibles. In fact, he added, no one has died in a submersible until the Titan disaster and there have not even been major accidents in submersibles since the 1960s. He also said that he always had “great confidence” in the Russian submerisibles he used to explore the Titanic.
Speaking about the Titan’s safety record in the context of that gold standard for safety, Cameron added, “This is a mature art, and many people in the community were very concerned about this sub. And 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.”
Christ Goldfinger, a marine geologist at Oregon State University who has been on numerous deep sea dives, told ABC that submersibles generally have redundant ways to self-rescue built into them, such as an ability to detach the passenger compartment and let it float to the surface. However, the Titan ignored that and din not have “nearly that much redundancy and self-rescue capability.”
He then made a similar point to Cameron about hubris leading to disaster in both this case and the case of the Titanic, saying, “The same sort of classic thing that got the Titanic into trouble in the first place was overconfidence in yourself and overconfidence in an underprepared vehicle.“
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