In 1997, when James Cameron was finishing the most expensive film of his or anyone else’s career to date, he had a sharp reminder taped up to the screen in the edit bay. Next to a straight blade razor was a note bristling with sardonic humor: “Use in case film sucks.”
It’s hard now to imagine anyone, much less Cameron, was that worried about Titanic, the 26-year-old blockbuster that still has a bigger cultural impact than any of the films that have since surpassed its box office record. But in a new documentary accompanying the 4K Blu-ray release of Titanic,on sale December 5, Cameron and his producers vividly recount the feverish, schadenfreude-filled press coverage that led up to Titanic’s December 1997 release. “Everybody was just acting like this was the biggest boondoggle in cinema history,” Cameron recalls in a recent conversation with Vanity Fair. “There was a daily story running on the cover of Variety, ‘Titanic Watch,’ and they were really trying to architect this dismal failure, sight unseen, of the movie.”
The solution turned out to be what Cameron calls “a bit of aikido,” moving the film’s release date from July to Christmas and taking more time in the edit bay, with that razor blade looming in front of them. Talking to then Fox chief Peter Chernin, in what he calls “one of the most memorable phone calls of my life,” Cameron convinced him: “They’ll go right past us and fall on their face. And then how are they going to resurrect that negative story five months later? And that’s exactly what we did, and that’s exactly what happened.”
Cameron and his Titanic producer Jon Landau have gone on to prove the skeptics wrong many times over on two even wilder bets: the first two Avatar movies, which are still numbers one and three on the list of lifetime worldwide grosses (Titanic has settled, over time, for fourth place). But it’s striking how vividly both of them remember the moments when success seemed entirely out of reach. “I mean, when we were in the thick of it on that film, we just assumed we were doomed and we’d never work again,” Cameron says. “I mean, we were over budget before we shot a foot of film, and by three or four weeks in, we were wildly over budget. At a certain point you realize your only way out is through.”
The new 4K release—the first of new releases for six Cameron films, including The Abyss and True Lies in high definition for the first time—includes plenty of behind-the-scenes photos, including several shots of Landau looking both thrilled and overwhelmed by the scale of the full-size ship set behind him. “To me, [there are] two images that I remember of myself,” Landau says. “One is me standing on the barren land where we built the studio. And then standing essentially in that same spot 100 days later in front of the ship having been built. That to me is sort of the journey that we went on every step of the way. We were there on barren land, but somehow 100 days later we had the ship.”
“There’s this craziness to the film industry,” Cameron adds, remembering when he called the studio and asked them to buy the land in Baja California where the Titanic replica could be built. “[It] allows you to imagine something and then manifest it in the real world. There’s nothing else quite like it.”
The Oscar-winning actors starred in the classic film early in their careers and have remained close friends since they played Jack and Rose in James Cameron’s romance drama. In a behind-the-scenes featurette from the film’s upcoming 4K Ultra HD DVD release, the Mare of Easttown actress opened up about her relationship with DiCaprio.
“Once I started working with Leo, we were able to kind of find our own rhythm,” she said in a clip obtained by Entertainment Tonight. “And it’s amazing to kind of look back and think about it all over again,” adding that they “clicked immediately, right away.”
She continued, “He was this kind of mess of long, skinny, uncoordinated limbs, and he was just very free with himself, and he had this effervescent energy that was really magnetic. And I remember thinking, ‘Oh, this is gonna be fun. We’re definitely gonna get along.’ And we just really did. We just really did.”
Winslet described her Titanic co-star as a “ferociously intelligent man” and detailed his technique when preparing for the role. She said he was fascinated with the period, the people who were in the lower classes, where they had come from and how they paid for their tickets, among other things.
Winslet and DiCaprio formed a close bond at the time and remain friends today, she shared, saying that they speak regularly and in real time, without either of them being too busy to connect, despite both of them working on projects often.
“You know, if you think about it, in the world that we live in now,” she concluded, “to have friendships that bind you, and that shared history, it’s really something.”
Every time the name Greta Gerwig is brought up, it’s practically a non-starter that Sacramento will be as well. That much held true in Gerwig’s latest cover story for Vanity Fair, during which she is profiled and interviewed by none other than Sloane Crosley (and yes, one can easily see Gerwig adapting Cult Classic, or even The Clasp). Among some of the anecdotes (not necessarily “titillating,” so much as, let’s say, “unsavory”) shared in the article, be they brief sentences or lengthier direct quotes, is the one that appears in the very first paragraph. It goes: “She likes what she likes, be it Truffaut or Titanic, which she saw eight times as a Sacramento teen and ‘wept beyond anything I thought I was capable of.’” “Little did she know,” as the saying goes,” Gerwig would go on to match (and possibly, eventually, outshine) the box office receipts of that rare movie to make it into the “elite” club of films that have managed to gross over a billion dollars. Many of them consisting primarily of superhero/IP movies. And yes, Barbie certainly does fall into the latter category (she might even be considered a superhero to some, i.e. Paris Hilton and Nicki Minaj). But one must admit that it’s not exactly a conventional “billion-dollars-at-the-box-office” movie. Nor was Titanic. A three-hour-and-fifteen-minute love story that essentially shows the rich have a fetish for banging people “beneath their station.”
Barbie (Margot Robbie), on the other hand, does not. At least not according to Gerwig’s rendering of her. Instead, she sees Ken (Ryan Gosling) not only as slightly “lesser than,” but hardly worthy of much of her mental or physical energy. That is, until Ken manages to surprise her by overtaking Barbie Land and turning it into Ken Land via explaining the “immaculate, impeccable, seamless garment of logic that is patriarchy” to the other Barbies “and they crumbled.” Perhaps, watching so many male-directed, male-written movies over the years, including Titanic, Gerwig finally understood the extent of this perspective’s brainwashing. Even its insidious influence on her own psyche. But it took her some time to stockpile the confidence to get behind the camera and flip the script on what viewers were seeing. As Crosley puts it, “…she always felt acting was training for directing.” If that’s the case, Gerwig has been training for decades. Arguably since her private Catholic school days at St. Francis High School in, that’s right, Sacramento. And if it sounds familiar, that’s because Gerwig fictionalized this part of her life for Lady Bird, with Saoirse Ronan as the eponymous character standing in for Gerwig’s teen self. The very teen self that saw Titanic in a Sacramento movie theater eight times in 1997. When Gerwig would have been fourteen.
Considering she grew up in the River Park neighborhood, one wonders if this meant she saw the film at the famed Cinerama domes of Century 21 on Arden and Ethan. And no, Century 21 did not automatically connote the real estate company or the “discount” “department store” that is still beloved by East Coastians despite being generally defunct. Gerwig, in fact, likely made no association with the phrase “Century 21” to anything except the domes that iconically peppered the parking lot of said movie theater. Where Titanic played seemingly ad infinitum thanks to its popularity among the hoi polloi. And Sacramento is nothing if not filled with just that type of “everyman” moviegoer. Even Gerwig.
For her to call out that experience of being in the theater and weeping over the tragic love story of Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet) speaks to one of her most profound memories of moviegoing in general. That it was in a milieu as “pedestrian” as Sacramento is telling of cinema’s unique power to transcend every background. Even one as “non-glamorous” as California’s capital city. A place Gerwig herself was sure to call out for being “non-glamorous” by quoting fellow Sacramentan Joan Didion at the beginning of Lady Bird via the aphorism, “Anybody who talks about California hedonism has never spent a Christmas in Sacramento.” Indeed, in order to experience anything like true hedonism as a, let’s face it, suburban Sacramentan, one would have to go to the movies. As Gerwig clearly did. Letting her jaw drop in disbelief like everyone else in the theater when she realized there was “no room” for Jack on the piece of wooden debris Rose manages to latch onto. Letting herself weep to the tune of “My Heart Will Go On” as the credits rolled. This after Cameron gave a “tag” ending that we can interpret either as “Old Rose’s” recurring nightly dream or an alternate reality in which the Titanic didn’t sink (yes, it’s more likely the former). Either way, that bittersweet concluding scene of Rose back on the boat ascending the steps where a still-alive Jack awaits her at the top is evocative of a lyric like, “We’ll stay forever this way/You are safe in my heart/And my heart will go on and on.”
For Gerwig, that line undoubtedly applies to her relationship with Sacramento. Even if, just as Didion, she ended up abandoning it permanently for the likes of a place that has actually become just as pedestrian: New York. It’s also entirely probable that seeing the impact a song could have in a movie like this affected her on a cellular level. That is, if we’re to go by the Barbie Soundtrack. And, even if no one song in particular came to embody it (some might say it’s “Dance the Night,” others “Barbie World” and others still “What Was I Made For?”—such is the hodgepodge nature of the soundtrack), Crosley is right to zero in on Indigo Girls’ “Closer to Fine.” The non sequitur (to the untrained ear) track that Barbie sings along to seemingly every time she enters and exits Barbie Land. And Crosley is certain to relate that choice back to how Gerwig wept over Titanic at a Sacramento movie theater (one of which, out of those eight times, just had to be the Century 21 on Arden and Ethan), following up that statement with, “Perhaps this explains why, this past summer, a certain generation of women watched Margot Robbie zipping along in her pink Corvette, a challah of blond hair over her shoulder, singing along to the Indigo Girls’ ‘Closer to Fine,’ and thought: Am I really watching this? Or rather, Am I getting to watch this?” That might not have been the exact sentiment Gerwig was experiencing while taking in Titanic at fourteen, but seeing something that big at a time when her world felt so small was unequivocally important to the seeds of her artistic growth. Because yes, seeing a movie can have just that kind of profound effect on an artist, whether they’re “germinal” or already established.
And yet, even after firmly establishing herself, there remains about Gerwig a certain “salt of the earth” aura. To this end, Crosley highlights a quote from Gerwig’s “partner” (that cringe-y word), Noah Baumbach, who assesses of her directorial style, “She’s just there without any pretense, figuring it out alongside everyone else and it’s inspiring to people.” One might argue that being from a place like Sacramento is at the core of her lack of pretense. After all, she is that Sacramento teen of Lady Bird, Christine McPherson. Hyper-aware that she might not be the “smartest” or “best” in the room, but she’s the most passionate and enthusiastic. The daughter of working-class parents (like Lady Bird’s, her mother was a nurse, while her father worked at a credit union [after his stint as a computer programmer] where he specialized in small business loans), Gerwig knew what it was to want “more.” Even if, like it did for Jack in Titanic, that might have proved to be more trouble than it was worth. And for a while, maybe it was for Gerwig. Even when she was already being branded as an “it girl” in the 00s…at least, in the “mumblecore” scene. Nonetheless, she cited this period of her life as being the most depressing, commenting, “I was really depressed. I was twenty-five and thinking, ‘This is supposed to be the best time and I’m miserable.’”
Perhaps meeting Noah Baumbach on the set of 2010’s Greenberg helped allay some of the misery. After all, in these two artists’ neurotic case, misery really does love company. The commiseration becomes inspirational. At the same time, Baumbach doesn’t exactly strike one as the type who would fuck with Titanic in the movie theater, least of all eight times. He comes across as much too jaded (“too cool for school,” as it were) for such a thing. Not just because he would have been twenty-eight during the year of Titanic’s release (indeed, that tidbit emphasizes the “May-December” nature of his and Gerwig’s romance), but, of course, because he’s from New York and fancied himself a real Woody Allen type before it became extremely politically incorrect to do so (regardless, he’s maintained that brand in the majority of his films, including The Meyerowitz Stories and Marriage Story).
Who knew that someone as plucky and “unscarred” by being the product of divorce could gravitate to someone as “opposite” as Baumbach? But then, look at the opposites attracting that were Jack and Rose. Their onscreen love rather likely planting a seed in Gerwig’s own young, moldable mind about how a relationship “ought to be” (minus the part where someone has to die in an extremely cruel and premature manner). And as she sat there (again, one wants to imagine the viewing took place at one of the Century 21 domes, long before they were fully demolished by 2016) taking in the three-hour, billion-dollar-making movie, maybe another seed was planted: that she, too, could one day makes something as influential upon “the monoculture.” It might have been a roundabout way to arrive at that point via various “indie darling” films, but, in the end, it seemed to be the right path for this director’s journey to the “billion dollar club.”
So sure, maybe being from Sacramento is “lame, or whatever,” but maybe it’s also the very thing that enabled Gerwig to write and direct a movie like Barbie with some sense of wonder and naïveté still intact. Dare one even say, some sense of…purity. That Baumbach co-wrote it with her only underscores the notion that she needed his jaded eye for certain aspects of it. Like the ones where Ken is a huge asshole. Of course, there are plenty of male assholes all over the U.S., including Sacramento.
A rare menu from the Titanic‘s first-class restaurant sold at auction over the weekend along with a pocket watch from a man who died in the 1912 disaster at sea and a deck blanket from the ill-fated ocean liner. The items were put up for auction with dozens of other transportation memorabilia Saturday in the U.K.
How much did the Titanic menu sell for at auction?
The menu sold for 83,000 British pounds (about $101,600), according to auction house Henry Aldridge and Son Ltd. Dated April 11, 1912, the menu shows what the Titanic’s most well-to-do passengers ate for dinner three days before the ship struck an iceberg that caused it to sink in the Atlantic Ocean within hours.
Featuring such dishes as spring lamb with mint sauce, “squab à la godard” and “apricots bordaloue,” the menu shows some signs that it was exposed to water. It was found earlier this year among the personal belongings of a Canadian historian who lived in Nova Scotia, where recovery ships brought the remains of those who died in the catastrophe.
A Titanic menu from April 11, 1912, was sold at auction in the U.K.
Courtesy Henry Aldridge and Son Ltd.
How the menu came to be in the historian’s possession is unknown, according to the auction house. He died in 2017, and his family found the menu tucked away in a photo album from the 1960s.
A pocket watch recovered from a Russian immigrant sold for 97,000 pounds (about $118,700), according to the auction house. Sinai Kantor, 34, was one of the over 1,500 people who died in the disaster. He was immigrating to the U.S. with his wife, Miriam, who survived the tragedy.
A pocket watch recovered from a Titanic victim was sold at auction in the U.K.
Courtesy Henry Aldridge and Son Ltd.
After Kantor’s body was recovered from the Atlantic, his belongings were returned to his wife, according to the auction house. The items included his Swiss-made, silver-on-brass pocket watch with Hebrew figures on its heavily stained face.
A deck blanket from the Titanic sold for slightly less than the watch at 96,000 pounds (about $117,500), according to the auction house.
The tartan blanket features the logo for White Star Line, the British company that owned and operated the Titanic. The blanket was used on a lifeboat and then taken on a rescue ship to New York, where it was acquired by a White Star official, according to the auction house.
A deck blanket from the Titanic was sold at auction in the U.K.
The U.S. Coast Guard has found more debris and evidence from the Titan submersible that went missing and imploded in June, according to a statement from the service released Tuesday.
The Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigations, working with marine safety engineers, recovered the material on Oct. 4 in a follow-up operation to the initial recovery mission in June, the statement said.
“The recovered evidence was successfully transferred to a U.S. port for cataloging and analysis,” the statement read. “Additional presumed human remains were carefully recovered from within Titan’s debris and transported for analysis by U.S. medical professionals.”
The submersible was carrying four passengers who had paid $250,000 to go on a deep-sea expedition led by the private company OceanGate to see the wreckage of the Titanic in June. The fifth person aboard was OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was piloting the vessel.
On June 18, the 21-foot submersible went missing about 300 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, prompting an intensive search. The Coast Guard, with the help of other groups and international teams, used planes, ships and remotely operated vehicles to try to locate the craft.
After a frantic search that lasted days, the Coast Guard announced that an ROV had identified a debris field in the search area and five major pieces of debris that appeared to be from the submersible were found.
The Coast Guard and OceanGate said the passengers were believed to have died when the submersible imploded hours after its launch. Later in June, the Coast Guard confirmed that it had recovered debris and evidence presumed to be the human remains of the Titan’s five occupants, which was sent for formal analysis and testing by medical professionals.
“The MBI is coordinating with [the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board] and other international investigative agencies to schedule a joint evidence review of recovered Titan debris,” read Tuesday’s statement from the Coast Guard. “This review session will help determine the next steps for necessary forensic testing.”
A key used aboard the Titanic that was recovered in the aftermath of the ship’s sinking has sold at auction for US$131,250, after being passed through four generations of a crew member’s family.
The weathered skeleton key with a brass plate inscribed with “PANTRYMAN” belonged to first-class saloon steward Alfred Arnold Deeble, and was found on his body.
A key once owned by 1st class saloon steward Alfred Arnold Deeble, who died in the Titanic sinking, has fetched $131,250 US at auction.
Provided/RR Auction
Boston-based RR Auction sold the lot through online bidding that concluded this past weekend.
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On April 14, 1912, RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in the cold Atlantic about 700 nautical miles from Nova Scotia, killing 1,497 of the 2,209 passengers and crew on board.
Deeble’s body was recovered by Halifax-based cable ship, the MacKay-Bennett, one of 337 bodies plucked from the Atlantic after the tragedy.
He was buried at Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax, and part of the auction lot includes a 2011 photo of his great-niece, Linda Jo McNulty Davis, visiting his gravesite.
The auction lot includes photos from the Deeble family, and a photo of his great-niece visiting his gravesite in Halifax in 2011.
Provided/RR Auction
McNulty Davis’s grandmother, Lily Deeble, was instrumental in bringing the key home to her family.
Not only did she lose her brother Alfred in the sinking, but her fiancé John Herbert Strugnell — another Titanic steward — also perished.
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“Any Titanic artifact with a well-documented lineage is of the utmost desirability. That this originates directly from the family who witnessed dual tragedies in the deaths of saloon stewards Alfred Arnold Deeble and John Herbert Strugnell makes it all the more poignant,” said Bobby Livingston, executive vice-president with RR Auction, in a statement.
An express package from Nova Scotia
Deeble, was born in Clerkenwell, London in 1877, had served in the Royal Navy and had a career as a singer.
In 1912, he was employed by the White Star Line and was on Titanic’s maiden voyage.
On a piece of yellowed paper documenting his death, Deeble was marked as body no. 270. Initially, he’s unidentified and listed as wearing black pants, a white coat with buttons and a green raincoat.
His effects include a gold watch, a gold ring, and “one bunch keys.”
Alfred Deeble’s remains were recorded as body no. 270 and recovered by the MacKay-Bennett.
In pencil, someone later notes the keys say “Pantryman” and “Chief Storekeeper,” but Deeble’s name appears to be misspelled as they try to identify him.
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Months later, a letter from White Star Line to Nova Scotia’s deputy provincial secretary, Frederick F. Mathers, on Oct. 4, 1912, asks for his belongings.
“Our Southampton Office has received a request from both the Board of Trade and the sister of this member of the crew for the effects found on the body,” the message begins.
“They ask us if we will place the matter before you, so we ask you to kindly give the case your consideration.”
The White Star Line wrote to Nova Scotia’s deputy provincial secretary to ask for Deeble’s effects on behalf of his sister.
Nova Scotia Archives
On Oct. 8, 1912, Mathers wrote White Star Line back to say he had indeed sent the items, which he valued to be $30.
“The effects in this case are of little value, and I am therefore sending you today by express a package containing these effects,” he wrote.
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From then on, the key remained in the family and was first passed down from Lily to her daughter, according to RR Auction.
The auction house called the artifact “remarkable” and said it now “transitions into a new chapter of its storied journey.”
One of the most famous sequences in Titanic is Leonardo DiCaprio in a tux and tail standing atop a large staircase in front of a clock, turning and extending his hand to Rose, played by Kate Winslet. Meanwhile, Winslet was unquestionably stunning in her performance as Rose. And their chemistry was incredible, leaving viewers in awe of the two of them. Titanic is one of the best films of all time, and no one could have done justice to Jack and Rose’s love tale other than DiCaprio and Winslet. However, DiCaprio acknowledged in 2016 that he and Kate Winslet did the film as an experiment. Who would have anticipated that an experiment would turn out to be so beautiful and record-breaking?
Leonardo DiCaprio revealed that he and Kate Winslet did Titanic as an experiment
Leonardo DiCaprio reflected on his experience filming Titanic alongside Kate Winslet and discussed how the part changed his career. In an interview with Deadline in 2016, the Titanic actor stated why the 1997 James Cameron film was an experiment for him and his co-star.
He said, “Titanic was very much an experiment for Kate Winslet and me. We’d made all of these independent films. I admired her as an actress, and she told me, ‘Let’s do this together; we can do it.’ We did it, and it turned into something we could never have predicted.
DiCaprio, who was only 22 years old when Titanic was released, said that he didn’t realize the scope of the project at the time. “‘Do you realize how big of a movie this is? ‘Yeah, it’s big,’ I said. It’s a big movie. They’re like, ‘No, no, no. ‘ No, it’s the largest movie ever,’ she says, and I’m like, ‘Well, what does that mean?’ I knew there was an expectation for me to do something at that point, and I knew I had to get back to what my intentions were from the beginning.
DiCaprio admitted that he could have gotten any part he wanted after Titanic, but he’s always wanted to produce different movies. He said, “By then, I knew exactly what kind of films I wanted to do. I used [my fame] as a blessing, making R-rated movies and different kinds of movies and taking a chance on things I wanted to act in. People would want to fund those films right now. That was something I’d never had before the Titanic.”
Leonardo DiCaprio was recently spotted enjoying ice cream at Lionel Messi’s game
The internationally recognized actor Leonardo DiCaprio kept a low profile as he watched the Herons defeat MLS rivals LAFC 3-1 from the stands. The seven-time Ballon d’Or winner caught the interest of Hollywood’s A-Listers, with celebrities flocking to see him play.
Despite his best efforts to blend in with the crowd at BMO Stadium, the Titanic and Wolf of Wall Street legend’s meal selection revealed him. The Oscar winner was seen eating an ice cream stick during the second half, with Vice City already up 2-0.
He tried to fit in by wearing his normal baseball cap and sunglasses, but it was futile. At the very least, the 48-year-old megastar looked completely ignorant that he was being recorded by Apple TV cameras. This was not, however, the first time the Los Angeles native had been photographed watching a game in recent memory.
Leonardo DiCaprio, on the other hand, was most recently seen in the 2021 film Don’t Look Back. The actor will soon be seen in Killers of the Flower Moon, which will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023. The film will be released on October 20, 2023.
Norfolk, Va. — The U.S. government is trying to stop a planned expedition to recover items of historical interest from the sunken Titanic, citing a federal law and an international agreement that treat the shipwreck as a hallowed gravesite.
The expedition is being organized by RMS Titanic Inc., the Georgia-based firm that owns the salvage rights to the world’s most famous shipwreck. The company exhibits artifacts that have been recovered from the wreck site at the bottom of the North Atlantic, from silverware to a piece of the Titanic’s hull.
The government’s challenge comes more than two months after the Titan submersible imploded near the sunken ocean liner, killing five people. But this legal fight has nothing to do with the June tragedy, which involved a different company and an unconventionally designed vessel.
The battle in the U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, which oversees Titanic salvage matters, hinges instead on federal law and a pact with Great Britain to treat the sunken Titanic as a memorial to the more than 1,500 people who died. The ship hit an iceberg and sank in 1912.
The U.S. argues that entering the Titanic’s severed hull – or physically altering or disturbing the wreck – is regulated by federal law and its agreement with Britain. Among the government’s concerns is the possible disturbance of artifacts and any human remains that may still exist.
“RMST is not free to disregard this validly enacted federal law, yet that is its stated intent,” U.S. lawyers argued in court documents filed Friday. They added that the shipwreck “will be deprived of the protections Congress granted it.”
RMST’s expedition is tentatively planned for May 2024, according to a report it filed with the court in June.
The company said it plans to take images of the entire wreck. That includes “inside the wreck where deterioration has opened chasms sufficient to permit a remotely operated vehicle to penetrate the hull without interfering with the current structure.”
RMST said it would recover artifacts from the debris field and “may recover free-standing objects inside the wreck.” Those could include “objects from inside the Marconi room, but only if such objects are not affixed to the wreck itself.”
The Marconi room holds the ship’s radio – a Marconi wireless telegraph machine – which broadcast the Titanic’s increasingly frantic distress signals after the ocean liner hit an iceberg. The messages in Morse code were picked up by other ships and onshore receiving stations, helping to save the lives of about 700 people who fled in life boats. There had been 2,208 passengers and crew on the Titanic’s maiden voyage, from Southampton, England, to New York.
The Titanic leaving Southampton, England on her maiden voyage on April 10, 1912.
AP file photo
“At this time, the company does not intend to cut into the wreck or detach any part of the wreck,” RMST stated.
The company said it would “work collaboratively” with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. agency that represents the public’s interest in the wreck. But RMST said it does not intend to seek a permit.
U.S. government lawyers said the firm can’t proceed without one, arguing that RMST needs approval from the U.S. Secretary of Commerce, who oversees NOAA.
The company has not filed a response in court. But in previous cases, it has challenged the constitutionality of U.S. efforts to “infringe” on its salvage rights to a wreck in international waters. The firm has argued that only the court in Norfolk has jurisdiction, and points to centuries of precedent in maritime law.
RMST reiterated that stance in a statement to The Associated Press on Tuesday, noting that the court granted its salvage rights three decades ago. Since then, the firm said it has recovered and conserved thousands of Titanic artifacts, which millions of people have seen.
“The company will continue its work, respectfully preserving the memory and legacy of Titanic, her passengers and crew for the future generations,” RMST said.
In 2020, the U.S. government and RMST engaged in a nearly identical legal battle over a proposed expedition that could have cut into the wreck. But the proceedings were cut short by the coronavirus pandemic and never fully played out.
The company’s plan then was to retrieve the radio, which sits in a deck house near the grand staircase. An uncrewed submersible was to slip through a skylight or cut the heavily corroded roof. A “suction dredge” would remove loose silt, while manipulator arms could cut electrical cords.
The company said it would exhibit the radio along with stories of the men who tapped out distress calls “until seawater was literally lapping at their feet.”
In May 2020, U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith gave RMST permission, writing that the radio is historically and culturally important and could soon be lost to decay. Smith wrote that recovering the telegraph would “contribute to the legacy left by the indelible loss of the Titanic, those who survived, and those who gave their lives in the sinking.”
A few weeks later, the U.S. government filed an official legal challenge against the 2020 expedition, which never happened. The firm indefinitely delayed its plans in early 2021 because of complications wrought by the pandemic.
So, yes. Many people felt that a catastrophe was brewing with the Titan, but at the same time everybody’s hands were tied.
On theTitan’s second deep test dive in April 2019—an attempt to reach 4,000 meters in the Bahamas—the sub protested with such bloodcurdling cracking and gunshot noises that its descent was halted at 3,760 meters. Rush was the pilot, and he had taken three passengers on this highly risky plunge. One of them was Karl Stanley, a seasoned submersible pilot who would later describe the noises as “the hull yelling at you.” Stanley was no stranger to risk: He’d built his own experimental unclassed sub and operated it in Honduras. But even he was so rattled by the dive that he wrote several emails to Rush urging him to postpone the Titan’s commercial debut, less than two months away.
The carbon fiber was breaking down, Stanley believed: “I think that hull has a defect near that flange that will only get worse. The only question in my mind is will it fail catastrophically or not.” He advised Rush to step back and conduct 50 unmanned test dives before any other humans got into the sub. True to form, Rush dismissed the advice—“One experiential data point is not sufficient to determine the integrity of the hull”—telling Stanley to “keep your opinions to yourself.”
“I remember him saying at one point to me that one of the reasons why he had me on that dive was he expected that I would be able to keep my mouth shut about anything that was of a sensitive nature,” Stanley told me in a phone interview.
“Like what?” I asked.
“I don’t think he wanted everybody knowing about the cracking sounds.”
Shortly after that, Rush did make an accommodation to reality. He sent out a press release heralding the Titan’s “History Making Deep-Sea Dive to 3,760 Meters with Four Crew Members,” and then a month later canceled the 2019 Titanic expedition. (He had previously scrubbed the 2018 expedition, claiming that the Titan had been hit by lightning.) Now, Rush was off to build a new hull.
Surely, people in the submersible world thought, Rush would come to his senses. Surely he wouldn’t actually go through with this?
But he did. 2020 was a write-off because of COVID. In 2021, Rush took his first group of “mission specialists” to the Titanic—and with him now, as part of his team, was Nargeolet.
It’s not that Nargeolet’s friends didn’t try to stop him. “Oh, we…we all tried,” Lahey said. “I tried so hard to tell him not to go out there. I fucking begged him, ‘Don’t go out there, man.’ ”
It’s that Nargeolet knew everything they were saying was true and wanted to go anyway. “Maybe it’s better if I’m out there,” Lahey recalls Nargeolet saying. “I can help them from doing something stupid or people getting hurt.” In the implosion’s aftermath, the French newspaper Le Figaro would report that Nargeolet had told his family that he was wary of the Titan’s carbon fiber hull and its oversized viewport, assessing them as potential weak spots. “He was a little skeptical about this new technology, but also intrigued by the idea of piloting something new,” a colleague of Nargeolet’s, marine archaeologist Michel L’Hour, explained to the paper. “It was difficult for him to consider a mission on the Titanic without participating in it himself.”
Now the reports are emerging about the plague of problems on OceanGate’s 2021 and 2022 Titanic expeditions; more dives scrubbed or aborted than completed—for an assortment of reasons from major to minor. A communications system that never much worked. Battery problems, electrical problems, sonar problems, navigation problems. A thruster installed backward. Ballast weights that wouldn’t release. (On one dive, Rush instructed the Titan’s occupants to rock the sub back and forth at abyssal depths in an attempt to dislodge the sewer pipes he used to achieve negative buoyancy.) Getting all the way down to the seafloor and then fumbling around for hours trying to find the wreck. (“I mean, how do you not find a 50,000 ton ship?” Lahey asked me, incredulous, in July 2022.)
One group had been trapped inside the sub for 27 hours, stuck on the balky launch and recovery platform. Other “mission specialists” were sealed inside the sub for up to five hours before it launched, sweltering in sauna-like conditions. Arthur Loibl, a German businessman who dove in 2021, told the Associated Press it was a “kamikaze operation.”
Fair is fair: Some people did get to see the Titanic and live to tell about it. Plenty more left disappointed, having spent an extremely expensive week in their branded OceanGate clothing doing chores on an industrial ship. (OceanGate’s Titanic expedition 2023 promotional video, now removed from the internet, showed “mission specialists” wiping down ballast pipes and cleaning the sub.) And even when Rush offered them 300-foot consolation dives in the harbor, on a number of occasions those were also canceled or aborted.
Sadly, those problems now seem quaint.
When the world learned of the Titan’s disappearance on June 18, no one I know in deep-sea circles believed that it was simply lost, floating somewhere, unseen because—the mind reels—it didn’t have an emergency beacon. No one believed that its passengers were slowly running out of oxygen. If the sub were entangled amid the Titanic wreck, that wouldn’t explain why its tracking and communications signals had vanished simultaneously at 3,347 meters. “The fear was collapse,” Lahey said bluntly. “The fear was always pressure hull failure with that craft.”
But the families didn’t know, and the public didn’t know, and it would be ghastly not to hope for some slim chance of survival, some possible miracle. But which was better to hope for? That they perished in an implosion at supersonic speed—or that they were alive with hardly a chance of being found, left to suffocate for four days in a sub that had all the comforts of an MRI machine?
“When I found out that they were bolted in…” Kerby told me, his voice anguished. “They couldn’t even evacuate and fire a flare. You know, there’s a really good reason for those [hatch] towers. It gives everyone a chance to make it out.”
“The lack of the hatch in the OceanGate design was a serious deviation from any and all submersible design safety guidelines that exist today,” Kohnen wrote in an email, seconding Kerby. “All subs need to have hatches.”
No knowledge of the tragedy was preparation enough for watching television coverage of the Titan’s entrails being craned off the recovery ship HorizonArctic. Eight-inch-thick titanium bonding rings, bent. Snarls of cables, mangled debris, sheared metal, torn exterior panels: They seemed to have been wrenched from Grendel’s claws in some mythical undersea battle. But no, it was simply math. A cold equation showing what the pressure of 6,000 psi does to an object unprepared to meet it.
One person involved in the recovery effort who wishes to remain anonymous told me that the wreckage itself was proof that no one aboard the sub had suffered: “From what I saw of all the remaining bits and pieces, it was so violent and so fast.”
“What did the carbon fiber look like?” I asked.
“There was no piece I saw anywhere that had its original five-inch thickness,” he said. “Just shards and bits…. It was truly catastrophic. It was shredded.”
Now, back on land, he was still processing what he’d seen. “I think people don’t actually understand just how forceful the ocean is. They think of the ocean as going to the beach and sticking their toes in the sand and watching waves come in and stuff like that,” he reflected. “They haven’t a clue.”
“Is there any possible reason the Titan could have imploded other than its design and construction were unsuitable for diving to 4,000 meters?” I asked Jarl Stromer, the manager of class and regulatory compliance for Triton Submarines. Stromer, who has worked in the industry since 1987, began his career as a senior engineer at the American Bureau of Shipping. He’s an expert on the rules, codes, and standards for every type of manned sub—the nuts and bolts of undersea safety.
“No,” he replied flatly. “OceanGate bears full responsibility for the design, fabrication, testing, inspection, operation, maintenance, catastrophic failure of the Titan submersible and the deaths of all five people on board.”
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In the beginning, OceanGate’s mission had seemed so promising: “Founded in Everett, Washington in 2009, the company provides manned submersible services to reach ocean depths previously unavailable to most individuals and organizations.” But there’s a vast chasm between intention and execution—and pieces of the Titan now lie at the bottom of it.
After the tragedy OceanGate went dark, suspending its operations. Its website and social media channels were suddenly gone, its promotional videos deleted. Emails sent to the company received this reply: “Thank you for reaching out. OceanGate is unable to provide any additional information at this time.” Phone calls were greeted with a disconnection notice.
Only one person familiar with OceanGate’s thinking would speak to me on the record: Guillermo Söhnlein, who cofounded the company with Rush. And Söhnlein left that post in 2013. “So I don’t have any direct knowledge or experience with the development of the Titan. I’ve never dived in Titan. I’ve never been on the Titanic expedition,” he told me. “All I know is, I know Stockton, and I know the founding of OceanGate, and I know how we operated for the first few years.”
Karl Stanley, a friend of late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, isn’t surprised the Titan submersible fatally imploded last month. A prior passenger on the doomed vessel, Stanley told “60 Minutes Australia” that Rush “definitely knew it was going to end like this.”
“He quite literally and figuratively went out with the biggest bang in human history that you could go out with,” Stanley told the outlet in an interview published Sunday. “And who was the last person to murder two billionaires, at once, and have them pay for the privilege?”
“I think Stockton was designing a mousetrap for billionaires,” Stanley added.
Stanley, a submersibles expert and deep sea explorer himself, experienced this firsthand during a Titan test dive in the Bahamas in 2019. He said Sunday there were “loud, gunshot-like noises” every three to four minutes that he said were coming from the carbon fiber tube breaking apart.
Karl Stanley (not pictured) warned OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush (left) about the dangers of his sub.
Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press
“That’s a heck of a sound to hear when you’re that far under the ocean in a craft that has only been down that deep once before,” Stanley told the program.
Perhaps most troubling was a series of messages he sent Rush and shared with “60 Minutes,” which showed Stanley warned him in April 2019 about “an area of the hull that is breaking down” and later ominously added, “it will only get worse.”
“I literally painted a picture of his wrecked sub at the bottom and even that wasn’t enough,” Stanley told the news program.
“The only question in my mind — the only question is — ‘when?’” Stanley told “60 Minutes.” “He was risking his life, and his customers’ lives, to go down in history. He’s more famous now than anything else he ever would’ve done.”
“I don’t respond to offensive rumors in the media usually, but I need to now,” Cameron wrote on Twitter Saturday. “I’m NOT in talks about an OceanGate film, nor will I ever be.”
I don’t respond to offensive rumors in the media usually, but I need to now. I’m NOT in talks about an OceanGate film, nor will I ever be.
The Oscar-winning director’s fervent response comes after The Sun published an anonymously sourced story Thursday that claimed Cameron, who directed 1997’s hit film “Titanic,” was gearing up to helm a project about the fatal Titan voyage to view the Titanic’s wreckage.
The Sun’s story said the information came from “insiders.” One source was quoted as saying, “The Titan disaster is already being looked at as a major series for one of the world’s biggest streamers — and James is the first choice for director. It is a subject close to his heart.”
The source continued, “He told the story of the Titanic so compassionately it feels like a natural step for him to take this on. Retracing the steps of those on board the Titan is a massive undertaking, but there would be a lot of time, money and resources dedicated to it.”
The article also alleged that Cameron was preparing to tap several of Hollywood’s top stars, including Matt Damon, to join the series.
The fact that the filmmaker appeared in an interview with ABC News to share his thoughts on OceanGate following the disaster further fueled the rumors.
Cameron told ABC News last month: “Many people in the community were concerned about this sub and even wrote letters to the company saying that what they were doing was too experimental and what they were doing needed to be certified.”
Comparing the Titanic to the submersible, he added, “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 died as a result. It’s a very similar tragedy at the exact same site. It’s astonishing and really quite surreal.”
The people on OceanGate Expeditions’ Titan submersible died when the vessel is believed to have imploded thousands of feet below the water while on a voyage to see the wreckage of the Titanic in the northern Atlantic.
The world was stunned after learning the sub lost contact with the surface, kicking off widespread concern for the people aboard as the fate of the craft remained a mystery for days.
In a separate conversation with BBC News, Cameron admitted that he “felt in my bones” that a disaster was ahead for the Titan after it was announced that the vessel had vanished.
“For the sub’s electronics to fail, and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously — sub’s gone,” he said, adding that it “felt like a prolonged and nightmarish charade where people are running around talking about banging noises and talking about oxygen and all this other stuff.”
“I knew that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position. That’s exactly where they found it,” he said.
The U.S. Coast Guard announced all five people’s deaths, including OceanGate Expeditions’ CEO, Stockton Rush, who was operating the sub, on June 22 after fragments of the submersible were discovered.
A BBC documentary released last year captured a chilling malfunction on the doomed Titan submersible that left passengers stuck circling at the bottom of the ocean.
On one of OceanGate’s dives to the Titanic wreckage nearly 13,000 feet below the surface in the North Atlantic, its sub’s thrusters malfunctioned, causing the vessel to spin only in circles.
It was captured in the BBC’s documentary “Take Me to the Titanic.” In the footage, as the submersible reaches the ocean floor near the Titanic’s resting place, pilot Scott Griffith can be heard saying: “There’s something wrong with my thrusters. I’m thrusting and nothing’s happening.”
“Am I spinning?” Griffith said at one point. “Oh, my God.”
He explained to passengers that one of the thrusters was thrusting forward, and the other backward ― meaning they couldn’t navigate toward the shipwreck just 1,000 feet or so away.
“You know, I was thinking, ‘We’re not going to make it,’” passenger Renata Rojas told the BBC. “We can’t go anywhere but go in circles.”
Crew members were forced to wait at the bottom of the ocean while OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush worked to come up with a solution from the host ship.
Eventually, the pilot was directed to reprogram the video game controller that steers the vessel and regained control of the sub. The passengers were then able to view the wreckage they’d paid $250,000 to visit.
Rush and four other people were killed last month when the same submersible imploded during another tourist expedition to the Titanic site.
In the wake of the incident, numerous dive experts and former OceanGate employees and associates have spoken out, accusing Rush and the company of ignoring repeated warnings.
David Lochridge, OceanGate’s former director of marine operations, wrote in a 2018 email that he feared Rush “kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego,” The New Yorker reported this week. Lochridge claims he was fired from the company after sounding the alarm on safety issues in a report.
Multiple previous passengers have also spoken about an array of glitches and malfunctions they experienced on their own Titanic expeditions.
Jonathan Small is editor-in-chief of Green Entrepreneur, a vertical from Entrepreneur Media focused on the intersection of sustainability and business. He is also an award-winning journalist, producer, and podcast host of the upcoming True Crime series, Dirty Money, and Write About Now podcasts. Jonathan is the founder of Strike Fire Productions, a premium podcast production company. He had held editing positions at Glamour, Stuff, Fitness, and Twist Magazines. His stories have appeared in The New York Times,TV Guide, Cosmo, Details, and Good Housekeeping. Previously, Jonathan served as VP of Content for the GSN (the Game Show Network), where he produced original digital video series.
Talk to someone who rode on the Titan submersible, and they’re likely to mention a technological glitch: the propulsion system failed or communications with people on the surface cut out. Maybe there were problems balancing weights on board.
They are also likely to mention Stockton Rush, the OceanGate Expeditions CEO who died on the fatal trip this week. He has been described by past passengers as both a meticulous planner and an overconfident pioneer.
In the wake of the Titan’s fatal implosion near the Titanic shipwreck on Sunday, some people who embarked on the company’s deep-sea expeditions described experiences that foreshadowed the tragedy and look back on their decision to dive as “a bit naive.”
But others expressed confidence and said that they felt they were “in good hands” nearly 13,000 feet (3,962 meters) below the ocean’s surface.
‘LIKE PLAYING RUSSIAN ROULETTE’
“I 100% knew this was going to happen,” said Brian Weed, a camera operator for the Discovery Channel’s “Expedition Unknown” show, who has felt sick to his stomach since the sub’s disappearance Sunday.
Weed went on a Titan test dive in May 2021 in Washington state’s Puget Sound as it prepared for its first expeditions to the sunken Titanic. Weed and his colleagues were preparing to join OceanGate Expeditions to film the famous shipwreck later that summer.
They quickly encountered problems: The propulsion system stopped working. The computers failed to respond. Communications shut down.
Rush, the OceanGate CEO, tried rebooting and troubleshooting the vessel on its touch screens.
“You could tell that he was flustered and not really happy with the performance,” Weed said. “But he was trying to make light of it, trying to make excuses.”
They were barely 100 feet (30 meters) deep in calm water, which begged the question: “How is this thing going to go to 12,500 feet — and do we want to be on board?” Weed said.
Following the aborted trip, the production company hired a consultant with the U.S. Navy to vet the Titan.
He provided a mostly favorable report, but warned that there wasn’t enough research on the Titan’s carbon-fiber hull, Weed said. There also was an engineering concern that the hull would not maintain its effectiveness over the course of multiple dives.
Weed said Rush was a charismatic salesman who really believed in the submersible’s technology — and was willing to put his life on the line for it.
FILE – Submersible pilot Randy Holt, right, communicates with the support boat as he and Stockton Rush, left, CEO and Co-Founder of OceanGate, dive in the company’s submersible, “Antipodes,” about three miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., June 28, 2013. Rescuers in a remote area of the Atlantic Ocean raced against time Tuesday, June 20, 2023, to find a missing submersible before the oxygen supply runs out for five people, including Stockton, who were on a mission to document the wreckage of the Titanic. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, File)
“It was looking more and more like we weren’t going to be the first guys down to film the Titanic — we were going to be maybe the 10th,” Weed said of the possible Titan expedition. “I felt like every time (the vessel) goes down, it’s going to get weaker and weaker. And that’s a little bit like playing Russian roulette.”
For work projects, Weed has swum with sharks, rappelled into remote caves and snowshoed through Siberia. But he and his colleagues pulled out of the dive to the Titanic.
“I didn’t have a good feeling about it,” he said. “It was a really hard choice to make.”
‘I ALWAYS FELT I WAS IN GOOD HANDS’
Mike Reiss, a writer for “The Simpsons” television show, said he had positive experiences on the dives he made with OceanGate, including to the Titanic wreck site.
“When my wife first came to me with this (idea), I said to her, ‘Well, this sounds like a fun way to get killed,’” Reiss said. “I knew (the risks) going in there. I always felt I was in good hands.”
Reiss said he went on three trips with OceanGate in waters near New York City — and that the company took safety seriously.
“Mostly it was just breathtaking how well it all went,” Reiss said of his 2022 dive to the Titanic. “It’s a 10-hour trip. And I went from sea level to two and a half miles down, and then back to sea level. And at no time did the pressure change in my ears. I didn’t get the same feeling I get in the New York elevator. To me that’s a remarkable achievement.”
Reiss said he was in a “different state of mind” on the expedition because he was so engaged.
“You’re never hungry. You’re never thirsty. They have a bathroom on board. It has never been used,” he said. “You just become a different kind of person. You even know you could die and it doesn’t bother you.”
Reiss said he did notice some issues with the Titan, although he wasn’t sure everything was a glitch.
For instance, the communications didn’t always work, like a cellphone losing service. The Titan’s compass also started “acting frantically” when they got to the ocean floor near the sunken Titanic.
“I don’t know if that’s an equipment failure or because magnetism is different two and a half miles down,” he said.
‘THE FATAL FLAW IS WHAT HE WILL BE REMEMBERED FOR’
Arnie Weissmann, editor in chief of Travel Weekly, never rode in the Titan despite spending a week aboard its support ship in late May, waiting for the weather to clear. He briefly climbed into the submersible, but the dive was ultimately canceled.
Wind, fog and waves were the stated reasons, but Weissmann wondered whether the submersible’s readiness was also a factor.
Over cigars one night, Rush told Weissmann that he got the carbon fiber for the Titan’s hull at a big discount because it was past its shelf-life for use in airplanes, Weissmann said. But Rush reassured him it was safe.
“I really felt there were two Stockton Rushes,” Weissman said. “There was the one who was a good team leader and efficient and getting the work done. And there was this cocky, self-assured, others be damned, ‘I’m going to do it my way’ sort of guy. And that’s the one I saw when we went out the back of the boat and had our cigars.”
But he also was a strong leader, said Weissmann, who recalled Rush leading lengthy planning meetings and urging anyone who was interested to read a book called “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right” that he left in the ship’s lounge. If a repair was complex, Weissmann said Rush would tell those assigned to it to pause for five minutes after completing it to make sure it was done correctly.
Looking back, Weissmann believes Rush had a fatal flaw: overconfidence in his engineering skills and the perception that he was a pioneer in an area that others weren’t because they were sticking to the rules.
“But in the end, for sure, the fatal flaw is what he will be remembered for — even though he was a three-dimensional human being like everybody else,” Weissmann said.
“You have to be a little bit crazy to do this sort of thing,” he said.
His submersible mates included Rush, French diver and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet and two passengers from England.
“Imagine a metal tube a few meters long with a sheet of metal for a floor. You can’t stand. You can’t kneel. Everyone is sitting close to or on top of each other,” Loibl said. “You can’t be claustrophobic.”
During the 2.5-hour descent and ascent, the lights were turned off to conserve energy, he said, with the only illumination coming from a fluorescent glow stick.
The dive was repeatedly delayed to fix a problem with the battery and the balancing weights. In total, the voyage took 10.5 hours.
He described Rush as a tinkerer who tried to make do with what was available to carry out the dives, but in hindsight, he said, “it was a bit dubious.”
“I was a bit naive, looking back now,” Loibl said.
James Cameron, director of the blockbuster film Titanic, has criticized the engineering of the lost Titan submersible, calling its design “fundamentally flawed.”
In an interview with ABC News, Cameron — who designs submersibles himself, some able to dive to depths three times below the Titanic site — said OceanGate Expedition’s vessel should not have been constructed from carbon fiber.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was one of five passengers killed onboard the Titan submersible that disappeared on Sunday, defended the use of carbon fiber in 2017, claiming the material was lighter, cheaper and easier to transport while still being durable under pressure. Traditionally, submersibles are constructed using titanium, steel or other materials that can withstand immense pressure underwater.
Cameron, 68, told the news outlet that members of the “small” deep-diving community had been warning about safety flaws in the Titan’s design since Rush boasted about the use of carbon fiber in the hull.
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He claimed many “very concerned” engineers and deep-sea divers wrote letters to OceanGate insisting the Titan was too experimental to carry human passengers.
All 5 aboard Titan submersible dead after ‘catastrophic implosion’
The Titan launched on Sunday and was reported overdue that afternoon about 700 kilometers south of St. John’s, N.L., prompting an exhaustive search involving American and Canadian organizations.
On Thursday, U.S. Coast Guards said debris had been found on the ocean bed. Authorities said all five people aboard the submersible — identified as Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood, Paul-Henri Nargeolet and Rush, who piloted the vessel — died when the Titan imploded.
“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 up full speed into an ice field on a moonless night,” Cameron told ABC News. “And many people died as a result and for a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded to take place at the same exact site…”
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In a separate interview with the BBC, Cameron further disparaged the Titan’s construction and claimed the company “cut corners.”
He said OceanGate did not certify the submersible because “they knew they wouldn’t pass.”
Cameron, who has completed 33 diving voyages to the Titanic wreck, said he would not have boarded the Titan submersible.
When it was announced on Sunday that the Titan lost communication, Cameron said he “felt in my bones what had happened.”
“For the sub’s electronics to fail and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously – sub’s gone,” he told the BBC.
Experts warned Titan submersible didn’t follow industry safety standards
Cameron said the days-long search for the submersible felt like a “prolonged and nightmarish charade” because he, and others in the deep-diving community, knew the vessel and its passengers were likely lost.
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“In the 21st century, there shouldn’t be any risks,” Cameron said. “We’ve managed to make it through 60 years, from 1960 until today, 63 years without a fatality … So, you know, one of the saddest aspects of this is how preventable it really was.”
The filmmaker has been an oceanography enthusiast since childhood and has made dozens of deep-sea dives, including one to the deepest point on Earth — the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean.
Is there anything more enthralling than a movie that keeps you on your toes? While it makes sense for some films to stick to one primary genre — such as comedy, historical drama, or romance — others are able to blend more than one genre seamlessly. In some very specific cases, however, the shift in genre is very noticeable. Essentially at some point during the movie, the plot becomes something else entirely, and as the audience, we must be ready to adapt. When done correctly, this subversive move can give an otherwise formulaic film an exciting edge.
Now, to preface, we’re not talking about movies that balance two different genres the entire time. There are plenty of dramas that also manage to be wildly funny — and there are comedies that cut straight through to the heart. Some genres, such as “romantic comedy” or “science fiction” have two elements built right into their names. There’s the central romance, and there’s the comedic relief. There’s the science element, and there’s the fictional aspect. But there’s something special about a movie that’s able to pull a fast one on you, transforming into something unexpected right before your eyes.
From charming comedies that devolve into gruesome slasher films to romance movies that morph into thrillers, we’ve rounded up 10 films that completely switched genres during their runtimes. While all these movies are pretty different from one another, they all have one thing in common — watching them from start to finish is one wild ride.
Movies That Changed Genres Halfway Through
These movies looked like one thing — only to shift into a totally different genre in the middle.
Popular Movies That Were Supposed To Be Way Darker
Things might have turned out differently for these hit films if they’d stuck with their original (darker) scripts.
It‘s possible none of us would have become so obsessed with the missing Titanic sub if it weren’t for James Cameron, the director who opened what became the biggest movie of all time with a submarine dive to the Titanic wreck. So if you‘ve spent days of cable news coverage wondering what Cameron would say about the now-presumed lost sub, wonder no longer: he has spoken out.
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Speaking to ABC News, Cameron—who notes that he’s spent more time on the Titanic via submarine dives than the actual captain of the Titanic did— calls deep submergence diving a “mature art,” the implication being that this Titan submersible was not quite mature enough for the job. “I designed a sub to go to the deepest place in the ocean — three times deeper than the Titanic,” Cameron reminded viewers at home. (He really did!) “I understand the engineering problems with building this type of vehicle.”
As others have done, Cameron notes that there were plenty of warning signs a $250,000 ride on this machine was a bad idea. Care to draw a parallel to the crew of the Titanic, who were convinced their ship was unsinkable, even by icebergs? Cameron welcomes it. “I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself,“ he told ABC News. “The captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed full speed ahead into an ice field on a moonless night. Warnings went unheeded. For this to take place at the same exact site, it’s quite astonishing.”
There’s actually some debate about how much the Titanic’s Captain Smith ignored ice warnings, and in Titanic itself the captain is presented much more as a hero than, say, the dastardly Bruce Ismay. Perhaps Cameron is trying to steer us away from the absolutely exhausting door debate—and toward a new piece of Titanic trivia we can fight about.
Listen to Vanity Fair’s Little Gold Men podcast now.
As rescuers frantically search a swath of the Atlantic Ocean the size of Connecticut for the missing OceanGate submarine, a Canadian plane with sonar capabilities “detected underwater noises in the search area,” the US Coast Guard announced via Twitter.
Canadian P-3 aircraft detected underwater noises in the search area. As a result, ROV operations were relocated in an attempt to explore the origin of the noises. Those ROV searches have yielded negative results but continue. 1/2
The Coast Guard provided no further information about the detected sounds or how they were picked up.
Earlier today, Richard Garriott de Cayeux, president of the Explorers Club, tweeted: “We understand that likely signs of life have been detected at the site. “We await hopefully good news.”
Message from President Richard Garriott Regarding the Ongoing Titanic Search and Rescue Mission pic.twitter.com/ec7YX5VQCY
Aircraft from the U.S. and Canada have been scanning the surface for the submarine while sonar buoys have been pinging the bottom of the ocean.
The Titan submersible carrying five high-profile tourists began its journey to the Titanic wreckage on Sunday morning. But it lost contact with a chartered Canadian research vessel about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive. International rescue teams are racing to locate the vessel before the air runs out.
A CBS reporter who traveled aboard the submersible currently missing on an expedition to see the wreckage of the Titanic said he was deeply worried as rescue officials continue to search for the craft.
David Pogue, a correspondent for CBS News’ “Sunday Morning,” joined the vessel’s crew last year and spoke with the company behind it, OceanGate Expeditions, and its CEO, Stockton Rush. He recounted his own anxiety before getting inside the minivan-sized submersible, including when the craft got lost underwater for several hours when communications broke own.
“This is going to sound very janky to a lot of people, but a lot of this submersible is made of off-the-shelf, improvised parts,” Pogue said Monday in an interview on CBS. “For example, you control it with an Xbox game controller. Some of the ballasts are these abandoned lead pipes from construction sites and the way you ditch them is everybody gets to one side of the sub and they roll off a shelf.”
“The important thing,” he continued, is “the capsule that contains the people and the air, that was co-designed with NASA, the University of Washington. The part that keeps you alive is rock solid.”
The U.S. Coast Guard said Monday efforts to recover the craft were ongoing, and officials estimated the vessel had between 70 and 96 hours of oxygen. OceanGate said it continued to explore “all options to bring the crew back safely” and that the company’s “entire focus is on the crew members in the submersible and their families.”
Five people were in the vessel, which disappeared in an area of the ocean with depths up to 13,000 feet. Private customers aboard pay up to $250,000 to travel to the Titanic’s wreckage.
Pogue said he was concerned as the submersible has multiple methods to rise to the surface, before noting he was informed by the company’s founder, Stockton Rush, during his own expedition that there was a small possibility the craft could get snagged on something or spring a leak.
“What concerns me, this thing has seven different ways to return to the surface … so why isn’t it at the surface?” Pogue said Monday. “There is no radio and GPS that works underwater, so you really are on your own in this thing.”
“It sounds bad,” he added. “If all seven methods they have of coming to the surface aren’t working, then what’s going on.”
British billionaire Hamish Harding is one of five people on board a missing submarine that takes people to the depths of the Atlantic Ocean to see the wrecks of the Titanic.
According to Sky News, other passengers on board the Titan submersible are French submarine pilot Paul-Henry Nargeolet and chief executive and founder of OceanGate Expeditions, Stockton Rush.
The exclusive tour is run by OceanGate Expeditions, a private company that charges as much $250,000 a person for the chance to see the Titanic wreckage off the coast of Newfoundland.
Lost communication
According to the US Coast Guard, the small submarine carrying five passengers began its journey on Sunday morning. About an hour and 45 minutes into the dive, the Canadian research vessel, Polar Prince, that it was working with lost contact with the crew.
The Coast Guard warned that the search had been a “challenge” due to the remote location. They also noted that they are racing against the clock as the oxygen onboard diminishes.
“We’re doing everything we can do to locate the submersible and rescue those on board,” Rear Admiral John Mauger told reporters. “In terms of the hours, we understood that was 96 hours of emergency capability from the operator, and so we anticipate that there’s somewhere between 70 to the full 96 hours available at this point.”
Mauger said the Canadian Coast Guard also sent out sonar buoys capable of detecting the submarine even at the bottom of the ocean.
In a statement, OceanGate said it was “exploring and mobilizing all options” to bring the crew back safely.
Because of the submarine’s remote location, the USCG must rely on Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites to communicate at sea.
Not Harding’s first adventure
The Dubai-based Harding is chairman of Action Aviation. He is no stranger to expensive, death-defying adventures. Last year, he paid to be a passenger aboard Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket. He has also dived the Challenger Deep to a depth of 36,000 feet.
On Saturday, Harding shared a photo of himself on Instagram just before OceanGate’s voyage to the Titanic, writing, “Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023. A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow.”
His stepson, Brian Szasz, wrote on Facebook earlier today: “Thoughts and prayers for my stepfather Hamish Harding as his Submarine has gone missing exploring Titanic. Search and rescue mission is underway.”
About OceanGate
OceanGate made its first successful manned submarine tour of the Titanic’s wreckage in 2021. On its website, the company boats that the 5-passenger Titan submarine can dive over 13,000 feet with the push of one button.
“Titan is lighter in weight and more cost-efficient to mobilize than any other deep diving submersible. A combination of ground-breaking engineering and off-the-shelf technology gives Titan a unique advantage over other deep-diving subs.”
The inside of the 22-foot-long submersible is about the size of a minivan. There is one porthole through which passengers can view the wreckage.
