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 ...
Re pic: Are those the characters played by Leonardo DeCaprio and Kate Winslett?
They are going to recover all the cases of Bass Ale that was in the hold.
That is fascinating. Thanks for posting it.
I have a book The Grand Scuttle by Dan van der Vat (1986) that covers this event. As I recall they were still harvesting steel in 1986 from these ships for some medical instruments because the steel was made before the nuclear tests so it does not have trace elements of radiation. (I recall the book saying manufacturing steel uses a lot of air and current air is tainted).
The second link was very emotional.
oh man...
True, but less concern now. Atmospheric radiation is substantially reduced and they now use ‘pure’ oxygen.
True, but less concern now. Atmospheric radiation is substantially reduced and they now use ‘pure’ oxygen.
Regarding the value, the going price for various sizes of cut diamonds is pretty well established. I think cut diamonds verge on being a commodity.
But and this is where it gets interesting, does a necklace made with “Titanic Diamonds” exceed the price of an identical necklace with ordinary antwerp diamonds?
Not the one i read.
must of been a very interesting and scary job going down those vertical tubes and sealing up those sunken ships..
Why not, they’ve stolen everything else....
The historical value of that stuff is infinitely more than the scrap value of the metal. And historical value is also cash value to collectors or museums.
There’s some suspicion that he killed him too. Some of those who tried to swamp the last lifeboats were killed by blows from oars.
It showed a body but no one knows if it’s from the wreck. As the song goes, “Superior never gives up her dead” due to the cold water that keeps corpses from rising. There have been so many shipwrecks in that Lake, it could be a body from some other wreck.
Some rich idiot will pay for titanic diamonds.
Plus if they have salvage rights can't they get what they can (minus human remains)? Maybe they could find that humongous blue diamond the gal tossed off the stern. ;-)
Its not a scuba diving tourist site.
Salvage controlled by UNESCO and international agreements. I would think any salvage operation would be monitored.
Without searching I thought a telegraph back then, Marconi or otherwise, used paper tape (no thumbdrives or SD chips) which would long ago have deteriorated to nothing.
Thus I suspect ulterior motives with “whatever” they needed to say to overcome the earlier court order.
scientists Henrietta Mann and Bhavleen Kaur and researchers from the University of Sevilla in Spain were able to identify a new bacterial species collected from rusticles (a formation of rust similar to an icicle or stalactite) from the Titanic wreck.
https://www.livescience.com/9079-species-rust-eating-bacteria-destroying-titanic.html
Hard for a rust-eating bacterium to survive where there's no rust to eat.
I can't imagine it would be worth it.
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