PLAN TO RETRIEVE TITANIC RADIO SPURS DEBATE ON HUMAN REMAINS

NORFOLK, VA. » People have been diving to the Titanic’s wreck for 35 years. No one has found human remains, according to the company that owns the salvage rights.

But the company’s plan to retrieve the ship’s iconic radio equipment has sparked a debate: Could the world’s most famous shipwreck still hold remains of passengers and crew who died a century ago?

Lawyers for the U. S. government have raised that question in an ongoing court battle to block the planned expedition. They cite archaeologists who say remains could still be there. And they say the company fails to consider the prospect in its dive plan.

“Fifteen hundred people died in that wreck,” said Paul Johnston, curator of maritime history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. “You can’t possibly tell me that some human remains aren’t buried deep somewhere where there are no currents.”

The company, RMS Titanic Inc., wants to exhibit the ship’s Marconi wireless telegraph machine. It broadcast the sinking ocean liner’s distress calls and helped save about 700 people in lifeboats.

Retrieving the equipment would require an unmanned submersible to slip through a skylight or cut into a heavily corroded roof on the ship’s deck. A suction dredge would remove loose silt, while manipulator arms could cut electrical cords.

RMS Titanic Inc. says human remains likely would’ve been noticed after roughly 200 dives.

“It’s not like taking a shovel to Gettysburg,” said David Gallo, an oceanographer and company adviser. “And there’s an unwritten rule that, should we see human remains, we turn off the cameras and decide what to do next.”

The dispute stems from a larger debate over how the Titanic’s victims should be honored, and whether an expedition should be allowed to enter its hull.

In May, a federal judge in Norfolk, Va., approved the expedition.

U. S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith wrote that recovering the radio “will contribute to the legacy left by the indelible loss of the Titanic, those who survived, and those who gave their lives.”

But the U. S. government filed a legal challenge in June, claiming the undertaking would violate federal law and a pact with Britain recognizing the wreck as a memorial site. U. S. attorneys argue the agreement regulates entry into the wreck to ensure its hull, artifacts and “any human remains” are undisturbed.

The case is pending before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond. The Titanic was traveling from England to New York in 1912 when it struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic. The wreck was discovered in 1985.