2023-06-23 14:37:03
The bathyscaphe that went to the Titanic. Photo: Reuters
Hollywood director James Cameron, who directed the cult film Titanic and made many dives to great depths, told the BBC that immediately after the disappearance of the Titan submersible, he suspected the worst. The director said that OceanGate, which organized the dive, was repeatedly warned about the dangers of expeditions to the sunken Titanic.
Bathyscaphe “Titan”, on board of which there were five people, stopped communicating after 1 hour and 45 minutes after the start of the mission last Sunday. The search operation continued until the evening of June 22, when the wreckage of the bathyscaphe was discovered in the sea, near the site of the sinking of the Titanic.
Experts believe that the device collapsed under the weight of water, all crew members died.
James Cameron, who himself dived to the wreck of the Titanic 33 times, says that the picture of what happened became clear to him from the very beginning.
“I felt in my gut what happened. If the submarine’s electronics fail, its communication system fails, and at the same time the tracking transponder fails, the submarine is gone,” says Cameron.
The director said that he called his contacts among the submariners and an hour later he had a complete picture of what had happened.
“They were diving, their goal was to descend to a depth of 3800 meters, at around 3500 meters they lost contact and the tracking system turned off. I immediately said that the loss of both systems can only be the result of some colossal catastrophe, ”recalls James Cameron.
According to him, the first thought was precisely that the capsule could be crushed by excessive water pressure.
At the moment, this is the main version of the death of the Titan. Experts use the term implosion to describe this phenomenon.
On Thursday, a US Navy spokesman told reporters that shortly after the Titan lost contact with the surface, the Navy detected “acoustic anomalies [то есть шум]corresponding to implosion”.
This information was passed on to the US Coast Guard team, which used it to narrow down the radius of the search area.
Cameron told the BBC that for him the past week “was like a prolonged nightmarish spectacle as the bustle continues with endless talk about knocks, oxygen and everything else.”
“I knew that the bathyscaphe was located exactly under the place where the data about its depth and location were last received. It was there that they found him, ”says the director.
He draws attention to the fact that the Titan was found very quickly only after the Victor 6000 remotely operated underwater vehicle was deployed on Thursday.
“OceanGate ignored warnings”
According to Cameron, there is a “terrible irony” in the death of the Titan, which descended to look at the tragedy of the Titanic. Prior to this, the director said in television interviews that the captain of the Titanic was repeatedly warned about the danger of icebergs, but he ignored these warnings.
Now, the director claims, history is repeating itself as OceanGate, which owned the Titan, was warned that it was, in one collective statement, “on a path to disaster.”
“Now we have another crash, unfortunately due to the same mistake of ignoring warnings,” Cameron said.
The Hollywood director is not the first to speak of concerns about the safety of OceanGate’s underwater expeditions. In particular, the New York Times obtained a letter written to OceanGate by the Marine Technology Society (MTS) stating that “the company’s experiments could lead to negative consequences.”
According to James Cameron, several employees have left the company in recent years.
It appears from court documents related to another case that a former OceanGate employee warned of potential safety issues with the submersible back in 2018.
Also, concern about OceanGate’s technical criteria is contained in one of the inspection reports signed by the company’s director of marine operations control, David Lochridge.
James Cameron is known for his love of the underwater world. He not only descended to the place of the sinking of the Titanic, but also plunged into the Mariana Trench, to the deepest point of the oceans. Much of his latest film, Avatar: The Way of Water, takes place underwater.
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