Posted on 05/20/2020 8:13:02 AM PDT by NRx
An underwater salvage company was granted approval this week to cut into the wreckage of the Titanic to try to recover a Marconi telegraph, rekindling a complex debate over access to the ship and maritime law.
The company, R.M.S. Titanic, persuaded a federal judge on Monday to allow it to conduct a salvage operation this summer in the wreckage of the ship, which sank during its maiden voyage across the Atlantic in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. More than 1,500 of the ship’s passengers died, and about 700 survived.
The ruling, by Judge Rebecca Beach Smith of the U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Va., made changes to a 2000 court order that prohibited the company from cutting into the ship’s hull to search for diamonds.
The company sought to loosen the restrictions so it could recover the Titanic’s telegraph machine, which it contends could be lost forever because of the degradation of the ship. The radio transmitter could unlock some of the secrets about a missed warning message and distress calls sent from the ship, said the company, which obtained the salvage rights to the wreckage in the 1980s. The site is about 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland.
“The Marconi device has significant historical, educational, scientific and cultural value as the device used to make distress calls while the Titanic was sinking,” Judge Smith wrote in her ruling. The company will be permitted to “minimally to cut into the wreck” so it can reach the telegraph room, Judge Smith wrote.
David Concannon, a lawyer for R.M.S. Titanic, said in an interview on Tuesday that the company would try to avoid cutting into the ship and that the ship’s telegraph room could be reached through a skylight that was already open.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
" 'BREATHTAKING' COLLECTION OF JEWELS DISCOVERED AT TITANIC SITE' - (1987)
I agree. Telegraph machines were small with thin parts... I doubt it would still exist.
I was on the second voyage of RC’s Navigator of the Seas and I remember a crewman telling me that the entire volume of the Titanic would fit in the main dining room of that ship.
I dunno if it’s true or not though..
“I guess you must have missed all the articles about the Titanic’s hull being draped in what salvagers have termed “rusticles,” which are huge “drippings” of rust that run down the sides of the wreck.”
I guess you missed the articles evaluating the analysis of the composition of those ‘rusticles’.
The better explanition provides no justification whatsoever. I was still using HF radio in the 1970's in the USAF. The ambiguities of HF radio propagation are a consternation to this day.
The company said it plans to exhibit the ship's telegraph with stories of the men who tapped out distress calls to nearby ships "until seawater was literally lapping at their feet."
Read a little of this to understand why the effort to recover the Marconi device is a ridiculous farce.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionosphere
As someone said above, follow the money. Grave robbers stripping the jewels from the deceased's fingers.
The Pursers Office with safe was located on C deck next to the Enquiry Office (where one filled out Marconi messages which went by pneumatic tube up to the Marconi room right off the Bridge and near all principal officers & Captain’s cabin). The C deck location is right across the landing on C-Deck from the famous main forward staircase up to First Class Promenade deck. Isidor Straus’s/wife’s room was next door, and John Jacob Astor’s/wife’s suite was just down the hall forward of this landing. High dollar rooms/location.
Here is the C Deck plan from Encyclopedia Titannica (yes there is a vast amount of info on this multi level site— it’s an entire career of info- and interesting while in lockdown). There is a safe shown in the diagram. Access to the Marconi Room on the next floor up would be possible, as the C deck is now greatly compressed.
https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-deckplans/c-deck.html
So Yeah— they are after the SAFE in the Pursers office- but that was recovered in 1987. Two other safes were recovered 2nd and 3rd Class. Whole blogs on the subject of the contents and the fate of any valuables including an original copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam— never recovered. When the Purser’s safe was recovered in 1987, it was empty. People in First class had picked up their valuables and took them with them— so lost at sea or not,(or stolen by recovery people highly likely).
The Second Class Purser’s Office was located on E-deck opposite the Aft Staircase.
From what I’ve seen over the years, a dive alone on a wreck that deep is nearly prohibitive in cost.
Diamonds are forever but storage media not so much.
“The better explanition provides no justification whatsoever.”
Exhibition is a justification. Why not?
Yea isn’t it mostly all encased in wood?
I imagine so...
Wood is long gone from the Titanic maybe they will find some metal parts..
Yep.. the sneaky vixen..
Well....Isidor Straus and his wife are still supposedly in their cabin...if that cabin happened to be in the front 1/3rd of the ship..
Whoops..i guess that might be a myth.
Mr. Straus’s body was recover soon after the sinking.
https://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-victim/isidor-straus.html
....Or maybe his cabin broke wide open and his body floated to the surface..i dunno..
They might be able to pull some of the log files off the hard drive.
#7 especially if someone is still at the telegraph...
#40 No need to cut any holes in those 3 ships.
They have plenty! The 2 subs imploded to so many bits.
That premise would have made a good Twilight Zone episode.
You should read about the salvage and retrieval of around 45 captured German warships held at Scapa Flow soon after WWI ended.
“the scuttling of the German High Seas Fleet in Scapa Flow was a deliberate act of sabotage ordered by a commander who refused to let his ships become the spoils of war”
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-48599958
I read a really good book about the operation once, can’t remember the name..quite the work of incredible engineering at the time.
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