Bay Area Titanic photographer ‘appalled’ by sub implosion

When famed underwater photographer Al Giddings heard an expedition submersible went missing this week on a deep sea dive to the Titanic shipwreck, he groaned.

“It was a crapshoot from the beginning,” he said.

Giddings, a San Rafael resident, has made 17 dives aboard a Russian submersible to the Titanic, eight for a CBS special with Walter Cronkite and nine with James Cameron for the blockbuster 1997 film.

The likely catastrophic implosion of the submersible and the death of its five passengers in the North Atlantic was “sad, but anticipated,” he said. Still, he feels “appalled” by the news.

“That submersible was high risk,” he said.

The hunt for the undersea craft commanded the attention of the world after it went missing on Sunday. A search ultimately turned into a solemn recovery effort when debris believed to be from the Titan was discovered on Thursday. A U.S. Navy acoustic system detected an anomaly believed to have been the moment the sub imploded.

The Titan is owned by OceanGate Expeditions, which had been conducting yearly voyages to the shipwreck since 2021, according to the Associated Press.

The Titan occupants were OceanGate chief executive and Titan pilot Stockton Rush; Pakistan residents Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood; explorer Hamish Harding; and one the world’s foremost Titanic experts, Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

Giddings, acknowledging a professional respect for Nargeolet, said his presence was the only reason he would have considered traveling in the sub.

“But I would have been apprehensive,” Giddings said.

Giddings said the submersible’s construction was the key to its failure.

The occupants were locked in with 17 bolts from the outside, he said. The vessel lacked a sail up top that would have given it visibility if it surfaced, drifting at sea. Its carbon fiber body had conclusive life cycle from repeated compressions and expansions.

“The word fatigue applies,” he said.

Giddings’ trips to the Titanic were made on the Russian-built submersible called MIR. With its 4.5-inch-thick titanium walls, it was “totally safe,” he said.

The pressure on the sub would have been around 6,000 pounds per square inch. Giddings likened the implosion to an instant jackknife at the center of a cylindrical soda can.

“They were all talking and a nanosecond later they were all gone,” he said.

Despite the tragedy, Giddings speaks of the Titanic and his illustrious career with a sense of reverence. Titanic “is like the Holy Grail” for explorers, adventurers, history buffs, he said.

The RMS Titanic was famously considered unsinkable. The British passenger liner sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912, after clipping an iceberg during its maiden voyage to the United States. More than 1,500 of the ship’s approximately 2,200 passengers died.

The Titanic shipwreck was discovered during an expedition in 1985. The wreckage and debris field of personal effects like teacups, jewelry and suitcases is “haunting and humbling,” Giddings said.

Giddings logged more than 360 hours at the site, recording video of “anything and everything” he could find. Most of the dives were in the 1990s.

Giddings saw his own share of dicey moments. He said the team had to evade wires and other debris from the Titanic during ascents to the surface.

Born and raised in Marin, where his father was a game warden, Giddings lived in Montana for 30 years on a ranch, though he spent months of the year out in the field.

Giddings is an Academy Award nominee and four-time Emmy winner. His undersea camera work can be seen in films like “The Deep” and “The Abyss” and the James Bond films “For Your Eyes Only” and “Never Say Never Again.”

Giddings said he took Cameron to the premiere of the CBS documentary, called “Titanic: Treasure of the Deep.”

“Al, let’s do Titanic,” Giddings recalled Cameron saying after the show.

Giddings was co-producer and director of underwater photography on the Cameron film. Giddings retired from the entertainment industry in 2007.

George Lang, a cinematographer-director-producer from Greenbrae, considers Giddings a mentor and friend.

“If you worked for Al Giddings, it was the same thing as if you worked for George Lucas,” Lang said. “It was quite the launchpad.”

For many, Giddings commands enormous respect for his work at the Titanic and expertise in diving.

Lang recalled an interview with Cameron in which Cameron referred to Giddings as an “annoying perfectionist.” In an interview with Giddings, Giddings referred to Cameron as an “annoying perfectionist” as well.

“He is meticulous. He is a Renaissance man,” Lang said. “His idea of a good time was breaking something and finding out how to put it back together again.”

In the aftermath of the Titan disaster, the submersible industry will likely face a reckoning, Giddings said. Still, the tragedy is further proof of the world’s enduring fascination with history’s most famous shipwreck.

The mystery and allure of the Titanic “will never die,” Giddings said.