[Alberta's Child]

There’s also the basic dilemma of having shipwrecks in international waters outside the jurisdiction of any nation — including the nations that owned these sunken ships. The article cites examples of two British warships that were sunk 80 years ago off Malaysia — 7,000 miles away from Great Britain. Great Britain doesn’t have some kind of territorial claim to a patch of the Pacific Ocean just because they owned two warships that are now sunk there.

I wouldn’t even use the term “looting” to describe what’s going on there. If scavengers can recover pieces or wreckage from a shipwreck that’s 150 feet underwater, then the Royal Navy could have done it themselves at any time over the last 80 years. They obviously didn’t think it was something terribly important to their country over all that time.

[SeeSharp]

Under international law sunken warships continue to be the property of their governments. You can salvage sunken civilian ships without anyone’s permission, but not sunken warships.