Jim Cameron tells it like it is. He knew right off the sub had imploded. NewsWorldAmericas James Cameron reveals he knew Titanic sub imploded on Monday - raising questions over rescue secrecy Cameron says he told colleagues in a mail on Monday that ‘we’ve lost some friends' Titanic director James Cameron felt ‘in his bones’ tourist submersible was lost Hollywood filmmaker James Cameron said he received the information within 24 hours of the disappearance of the submersible Titan that it had imploded when it lost communication with its mothership. "We got confirmation within an hour that there had been a loud bang at the same time that the sub comms were lost," Mr Cameron, who directed the 1997 movie Titanic, said. "A loud bang on the hydrophone. Loss of transponder. Loss of comms. I knew what happened. The sub imploded," he said, adding that he told colleagues in an email on Monday, "We've lost some friends," and, "It's on the bottom in pieces right now”. The submersible carrying five people to the Titanic imploded near the site of the shipwreck and killed everyone on board, authorities said on Thursday. The Titan launched on Sunday around 8am EST and was reported overdue that afternoon about 435 miles south of St John’s, Newfoundland. But after one hour and 45 minutes, the craft lost contact with its mothership, the Polar Prince. Those on board were British billionaire Hamish Harding, Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistan-born businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, and OceanGate Expedition's chief executive Stockton Rush. “This was a catastrophic implosion of the vessel,” said rear admiral John Mauger of the First Coast Guard District, adding that the bodies of the victims may never be recovered from the Atlantic. The decorated director’s statement comes amid reports that secret US Navy underwater microphones detected the Titan sub’s implosion several days ago, but the information was released on Thursday. The Navy used a top secret acoustic detection system to search for any sign of the OceanGate Expeditions submersible soon after it was reported missing on Sunday, a US defence official told The Wall Street Journal. The Titan submersible An implosion was heard near the site where debris was located on Thursday, about 500m from the Titanic shipwreck, soon after the sub disappeared, according to the report. Mr Cameron, who has made over 30 dives to the Titanic wreckage, said he wishes he had sounded the alarm earlier about the submersible. He became a deep-sea explorer in the 1990s while researching for his Oscar-winning film Titanic and is part owner of Triton Submarines, which makes submersibles for research and tourism. When he heard that OceanGate was making a deep-sea submersible with a composite carbon fiber and titanium hull, Mr Cameron said he was skeptical. “I thought it was a horrible idea. I wish I’d spoken up, but I assumed somebody was smarter than me, you know, because I never experimented with that technology, but it just sounded bad on its face,” Cameron told Reuters. Although the cause of the implosion has not been determined, Mr Cameron presumes the critics were correct in warning that a carbon fiber and titanium hull would enable delamination and microscopic water ingress, leading to progressive failure over time. OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the submersible, said in a statement that all five people in the vessel, including the CEO, “have sadly been lost.” “These men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans,” OceanGate said in a statement. “We grieve the loss of life and joy they brought to everyone they knew.” The White House thanked the US Coast Guard, along with Canadian, British and French partners who helped in the search and rescue efforts.“Our hearts go out to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives on the Titan. They have been through a harrowing ordeal over the past few days, and we are keeping them in our thoughts and prayers,” it said in a statement.
Normalization of risk. Hey, nothing happened the first time. Hey, something happened but we recovered just fine so no worries. Hey, the CEO says everything is great and safety comes second to innovation. Hey, we have titanium and carbon fiber--that sounds strong. Complacency is a killer, but buying into your own specialness will kill you faster. There are some good books to read about this topic but this is my favorite: Complex technology created by complex human systems interacting with complex natural systems. What could go wrong? Other options include Dekker's The Field Guide to Understanding "Human Error" and The Human Contribution: Unsafe Acts, Accidents and Heroic Recoveries by James Reason.
It sounds like Cameron very likely believed that the sub had imploded but it wasn't confirmed until yesterday that it was an implosion. Even the coast guard statement doesn't say for absolutely sure it was an implosion. As such if they couldn't absolutely confirm it I don't think the rescue effort was a sham. I think most people had the feeling that chances of survival were slim but there still was a possibility the sound heard might've been something else and the sub was intact.
I've studied a lot of building disasters and this attitude is very prevalent in construction. Especially with developers, contractors and even architects and engineers looking to save money... I've been in constructon meetings where arguments have broken out regarding a contractor saying that they shouldn't need to do something like include more steel reinforcing because they've built other buildings where they didn't need it. The point of good design standards and building codes is that they have a margin for error and multiple redundancy. Maximum efficiency is great for the bottom line and getting things done fast but is terrible for safety. IN fact the Titanic itself is a great example. It relied upon a novel design regarding sealable bulkheads. So if one section of the ship was breached the other sections could be kept watertight. The problem was that the breached sections would fill up with water and drag the ship down. Gradually more and more sections would fill with water leading to a catastrophic failure. That is exactly what happened. On top of that because there was so much faith in this design and the White Star lines wanted to cut cost they didn't provide enough back up systems like enough lifeboats if there was a catastrophic failure.
I hope this narrative doesn't take off, I see D Crenshaw saying it was a sham and why didn't the CC tell everyone about the recording they heard on Sunday. From what I heard yesterday, it was inconclusive, I think it would have been worse if they spoke up about it and then stopped searching assuming it was the sub, IMO you still have to exhaust all possibilities. Were all so quick to blame and there will be plenty of time for that, the 24 hour news cycle has to have something to feed the masses
They should have told us the truth. It's not fair to the families and gave them (and us) false hope when there was none. It was a lie by inadmission. I had unnecessary anxiety for four days thinking about their conditions going on false information. That's bullsh*t.
Can you please tell me what show this is taken from? That would be a silver lining to this brutal tragedy. And @GIGO -- thanks for the find, re: the son. F'ing father's day. That's really damned sad, and the kid clearly had some common sense.
I envy the experience. There is an excellent read about the early days of the Alvin’s construction that you might enjoy here: https://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/the-boy-in-the-alvin-sphere/ As has been noted elsewhere (and I put in my 2 cents), the use of the “Titan” by the tourism firm OceanGate (and that’s what it was - tourism wrapped in a veneer of “mission specialists” as a come-on to get business, in my opinion) was incredibly irresponsible. There needs to be regulation of high pressure deep-diving submersibles to insure their safety up to a certain depth, certainly for tourism, in my opinion. Perhaps this tragedy will lead to it. I hope so. Woods Hole is an excellent example of how to do it right, and there are others. Cameron and Ballard come to mind. The ocean depths are still largely unexplored. There will be accidents again in the future. Like space exploration, it’s dangerous, but not making every effort to insure the safety of those involved before taking those inevitable risks is inexcusable.
The more I think about this, the designers flaunted incredible hubris when they moved away from a spherical shape. As if spheres are old-fashioned and don't look cool. Like "phock physics, watch this, dudes," high five. SMDH.
Yea...that owner was pysched by cheaper innovation or something. He was overconfident without the objective science to back it up. But, there's no question he believed it would work. That's the problem. They thought the Titanic was unsinkable with the airtight doors and had nothing to worry about, either. The parallel is striking. What good are all the safety sensors in such a situation? Not much you can do with those as you wouldn't even hear it probably before it was over.
That's a really interesting point. Titanic is all like, "bring it on, chumps. What's a few more dumb skeletons down here."
I think most modern submersibles don't have a sphere shape, it's fine if you adhere to extreme safety precautions (as one should either way). The tic-tac/ellipse shape seems to be the current standard, and from what I understand also offers very few points for pressure to attack. Main issue with this one was the terrible choice of materials used.
Thanks for that. Not my field. I guess I can understand those shapes for submersibles in general, but I'm surprised they deviate much from spheres or ellipsoids for extreme depths.
There's a James Cameron documentary called "Deepsea Challenge" which shows his descent to the deepest point of the ocean, it details a lot of the craft he built for it and some scientific aspects. I heard it's available for free on American YouTube, if you want to check it out.
Yep. The cardinal rule of Search and Rescue is you go until you find the person or a body. There are too many odd things that can happen to lead you to believe the outcome was X but in reality it is Y.
