James Cameron 'struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself' after Titan debris is found

James Cameron has commented on the Titan submersible disaster (Photo: AFP)

James Cameron, the director of the multiple Oscar-winning film 'Titanic', has reacted to the deaths of the five passengers on board the Titan, the tourist submersible that went missing. The director said that the diving community was "deeply concerned" about the submersible's safety even before Sunday's expedition.

Cameron told ABC News, "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 it needed to be certified."

After reports discovered Titan debris was found, indicating the crew inside was dead, Cameron said he couldn't help but connect the circumstances of the presumed catastrophe to that of the Titanic.

He 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 at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result. For us, it's a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded. To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that's going on all around the world, I think it's just astonishing. It's really quite surreal."

Cameron, 68, is not only a filmmaker but an experienced diver, reportedly completing 33 trips to the ship's wreckage site in his life.

During the RMS Titanic's maiden voyage, which began April 10, 1912, Captain Edward J. Smith failed to conduct a scheduled safety drill and ignored multiple warnings from nearby ships that icebergs lay ahead of the ship, according to National Geographic.

Years before the fateful Sunday expedition, experts, including OceanGate's own director of marine operations, raised concerns about the safety of the vessel and said that the sub required more testing. In March 2018, more than three dozen people from the Marine Technology Society wrote that OceanGate's approach "could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic)," The New York Times reported.