James Cameron Slams the 'Prolonged Nightmarish Charade' That Was the Search for the Titan Sub
I think it's fair to say that most of us are mentally burned out by the whole Titan submarine saga. If we weren't before, we certainly had reason to be once we found out there was no drama. No five men bravely clinging to live. Not heroic rescue mission possible. Just five days of committing massive resources in money and man hours in an attempt to save people who died instantly in a foolhardy tourist trip aboard a depth trap that never should've been put in the water:
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So heroes. No inspiring tale of courage and the intrepid human spirit. Just rich guys who recklessly risked their lives and lost the wager. So this will likely be my final words on the matter. And as far as I'm concerned, James Cameron can speak for me.
As a general rule, taking your cues about any news event as captivating as this one has been from Hollywood celebrities is fool's errand. It's an embarrassment any time they bring some actors to testify before congress or discuss world affairs on cable news. Almost without exception, these are people with Performing Arts degrees who play act by emoting while reciting dialogue someone smarter than them wrote.
Well James Cameron is the exception. He didn't even go to film school. Instead, he went to the library and studied up on the art of film making. Then, started actually making films, and kept trying until he got good at it. He has now written and directed three of the top four grossing films of all time. More relevant to our discussion here, he's an absolute authority on taking submersibles to the bottom of the ocean, especially for the purpose of seeing the Titanic in person. When he talks, we should all listen:
Daily Mail - Mr Cameron told BBC News that the search '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. …
Mr Cameron said last night: 'A number of the top players in the deep-submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that needed to be certified and so on.
'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 It's a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded — to take place at the same exact site with all the diving that's going around all around the world. I think it's just astonishing, it's really quite surreal'.
My sentiments exactly.
This would've been an amazing tale had it been what we were led to believe it was. A desperate struggle for survival against impossible odds. If it had been successful, we could've used it as an instructive moral tale about what human beings are capable of in the most difficult situations. Instead, it's just a stupid accident that anyone who knew what they're talking about (Cameron, "the deep submergence engineering community) could've seen coming a nautical mile away. And a colossal waste of everyone's time, risking other sailor's lives one a foolhardy rescue mission that was really just a recovery mission the entire time. The world would've been better off sitting in a beach chair with a cooler of beers and sandwiches and waiting for the sub's passengers to wash up on shore.
That's it. I'm done with this. If anyone else wants to go see the grave of a 1,500 souls, they're on their own. After all this time, let's just let these poor people rest in peace.