Titanic director James Cameron has said he 'felt in his bones' what happened to the missing OceanGate submersible days before it was found.
Authorities were able to identify the fate of the Titan vessel yesterday after discovering five 'major pieces' of debris in the sea, which suggest a sudden implosion took place killing all five on board.
The five passengers are certain to have died instantly.
Now, Cameron - who has been on numerous undersea trips to the Titanic shipwreck himself - has told BBC News he predicted the outcome of the ill-fated submersible days before the news was confirmed.
He said: “I 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.
“I knew that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position. That’s exactly where they found it.”
He also revealed that he had "immediately got on the phone to some of my contacts in the deep submersible community" when he found out about the incident.
Cameron's contacts gave him facts about the progress of the vessel, and told him all available information suggested a sudden implosion.
Speaking to CNN, the director shared that he had additionally "tracked down" intel that was "probably of a military origin" which revealed "some kind of loud noise consistent with an implosion event" not long after launch.
Cameron said he alerted those within the undersea activities community that the men had likely been lost, and encouraged people he knew to "raise in glass in their honour" on Monday.
Lamenting the numerous safety concerns raised about OceanGate before the incident by peers in the community, he added that we "now have another wreck that is based on unfortunately the same principles of not heeding warnings."
James Cameron has been on 33 deep-sea dives to the shipwreck of the Titanic, and has even said previously that he directed the 1998 blockbuster film just so he could have a reason to go to the historic underwater site.
His comments about the Titan come after the US Navy revealed they picked up a sound consistent with an implosion on a top secret system when communications were lost.
Analysis of previous acoustic data found an anomaly that was “consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost”, a senior Navy official said.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive acoustic detection system.
The Navy passed on that information to the Coast Guard - but they continued their search, as the Navy did not consider the data to be definitive.
The US Coast Guard confirmed the tail cone of the deep-sea vessel was discovered around 1,600 ft from the bow of the Titanic wreckage during a press conference in Boston.
Rear Admiral John Mauger said further debris was also found, in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland, that was “consistent with a catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber”.
