Titanic director James Cameron has claimed he knew the missing OceanGate submersile had imploded and its occupants were dead on Monday.
The filmmaker and deep sea expert told CNN he figured out the tragic outcome days before it was officially announced by the US Coastguard and he felt watching the desperate search and rescue mission was "futile". Cameron said that as soon as he'd heard the sub had lost contact with its mothership, he got in touch with some members of the deep-sea diving community that he's friends with and was told the vessel had lost communication and its tracking at the same time.
Cameron told CNN's Anderson Cooper that this led him to work out the tragic fate of the five men on board, which included a 19-year-old Glasgow student.
Speaking last night, Cameron said: "The only scenario that I could come up with in my mind that could account for that was 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 (mother) ship uses to track where the sub is.
“That seemed to me enough confirmation that I let all of my inner circle of people know that we had lost our comrades, and I encouraged all of them to raise a glass in their honour on Monday.
Cameron directed the hit 1997 smash hit film starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet and he's made 33 dives to the Titanic wreckage.
The submersible was carrying five people when it took to the sea on Sunday and headed down towards the Titanic wreckage in the North Atlantic. It lost contact with its mother ship an hour and 45 minutes into the journey, sparking a daylong search and then the US Coastguard was contacted and subsequently, Canadian rescue forces joined in too.
Cameron said he dove in a ceramic sub - which is stronger than the vessel used and built by Oceangate. Cameron added the tragedy in the sea did not surprise him as he'd thought the carbon fiber hull of the sub named Titan was dodgy.
"I tracked down some intel that was probably of a military origin, although it could have been research - because there are hydrophones all over the Atlantic - and got confirmation that there was loud noise consistent with an implosion," he explained. Adding that he felt "heart sick" from the outcome, Cameron added: "I've been living with it for a few days now, as have some of my colleagues in the deep submergence community.
"I was out on a ship myself when this happened on Sunday.
"The first I heard of it was on Monday morning. I immediately got on my network - because it's a very small community in the deep submergence group - and found out some information with about a half hour that they had lost comms and they had lost tracking simultaneously.
"Then I watched over the ensuing days this whole sort of everybody-running-around-with-their-hair-on-fire search, knowing full well that it was futile, hoping against hope that I was wrong but knowing in my bones that I wasn't."
Cameron said when he heard OceanGate was planning the deep-sea submersible with a composite carbon fiber and titanium hull, he wasn't sure it was a good idea.
"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," he told Reuters on Thursday.
Cameron also said he's not the only deep sea expert to have worked out what happened before the news was confirmed and it "certainly wasn't a surprise" when it was announced on Thursday that all five onboard were dead.
On Thursday evening OceanGate released a statement revealing they believed tragedy had struck as they said: "We now believe that our CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet, have sadly been lost."
In a press conference this was reiterated by the US Coastguard.
David Mearns, who is a rescue expert and a friend of someone onboard said "a landing frame and rear cover from the submersible" was recovered in the search area.
He said he received the information via WhatsApp from someone "directly connected" to ships involved in the search for the OceanGate submersible.
Documents show OceanGate was repeatedly warned that there might be catastrophic safety problems posed by the way it was developed.
A major search operation was launched on Sunday as ships and planes rushed to the site with equipment to aid the search.
On Thursday, the US Coast Guard said an undersea robot sent by a Canadian ship had reached the sea floor, while a French research institute said a deep-diving robot with cameras, lights and arms also joined the operation.
The vessel was about 435 miles south of St John’s, Newfoundland, during a voyage to the Titanic shipwreck off the coast of Canada.
Founding member of the Board of Trustees of The Explorers Club, Hamish Harding, was on board the undersea craft, alongside UK-based businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, who is a student at Strathclyde University.
OceanGate’s chief executive and founder Stockton Rush was also onboard, as well as French submersible pilot Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
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