Titanic director James Cameron is sub tragedy’s ‘mystery interviewee’

And now another mystery has been solved. The identity of a famous interviewee questioned about underwater safety during a parallel inquiry into the submersible’s “critical flaws” has emerged, despite the scrupulous redaction of his name throughout.

At the opening of “Mr X’s” interview with the investigating team, he explained his interest in submarines, saying: “Well, I am sure you are familiar with my film Titanic…” Readers might assume this could be James Cameron, the Canadian film director who has criticised the OceanGate operation publicly and who requested to be interviewed by investigators.

For anyone left unsure, since other films about the sinking of the Titanic have been made, this anonymous expert went on to add: “I had been an avid diver since I was in my teens and I made a film called The Abyss in 1988, which was released in 1989.”

The implosion of Titan during an expedition to view the wreck of the Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland killed five people, including OceanGate’s chief executive, Stockton Rush and British businessman Hamish Harding.

The new National Transportation Safety Board findings published this month criticise a combination of engineering lapses, a lack of adequate testing and substandard safety procedures.

Its redacted interview with Cameron was conducted by an unknown officer the US Coast Guard, whose name is also blacked out in the report. But the repetition of key details of Cameron’s blockbusting career make the exchange an unintentionally comic read. The partial nature of efforts to disguise participants has also prompted derision on social media.

More significantly in his interview, Cameron expresses amazement at the threat to safety he believes was posed by Titan’s basic structure.

“The thing that dumbfounds me about this, about this whole thing,” he said, “is implosion should never be on your mind when you’re in a sub. That should have been eliminated as even the most remote possibility very early on in the engineering phase.”

Photograph by Leon Bennett/Variety via Getty Images