Days of endless anguish were experienced during the search for the Titan submarine and the five passengers on board, which James Cameron described as a ‘farcical nightmare.’ The filmmaker is passionate about the depths of the ocean, as it not only served as inspiration for Titanic, one of his most successful films, but he has also dedicated himself to studying it.
Why Does James Cameron think the Search for Titan Was a Farce?
The rescue actions were practically faked, giving the relatives a false hope that the crew members might be alive. According to the director, experts and authorities already knew that the submersible had imploded before they made it known.
He recalled in an interview for the BBC that since June 19, when they announced the disappearance of the submarine, he told several of his friends how he felt about it. “I felt in my bones that the submersible was lost shortly after hearing that it had ceased to have contact with the surface,” said James Cameron.
He stressed that media assurances that there were still 96 hours of oxygen supply left in the submersible and that thumping noises had been heard simply prolonged the tragedy being announced.
James Cameron, who has made 33 trips to the bottom of the ocean to see the wreck of the Titanic, noted that from the moment he learned that navigation and communication with the support ship had been lost, he knew an “extreme catastrophic event” had occurred.
“That was just a cruel and slow turn of events for four days as far as I’m concerned (…) because I learned the truth on Monday morning. For the submarine’s electronics to fail and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously, the submarine disappeared,” the Avatar director detailed.
The disappearance was announced on June 19, and it took four days for the U.S. Coast Guard to report the implosion. The director assures that he knew about it and, obviously, so did they; they just prolonged the obvious but in a terrible way.
What Happened to Titan, According to the U.S. Coast Guard
John Mauger, Rear Admiral of the U.S. Coast Guard, explained that the first hypothesis about what happened to Titan is that it imploded, that is to say, that the submersible collapsed on itself. The expert stressed, without going into great detail, that despite what was confirmed, they are going to continue with the search operation in the determined area.
“There was speculation that it may have collided with the wreckage of the Titanic. What I can tell you is that the wreckage we found was 600 ft from the distinguishable debris field, and that is where we might find the remains of the passengers,” said the rear admiral.
Titan Crew Members
- Businessman Shahzada Dawood.
- Suleman Dawood, Shahzada Dawood’s son.
- Hamish Harding, president of Action Aviation.
- Stockton Rush, general manager of OceanGate, the exploration company.
- Paul-Henri Nargeolet, the Titanic exploration expert.
Story written in Spanish by Nayeli Párraga in Cultura Colectiva
