"Titanic" director James Cameron on Thursday said it was "impossible" for him to process the "catastrophic implosion" of the submersible carrying five people to the 1912 shipwreck site and that he was "struck" by the similarities between the tragedies.
Coast Guard officials on Thursday said the Titan submersible imploded near the site of the shipwreck and killed everyone on board, bringing a tragic end to a saga that included an urgent around-the-clock search and a worldwide vigil for the missing vessel.
"Many people in the community were very concerned about this sub," Cameron said in an interview with 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 and so on.
"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, 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."
The Coast Guard said the submersible likely imploded in the North Atlantic waters.
"The debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," said Rear Adm. John Mauger, of the First Coast Guard District.
OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the submersible, said in a statement that all five people in the vessel, including CEO Stockton Rush, "have sadly been lost."
OceanGate has been chronicling the Titanic's decay and the underwater ecosystem around it via yearly voyages since 2021.
At least 46 people successfully traveled on OceanGate's submersible to the Titanic wreck site in 2021 and 2022, according to letters the company filed with a U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, that oversees matters involving the Titanic shipwreck. But questions about the submersible's safety were raised by former passengers.
One of the company's first customers likened a dive he made to the site two years ago to a suicide mission.
Cameron, who has visited the wreck more than 30 times, previously warned of the dangers of visiting the site.
"You're going into one of the most unforgiving places on earth," the Academy Award-winning director said in a 2012 interview.
"It's not like you can call up AAA to come get you," he warned.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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