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 ...
It’s a wreck. A little more damage won’t hurt.
Sounds like an expensive operation.
Why should a United States court have jurisdiction of a shipwreck in international waters?
If they own the salvage rights why do they need a court to say they can salvage anything?
You wonder how a ship which sunk 110 years ago, is 12,500 below the surface and 400 miles from the closest land is subject to any court’s jurisdiction.
As a Sailor, I am totally opposed to this kind of grave robbing! Sunken Ships with a death counts are graves and it’s totally disrespectful to the victims.
The mission is to locate diamonds. The telegraph hoax is cover
It’s a grave.
It should be left alone.
I don’t think the passengers would mind.
[[[The radio transmitter could unlock some of the secrets about a missed warning message and distress calls sent from the ship, said the company]]]
Yes, get the cassette tape out of it.
[[[The mission is to locate diamonds. The telegraph hoax is cover]]]
You win the thread.
Gee, what could possibly go wrong?
It’s also a grave.
How did this judge get sole self-appointed jurisdiction over a wreck in international waters?
How old is he?
They should have saved the money they wasted on lawyers and spent it on better iceberg spotters.
I’m waiting for the media to say that Trump is involved somehow.
The short answer is that it’s insanely complicated. It’s all bound up in questions of maritime law, specifically salvage law, who owns the wreck, what rights the insurers had and who those rights passed to (the ship was British built and registered but the White Star Line was owned by an American shipping conglomerate) and then there are laws passed by various countries limiting what could be removed from the wreck site. And so on...
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