MP accuses Titanic salvage team of ‘piracy’
An audacious attempt to seize treasures hidden inside RMS Titanic for the first time prompted a huge row last night amid accusations of modern day piracy. Politicians lined up yesterday to accuse the US salvage firm behind the plans of attempting to “pilfer and pillage” the wreck to make money. The UK Government has said it would lobby the US and other Atlantic nations to “ensure the wreck of the Titanic is treated with the sensitivity it deserves”.
AN AUDACIOUS plan to seize treasures hidden inside RMS Titanic sparked a furious row yesterday amid accusations of modern-day piracy.
Politicians accused a US salvage firm of attempting to “pilfer and pillage” the sunken wreck to make money, and the Government has said it would lobby the US and other Atlantic nations to “ensure the wreck of the Titanic is treated with the sensitivity it deserves”.
However, descendants of the passengers and crew who died in the tragedy gave the project their blessing, and said it was time to retrieve Titanic’s artefacts before they were lost forever.
The firm RMS Titanic Inc (RMST) had said it aims to cut open the wreck and remove its Marconi wireless system, described as the “voice of Titanic”.
In legal papers seen by The Daily Telegraph, it said it would “surgically” remove a deckhouse roof, and use underwater robots to recover the radio which broadcast Titanic’s final distress signals as it sank on April 15 1912.
The firm was awarded sole salvage rights to the Titanic nearly 30 years ago, and remains the only entity permitted to recover items from the wreck site. It has vowed to “ignore” a new treaty between the US and UK designed to protect the wreck from scavengers.
But Gavin Robinson, DUP MP for Belfast East, where the Harland and Woolf shipyard built the ship, likened the expedition to “piracy” and urged the Government to intervene.
“It’s important we get behind the Government, and make sure that there are robust efforts in place that would frustrate the efforts of those who want to profiteer,” he said. “The idea that a vested connection would warrant pilfering and pillaging what is essentially a tomb, I think it’s entirely misguided.
“If the detail of this agreement is not sufficiently robust to frustrate their efforts, that’s where we need to place our attention now.” Once recovered, the wireless and other artefacts would be put on display at the Luxor casino in Las Vegas, then taken on tour around the world.
The company has recovered thousands of items from the vast debris field surrounding the Titanic since it was discovered in 1985, but the Marconi would be the first artefact taken from inside the wreck itself. RMST has insisted that it wants to preserve the wreck’s treasures for future generations, and has sought approval for the project from relatives of the dead.
Vanessa Beecham, 59, whose greatuncle, Edward Biggs, died in the sinking aged 21, told The Daily Telegraph: “I don’t see this as a problem.
“They raised the Mary Rose in the Eighties. The people who died, including my great-uncle, are long gone...if the wireless can be retrieved in a sensitive way, then they have my blessing.”
In court documents filed at the US District Court in Virginia yesterday, RMST said: “Without the recovery and conservation of these artefacts, the ability to experience additional items would be limited to less than 150 people, an elite group who have the privilege and means to travel to the wreck site. The company places the highest value of ensuring that any recovery is completed in a respectful and judicious manner taking into account the sensitivities of such actions.”
Children can be morbid, can’t they? I speak for myself, of course, and my youthful fascination with the Titanic.
It was among the reallife “mysteries” in a book bought by my mother. The Loch Ness Monster and Turin Shroud were gripping, sure – but it was the mystery of how this “unsinkable” liner had sunk that hooked me. I devoured accounts of that awful night on April 15, 1912, when 1,500 people died, and lay in bed trying to imagine the terror of the final moments, before they went to their watery graves.
So it was with a heavy heart that I read about a plan to disturb that watery grave and extract the ship’s Marconi wireless system, on which its final distress signals were sent. The would-be salvagers are RMS Titanic Inc, a US company backed by private equity. For three decades, they’ve had a monopoly on raising thousands of items from the ship’s debris field – hats, handbags and jewellery.
Now, they insist that the secrets hidden inside the Titanic itself must be uncovered before they are lost in the crumbling wreck forever. Or was it that the secrets inside the ship must be uncovered from the crumbling wreck before RMS Titanic Inc is lost forever? I forget…
The company – which has faced financial difficulties – argues that the wireless would be a teaching tool. “Surely we owe it to the future to protect and preserve these items,” said president Bretton Hunchak, who seems happy to flout a new UK-US treaty designed to protect the wreck from scavengers.
He has a point. It would be criminal if the Titanic’s story was allowed to slip beneath the waves for good. But it won’t. You only have to visit the magnificent Titanic Experience in Belfast, which overlooks the shipyard where she was built, to understand that it’s far from lost – and can be told without disturbing the dead.
Ever since the wreck was found in 1985, it has become a vehicle for profit. Even those who seek to protect it are not immune: film director James Cameron has opposed any tampering with the disintegrating ship – but given that his Hollywoodisation of the story grossed over
$2 billion, he can well afford to be magnanimous. His romanticised version has a lot to answer for in turning our heads away from the true tragedy – and I say that as someone who once had a Leonardo Dicaprio poster on her bedroom wall.
Simply, we have forgotten that two and a half miles below the Atlantic lies a grave site, not a cash cow. Don’t believe me? In 1996, RMS Titanic Inc offered people the chance to watch a piece of the wreck being recovered – for $5,000 a head. It failed when the rope snapped and the piece plunged back to the sea bed. And if the firm succeeds in recovering the wireless, it will probably be displayed in the Luxor casino in
Las Vegas – just another opportunity for gawping tourists to take selfies.
There have been accusations of graverobbing, and little wonder. Titanic survivors and their families have long made a small but important distinction between artefacts recovered from the debris bed and inside the wreck itself. “When I think of all the people down there, one of them my father, I want them to rest in peace,” said Millvina Dean, who died in 2009 aged 97.
She was the last survivor. Now it is up to the rest of us to ensure those 1,500 lost souls are allowed to do just that.