Foreign Affairs
Related: About this forumA new Titanic expedition is planned. The US is fighting it, says wreck is a grave site
Source: Associated Press
A new Titanic expedition is planned. The US is fighting it, says wreck is a grave site
BY BEN FINLEY
Updated 4:06 PM EDT, August 29, 2023
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) The U.S. government is trying to stop a planned expedition to recover items of historical interest from the sunken Titanic, citing a federal law and an international agreement that treat the shipwreck as a hallowed gravesite.
The expedition is being organized by RMS Titanic Inc., the Georgia-based firm that owns the salvage rights to the worlds most famous shipwreck. The company exhibits artifacts that have been recovered from the wreck site at the bottom of the North Atlantic, from silverware to a piece of the Titanics hull.
The governments challenge comes more than two months after the Titan submersible imploded near the sunken ocean liner, killing five people. But this legal fight has nothing to do with the June tragedy, which involved a different company and an unconventionally designed vessel.
The battle in the U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, which oversees Titanic salvage matters, hinges instead on federal law and a pact with Great Britain to treat the sunken Titanic as a memorial to the more than 1,500 people who died. The ship hit an iceberg and sank in 1912.
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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/titanic-expedition-rmst-marconi-radio-ce027ac27d8f4804304b5f33fa471dda
sheshe2
(83,898 posts)Deuxcents
(16,330 posts)anciano
(1,001 posts)Chainfire
(17,636 posts)History is discovered by exploring grave sites. Is there some unwritten time frame as to when it is ok to explore grave sites? It is fine to run Tutankhamen's corpse all over the world, we glorify the explorations of Pompeii, but not OK to pick up a coffee cup from the Titanic? Of course, most of the Titanic victims were white and wealthy, maybe that is the difference. Apparently white people's souls hang around their death sites but not so much for darker skinned peoples... Personally, I don't think that a single victim of the sinking will mind, and even if they did the dead have no rights in international waters.
Eugene
(61,945 posts)Some wrecks are more protected than others, especially those associated with large losses of life.
Archeological/indigenous remains is a battle being fought elsewhere on land.
Chainfire
(17,636 posts)living. Some of the best property in the world is reserved for the dead or dedicated to the afterlife. It is just another burden placed upon us by other people's superstitions (religions). It wouldn't bother me a bit if my parents gravesite was developed for low rent housing. They are gone, they are dead, nothing left in their coffins but grave soap. No one owes them anything, they ain't coming back, they don't care.