James Cameron ‘Struck’ By Similarity Between Lost Sub and the Titanic Disaster: ‘The Captain Was Repeatedly Warned’

Famed director James Cameron, who has been down to the Titanic wreck 33 times, offered commentary on ABC News Thursday after it was announced that all five members aboard the Titan submarine had “perished.”

The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed on Thursday a debris field near the area the Titanic sank was “consistent with catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber.” The news ended the multi-day search for a tourist expedition submarine that had been lost on Sunday while ferrying five passengers to view to famed shipwreck some 12,500 feet below the Atlantic Ocean.

“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,” noted Cameron, who directed the 1997 film Titanic.

“For 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 is just astonishing,” Cameron concluded.

“It’s really quite surreal,” he noted before discussing the complexities of building a submarine for such depths.

“A number of the top players in this 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,” Cameron added, backing up his claims that the OceanGate CEO, who was aboard the sub, had indeed been warned.

Watch the full clip above via ABC News.

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