Titanic director James Cameron says sub was ‘too experimental’ and he knew it had imploded

Titanic director James Cameron has said he felt “in his bones” that the Titan submersible had been lost and warned there should be better safety for tourist subs.

The Hollywood film maker, who has completed more than 30 dives to the Titanic wreck in the North Atlantic, said when he heard the submersible had gone missing, losing navigation and communication simultaneously, he suspected it was a disaster.

“I felt in my bones what had happened,” he told the BBC. “For the sub’s electronics to fail and its communication system to fail, and its tracking transponder to fail simultaneously – sub’s gone.”

In an interview with a US broadcaster he also flagged up his concerns about the safety aspect of the expedition.

He told ABC News: “People in the community were very concerned about this sub.

“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 it needed to be certified.

“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.”

This story is being updated