Why can’t the Titanic be left to rest in peace?
SIR – You report (July 26) that the families of passengers and crew members who died on the Titanic have backed plans to salvage the ship’s Marconi wireless set.
I am puzzled. How old does a tomb (in this case a wreck) have to be before desecration becomes archaeology? Wrecks from the Second World War are generally seen as graves not to be disturbed. However, tombs from ancient Egypt are happily opened and skeletons from early Britain unearthed.
When does the change in sentiment occur?
Andrew Pearse
Guilsborough, Northamptonshire
SIR – I began my working life in 1962, aged 17, as a marine radio officer with the Marconi Company, and I left the sea in 1967, soon after turning 23. This was not unusual.
Radio officers did not exist before 1900 and had vanished by 2000. Ships generally only carried one, and they were mostly employed by radio companies rather than ship owners. As such, their work could be lonely, with no real career structure, and was known as a “young man’s game”. Jack Phillips and Harold Bride of the Titanic were 25 and 22, Harold Cottam of the Carpathia was 21 (and a friend of Bride), and Cyril Furmstone Evans of the Californian was 20.
Radio officers were also often physically separated from their shipmates, housed with their equipment on the bridge level but at a “safe” distance from the suspicious old sea-dogs. The Titanic radioroom was in a deckhouse at the after end of the boat deck – a fairly typical arrangement.
I sincerely hope that the recovery of the Titanic’s radio equipment goes ahead. For me, the preservation of this material is vital – and, I think, of interest to all those who occasionally feel the sea in their veins, as well as seamen and historians. It would also be a fitting memorial to the many in my obscure little profession who lost their lives doing their duty.
AM Bird
Tavistock, Devon