These days we have met dozens of testimonials from former Titan passengers, the same OceanGate Expeditions submersible in which the tragedy occurred. Among them the one of youtuber Alan Estrada o David Pogue, former New York Times technology columnist and CBS anchor who participated in a similar expedition a year ago.
James Cameron was the most sought after testimony
But there was a thunderous silence, James Cameron’s. The testimony of Canadian filmmaker, philanthropist and marine explorer was one of the most wanted, not only for having directed the Oscar-winning film Titanic (1997), but for being the person who has descended to the depths of the ocean the most times to see them remains of the ocean liner sunk in 1912 that were found in 1985.
In fact, in a 2009 interview, Cameron even confessed that making the film by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet -the highest grossing in history with 2,188 million dollars collected-, was just an excuse to finance their underwater expeditions to study the remains of the iconic ship up close. “I did Titanic because I wanted to dive the wreck, not because I wanted to make the movie,” declared the director of other blockbusters such as Avatar, The Abyss o Terminator to the magazine PlayBoy.
Cameron Round Titanic twelve years after the discovery of the remains in 1985, in the North Atlantic, at a depth of 3,821 meters. “Titanic was the Everest of shipwrecks, and as a diver, I wanted to get it right.” “When I heard that other guys had been diving on the Titanic to make an IMAX movie, I said: ‘I’ll make a Hollywood movie to pay for an expedition and do the same.’ I loved that first contact, and I wanted to repeat.”
Several media had been trying to contact James Cameron for days to find out his opinion about what might have happened on the OceanGate Titan, but they didn’t get an answer. He was also silent on his social networks. His last publication on Twitter was a text from last February in which he refers to Never-before-seen images of the first expedition to the Titanic, in 1986:
was this Thursday night, when the remains of the imploded Titan were found and presumed dead to the 5 crew members, when Cameron has finally spoken. Rate the search as “sham” given that “From the beginning it was known that there was no hope.” He assures that he sees “similarities” in the tragedy of this submersible with that of the Titanicgiven that the owner of OceanGate was warned of the dangers that his expeditions entailed, and he did not pay attention, in the same way that “the captain” of the mythical sunken ship “received warnings repeatedly about the ice in front of him and still accelerated at full speed.” Besides, Cameron is especially distraughtgiven that one of the passengers, Frenchman Paul-Henry Nargeolet, Former French Navy officer expert on the Titanic, he was a friend of his.
Cameron got “stuck” in one of his submarine trips
Cameron’s silence is now understoodwhich could be due to respect for the victims for their greater knowledge of the case, in addition to the bittersweet memories that this dramatic event could bring back. On one of Cameron’s 33 trips to the Titanic, the 68-year-old filmmaker was trapped. “A current of water trapped them against the stern and they were there for 16 hours until the water diverted because they could not get out”said the Mexican youtuber Alan Estrada.
Things started to fail and I lost control
Cameron had another even more dramatic underwater experience that he himself recounted in an interview, rescued in a TikTok video that has gone viral:
That time, the filmmaker did his first solo trip to plunge into the Bougainville Trench (also known as the New Britain Trench), east of the island of New Guinea, in the Pacific Ocean. Is one of the largest in the world, at a depth of 9,140 meters.
“Things started to go wrong” when he reached 7,900 meters deep, recalls Cameron, who suspected that “Something was wrong with the PAC (Programmable Automation Controller), the computer that controls everything in the submersible. “It was a little scary because I lost my altimeter, control of the lighting system, control of the thruster and more,” says the director, who hesitated about what to do. “I didn’t know whether to go ahead and eventually I dropped ballast because I didn’t know where the bottom was and I didn’t want to crash.”
Cameron acknowledges that he was solely responsible for the accidentsince the night before there was requested to change the lines of source code “to record the data from the touch screen as I saw it”, which was a mistake. Also it was thanks to him that he was saved. Fortunately, a year earlier he had asked those responsible for the submersible’s electricity that the ballast system be independent of the PACa decision that was decisive so that he could return to the surface. Good thing I did, because if he didn’t he’d still be sitting down there.” says in the video.
Where does your passion for the seabed come from?
The Cameron’s fascination with the depths of the sea comes to him as a child, when he was “astonished” seeing the documentary of Jacques Cousteau, as he told National Geographic.
At the age of 14, he visited the Royal Ontario Museum and was fascinated by an exhibition of a Underwater habitat designed by Joe MacInnis, to which He wrote a letter that, to his surprise, was answered. He obtained the contact address of the Plexiglas manufacturer, which allowed him to obtain a sample of the material.
“I think the job of the explorer is to go and be at the remote edge of the human experience and then come back and tell that story.” the director told NPR ten years ago.
His epic journey, beyond the wreckage of the Titanic
Cameron has made dozens of underwater trips since he filmed Titanic. In 2012, it plunged into the Mariana Trench, 11,000 kilometers deep, well beyond where the sunken liner lies. He did it aboard his own 7-meter-long submersible, el Deepsea Challenger:
Director broke the record held since 1960 by the famous Swiss explorer Jacques Piccard. A feat that until now only he, who was the only one who spent up to three hours exploring the bottom and collecting sediment samples that revealed hitherto unknown microorganisms.
This is how he recounted the experience in National Geographic. “I came out like lightning, the fastest I’ve ever seen. The surface just receded”said. “It just went away. I’m looking at the depth gauge and I’m at 1,000 feet (300 meters) in the first couple of minutes. Then 2,000, then 3,000. The sub was going like a bat.”
Cameron dared to go further from the depth of the Titanic and reached 27,000 feet or about 8 kilometers, just 2.7 kilometers away from the bottom of the ocean.
His wife, Suzy Amis Cameronwho played Lizzy Calvert en Titaniccontacted him through the communication system from the surface. “Here I am, in the most remote place on planet Earth, which has taken so much time, energy and technology to reach, and I feel like the loneliest human being on the planet, completely isolated from humanity, with no chance of rescue in a place no human eye has ever seen,” Cameron told his wife.
This expedition can be seen in the documentary film James Cameron: Challenge in the Deep (2014)on Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+.
If you are lucky enough to have money, why not invest it in your dream?
In another 2018 documentary, the filmmaker explained that his travels were not the result of the “ego of a rich man”but the objective of “to witness a miracle. If you are lucky enough to have money, why not invest it in your dream?”
The result of the Cameron’s epic journeys to the seabed have been portrayed in documentaries such as the aforementioned and others such as A James Cameron expedition: the battleship Bismark (2002), Titanic mysteries (2003) y ocean mysteries (2005).
