‘Quite a horrifying prospect’: James Cameron on what led to the implosion of OceanGate’s Titanic submersible

Director of Titanic, James Cameron, who is also a deep-sea explorer, said that the delamination of the submersible Titan must have led to the implosion. He said that the material of the submersible – carbon fiber composite – were just the wrong material. 

“They call it delamination, when water ingress starts to force the layers of the fibers apart, and theoretically you can hear it. I actually believe they heard it with their ears, not through the sensor system in the last moments of their lives. And that’s quite a horrifying prospect,” said Cameron in an interview to CNN’s Anderson Cooper. The Titan submersible had sensors that could analyse the effects of the changing pressure as it scanned the integrity of the vessel. 

The Titanic director explained that carbon fiber composite – the make of the Titan – is used very very successfully for internal pressure, for vessels like say, a scuba tank. But for something that sees external pressure, all of the advantages of carbon composites go away and all the disadvantages come into play, he said. “It was the wrong material for submersible hulls. You can have a number of successful dives and fail later. It is quite insidious,” Cameron said in the interview. 

Also read: Missing Titanic submarine: Crew on board believed dead after 'catastrophic implosion'

Cameron has made dozens of deep-water explorations, including more than 32 to the Titanic wreckage. He has also gone far deeper than the 13,000 ft where the Titanic ruins rest. Cameron also has been to the Challenger Deep, the deepest-known seabed. 

In the interview, Cameron said that he was on a ship when the event happened and the first he knew of it was on Monday. He then found out that the Titan lost communications and tracking simultaneously, making him realise that it was probably an implosion – “a shockwave event so powerful that it actually took out a secondary system that has its own pressure vessel and its own battery power supply which is the transponder that the ship uses to track where the sub is”.

He then tracked down further intel and got confirmation that there were some loud noises consistent with an implosion, which were caught in the hydrophones all over the Atlantic Ocean. 

Also read: ‘If you want to be safe, don’t get out of bed’: Missing Titanic sub owner wanted to take risks

“That seemed to be enough confirmation for me and I let my inner circle of people know that we had lost our comrades,” adding that the confirmation of the implosion did not come as a surprise to him. 

He said that he took the reports of the loud noises as a factor that he multiplied with other factors. “I couldn’t think of any other scenario in which a sub would be lost, where it lost communications and navigation at the same time and stayed out of touch and did not surface,” he said in the interview. 

Also read: Titanic submersible: Wife of sub's pilot is descendant of a couple who died in the Titanic in 1912

Also read: Titanic sub OceanGate's Titan: All about the expedition, eligibility, itinerary, safety rules, price

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