Intend to retrieve Titanic radio spurs debate on human remains
Folks 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, reports AP.
But the company’s intend 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 be there. Plus they say the company does not consider the chance in its dive plan.
“Fifteen hundred persons died for the reason 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., really 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 slide through a skylight or cut right 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 going for 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 how to proceed next.”
The dispute is due to a more substantial debate over how the Titanic’s victims ought to be honored, and whether an expedition ought to be permitted to enter its hull.
IN-MAY, a federal judge in Norfolk, Virginia, approved the expedition.
U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith wrote that recovering the radio “will contribute to the legacy left by the indelible lack of the Titanic, those that 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.
