Artifacts from the Titanic

Reports suggest that R.M.S. Titanic Inc. may give up its salvage rights. As stated in the article:

R.M.S. Titanic Inc’s salvage rights have always been controversial - both from a legal and moral perspective. However, RMSTI have been very good in preserving the artifacts that they do retrieve and not causing undue damage to the ship itself.

The Titanic is deteriorating at a steady rate (an excellent naration of James Cameron’s 2001 expidition can be found here).

Should there be any more salvage done on the wreck? The artifacts that would generate the most interest are the “personal” effects, such as bags and chests, yet these are the most controversial. Should anything be done to preserve this piece of history.

Although I don’t have a link currently, I believe that Robert Ballard - who found the wreck initiallly - is looking into setting up HD cameras permanently down at the Titanic. He is working on a test set-up right now (at the wreck of the Brittanic I think - which is in a less hostile environment).

Personally, I find grave robbing criminally disgusting at best. I suppose there are gray areas with respect to anthropological and scientific research, but in general digging up mummies and poking around sunken ships is just awful. Off with their heads!

I have seen the artefacts brought up from the Titanic exhibited at Greenwich.

Whilst they are interesting there is nothing that can’t be seen in an antique shop, or indeed my grandmothers house. So, quite what the archeological value is I don’t know.

What do we not know about ships and people in 1912?

Leave them be.

As to the Britannic. They should leave this alone as it is a British war grave and we don’t like them messed about with.

Having said that there are some great photos here:

http://website.lineone.net/~britannic98/

Why does it matter whether the remains are left to deteriorate in the depths, or are raised/salvaged/plundered for either public display or personal profit? It’s basically just a poorly designed ship that was recklessly piloted, isn’t it?

I have seen the artefacts brought up from the Titanic exhibited at Greenwich.

Whilst they are interesting there is nothing that can’t be seen in an antique shop, or indeed my grandmothers house. So, quite what the archeological value is I don’t know.

What do we not know about ships and people in 1912?

Leave them be.

As to the Britannic. They should leave this alone as it is a British war grave and we don’t like them messed about with.

Having said that there are some great photos here:

http://website.lineone.net/~britannic98/

As far as shipwrecks go what’s so special about the Titanic? I can find no compelling reason to forbid anyone from salvaging whatever they want anymore then I could find a compelling reason to forbid someone from salvaging gold from a Spanish Galleon.

Marc

I suppose that the difference is time and distance.

I used to be a volunteer archeological helper and I have lost count of the number of romans, celts, saxons, vikings and crusaders I have dug up. However I couldn’t go to the cemetary and start digging, even though all the people I dug up were interrred according to their own customs and weren’t just left there.

In theory there should be no diffrence between digging up a roman and digging up someones grandad.

There is though isn’t there?

I come from near Southampton where most of the crew were from and there are still some people left who can remember the dead as living people. Not many and they are dying out, but there are still some.

So I think what i’m saying is that it is too close to people’s real lives whereas the Spanish Armada was in 1588.

Why does it matter whether your great uncle’s grave and coffin content are left to deteriorate in the ground or are salvaged/plundered for public display or personal profit?

A lot of people perceive a sunken ship as a grave. That’s the whole issue.

Hey clair - I hear on the news a bus crashed over a cliff, killing 30 people.

I think they should just leave it there to rot.

don’t be daft dinsdale. There’s no comparison.

Irrelevant. Attempts would be made to bring back the bodies and give them back to the families. It’s not at all the goal of the salvaging attempts on the Titanic.

But nevertheless, let’s consider your example. If the authorities couldn’t bring back the bodies and belongings of the people killed in the accident (because it would be too dangerous for the divers, for instance), what do you think people would say if you were going to independantly loot the bus?

Are there still bodies on the Titanic? I didn’t think so, but if there are, why cannot recovery of those remains be a part of any salvage efforts?

If the boat crashed and sank in shallow waters, would it have been left there? Haven’t attempts at marine salvage been attempted and succeeded at for hundreds of years? Why is this one different? IMO, the difference between my bus and the Titanic is of size and publicity, not substance.

What makes the Titanic unique, such that is should not be disturbed? Let’s see. It was really big, it sank relatively recently, and a whole bunch of people died. So, what type of scale are you suggesting to identify how big, recent, and deadly a shipwreck must be to remain undisturbed?

Ya know, there were some bones found in the recent American sub and the Monitor recently salvaged. Was that okay? How about WWII warships? Should they be disturbed? 800 or so died on the Eastland, and I don’t recall that hulk cluttering up the Chicago River. http://www.eastlanddisaster.org/timea3a1.htm

And people muck around in graveyards all the time when changing economic and landuse factors make it appropriate. While there should be some oversight, I don’t believe anything - real property or personalty - should be held sacrosanct solely because someone might possibly be emotionally tied to it.

(Of course, it isn’t every day that I get called “daft!” I like it!)

And in response to your question concerning independent looting of the bus clair, my understanding is that the law of salvage - especially in international waters - is entirely different from property laws that would apply on land.

I would support any and all lawful efforts to exploit the Titanic. As suggested by others, I do not see it as of any significant archaelogical importance.

Good Joke :slight_smile: (if it is a joke)

Dinsdale:

The Titanic was an exceptionally well designed ship for her time, the persistent “pig iron” myth notwithstanding, but she was inadequately provisioned with lifeboats due to outdated maritime regulations (life boat capacity was determined by tonnage, not passenger capacity, for some bizarre reason).

She was poorly managed/handled because, quite simply, ships of her size-class were too new for there to be much of a body of experience with them. Coupled with late Edwardian Anglo-Saxon arrogance…

Wireless telegraph was also too new for there to be any coherent, consistent procedures or regulations governing their use. They were essentially corporate assets, and made available to the passengers for their private use (those who could afford it, that is); it was outside the ship’s “chain of command,” and any ice warnings the operators received were passed on to the ship’s officers merely out of courtesy, and as time allowed.

Not out of any obligation of duty to warn them of impending danger. And the ship’s officers were free to give such warning as much or as little attention as they deemed necessary.

The magnitude of the disaster was exacerbated by a placid attitude of her officers. The ship was “unsinkable” after all.
But the whole “unsinkable” myth evolved out of an article in a maritime engineering trade journal which touted the class’ innovative design features, calling her “…virtually unsinkable.”

The popular press picked up the term, and the “virtually” was truncated. At no time did Harland & Wolfe Shipyards, White Star Line or International Mercantile Marine (the American company owned by J.P. Morgan which owned the White Star Line) ever publicly claim that the Olympic, Titanic or Britannic were unsinkable. Although J. Bruce Ismay, Managing Director of White Star Lines, was known to have publicly hinted as such (at least until April 15, 1912, that is).

Interestingly enough, J. P. Morgan was booked for her maiden voyage, but backed out at the last minute, contributing to some of the goofier conspiracy theories concerning the sinking of the Titanic.

So the ship’s command staff was slow to react to the disaster, to provide firm leadership in the face of the crisis apparent to at least Captain Edward J. Smith, Chief Engineer Joseph Bell, and Mr. Thomas Andrews, Managing Director of Harland & Wolfe Shipyards and a capable nautical engineer thoroughly familiar with both of the Olympic-class ships.

Capt. Smith knew that there were only enough lifeboats for about half of her people, and wished to head off a panic. But in a case of classic British understatement, he may have actually contributed to the death toll by not being more emphatic with at least his senior officers to convey a firm yet unpanicked sense of urgency to cram the lifeboats with as many people as they could safely hold (there is anecdotal evidence that the lifeboat’s capacities may have been understated by perhaps as much as 50%).

Captain Smith probably could be forgiven, though. He had a long and prestigious, if unspectacular, career. He had never faced danger, a crisis, on the high seas. A mercantile officer, his priorities were naturally to ensure a smooth, uneventful passage to the paying customers. The magnitude of the crisis he faced was beyond his scope of experience, yet he did well enough, all things considered.

So no, the Titanic isn’t “just a ship.” Her allure is that she was the grandest of the grand, built during a time when mankind felt that technology could solve anything, supremely confident of their mastery of the world and nature. She was a microcosm of Edwardian society, almost a caricature of Clemens’ “gilded age.”

She was flung at top speed on a moonless night into an ice field, with full knowledge of the danger which laid in her path by her command crew and corporate management. She had lifeboat capacity for only half of her people, because no one could conceive of a disaster of such magnitude to sink such mighty vessels.

As she sank for over 2 1/2 hours, she played out a human drama that consisted of the very best and very worst of mankind, with the range of emotions running from blatant scorn of such a notion as her sinking, to stunned incomprehension, denial, desparation, and finally acceptance, whether hysterical or calm.

She wasn’t “just a ship” that sank with a bunch of people; she was the symbolic death knell of an age, a way of thought, of all the safe, arrogant assumptions that promised social utopia through technology and technique. Quite a bit of difference from a Greyhound bus that runs off the road and over a cliff, or even from a train that has derailed. Those kinds of accidents are quick; the time-scale which they play out over is too brief for the kind of human drama that the Titanic, the Empress of Ireland, the Andrea Dorea, or the U.S.S. Indianapolis represent.

Salvaging some artifacts for posterity is appropriate; salvaging artifacts for profit is sickening.

While there are no known human remains left on or about the wreckage, there are still priceless artifacts to be had. If they can’t be brought back for the edification and enjoyment of all, they should be left well enough alone.

Nice post, ExTank. (Not that I expect anything else from you!):wink:

Been doing a little reading. Man, IAAL, and salvage issues are astoundingly dense. This page has some info - there are a coupla million others. http://www.he.net/~archaeol/online/features/titanic/

The impression I get is that the wreck is deteriorating - and rather rapidly. One wag claimed that in 100 years it will be nothing other than a rust stain on the ocean floor.

So, unless someone is planning on raising the ship in its entirety, or putting a big glass bubble around it, the alternative to salvaging items/pieces is letting them all disappear. Is that what “preservationists” wish? Is that what you term leaving them “well enough alone”? What or who is served by that approach? Seems like - at most - a “symbolic” advantage.

Moreover, who’s interests are at issue here? What private or public entity/ies should be able to dictate the process? I don’t see any government or not-for-profit stepping forward with the bucks to preserve artifacts. Realistically, the only chance I see for anything to be preserved for display/study is to involve some degree of profit.

Add in that the Titanic is REALLY BIG! Heck, they’ve been selling coal from the wreck for years, and I haven’t heard a huge outcry. How much of the Titanic needs to be in public institutions as opposed to private collections? A big Titanic exhibit came through Chicago last year or so. I didn’t go - wasn’t interested. But why should we believe that such exhibits wil not be available in the future?

How about encouraging private salvage, but trying to encourage that it be done responsibly. It ain’t as tho I’m gonna cruise out there in my Sunfish and start hauling things up on the end of a fishing line. If governments/institutions stepped in and helped responsible parties conduct salvage efforts, there could be a split of the booty - x percent to be sold, and y percent “for the benefit of humanity.” No idea how that would be done, tho, or under what authority.

It just boils down to symbolism; for some (like me, admittedly), the Titanic has a symbolic value as a basically unmolested wreck far in excess of the monetary value of its salvaged artifacts.

Those same artifacts, if made available to the general public as a permanent of travelling display, changes things. For me, at least.

People donate millions to various museums every year, to allow them to collect and preserve artifacts of historical, cultural or social significance. If Titanic artifacts are brought up that way, fine. But if it’s booty brought up to line people’s pockets, to make someone or a group of someones wealthy, then fuhgedaboudit. I’m opposed. Have been, am, and will be.

But hey, one man’s gold is another man’s garbage. I went to the Titanic exhibit in Baltimore and was nearly moved to tears, being able to see this stuff. Some kids who were “dragged” there unwillingly by their parents or grandparents were little boogersnots making wiseass comments as they wandered around the exhibition. I wanted to boot their little butts, and rub their disrespectful little heads bald with noogies.

The aforementioned Spanish Galleons are ancient history; no one left alive has family who perished upon those ancient, lost ships.

Even though the list of Titanic survivors has dwindled just about to nothing, the social impact of her demise contributed to shaping the 20th century. Hardly ancient history.

It’s the eqivalent, to me at least, of cutting up the U.S.S. Arizone and selling it off as paper weights. YMMV.

How about salvaging artifacts for the gold pieces and experience points?

After all, if there are artifacts in the wreck of the Titanic, we should be able to find the Axe of the Dawrvish Lords, or the Hand of Vecna, or at least a couple of the Teeth of Dahlver-Nar. Just think of how many damage points you’ll get to inflict on an Ogre (or an Ettin) with one swipe of the Sword of Kas! I mean, it’s +6, for cryin’ out loud!

It’s not a matter of law. If some people don’t like the Titanic to be salvaged/looted, it isn’t because they think it’s illegal, but because they think it’s disrepectful and similar to robbing a relatively recent grave.
I don’t think it has much of an archeological value, either. One reason more to leave it alone.

There COULD be remains down in the mud, buried in the bowels of the ship-those of crew members and such.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with taking things like letters and such from the debris field. They found a man’s watch-it turned out to belong to the father of a survivor. The woman wore it until she died and then donated it to a museum. Likewise, finding family letters and such is very interesting.

But destroying the wreck to find some hidden “treasure”, such as the Rubiyat, or the Renault…that’s not right.