‘Titanic’ director James Cameron says search for missing submarine turned into ‘nightmare farce’ | Wagon Radio 720

LONDON (AP) – “Titanic” director James Cameron said the search for the deep-sea tourist submarine had become a “nightmare spectacle” that prolongs the agony of the families of its passengers.

In an interview with the BBC aired on Friday, Cameron said that as soon as he heard that the Titan submarine had lost contact with the surface while descending towards the wreckage of the passenger ship on the seabed, he “felt it in his bones”. Told. Atlantic Ocean.

He said what the media would focus on over the next few days was a “long nightmarish farce,” including the submarine’s 96-hour oxygen supply and the banging noise.

“As far as I’m concerned, it was just brutal and slowly turning the screws over four days,” he said. “Because I learned the truth on Monday morning.”

Titan launched at 6 a.m. Sunday and was reported to have run past schedule that afternoon about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. On Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard announced that debris had been found on the ocean floor. Authorities said all five people on board were killed when the submarine exploded.

Cameron, who has dived into the wreckage of the Titanic more than 30 times, said he knew “an extreme catastrophe” had occurred as soon as he heard that the submarine had lost navigation and communications during its descent.

“If a submarine’s electronics fail, the communications system fails, and the tracking transponder fails at the same time, the submarine fails,” he told British broadcasters.

“For me, there was no doubt. We finally put an ROV there that could probe depth, and it was found within hours, maybe minutes.”

An oceanography enthusiast since childhood, the filmmaker has made dozens of deep-sea dives, including to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, the deepest point on Earth.

“One of the saddest aspects of this time is how much could have actually been prevented,” Cameron said.

“Unfortunately, another shipwreck is now occurring based on the same principle of disobeying warnings,” he said.

Deep-sea explorers have expressed concerns about Oceangate Expeditions’ Titan submersible, saying it is too experimental to carry passengers.

Oceangate co-founder Guillermo Thornlein told Times Radio that CEO Stockton Rush, one of the people on board the Titan, said, “We are doing our best to be safe. I was doing it,” he said.

“He was also very passionate about risk management and was very aware of the dangers of operating in a deep-sea environment,” said Thornlein, who no longer works for Oceangate.