![]() ![]() There have been accusations of grave-robbing and little wonder. And if the firm succeeds in recovering the wireless, it will likely be displayed in the Luxor casino in Las Vegas – just another opportunity for gawping tourists to take selfies. ![]() It failed when the rope snapped and the piece plunged back to the sea bed. 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. Simply, we have forgotten that 4,000m below the Atlantic lies a grave site, not a cash cow. His romanticised version has a lot to answer for in turning our heads away from the true tragedy of it all – and I say that as someone who had a Leonardo di Caprio poster on her bedroom wall. Even those who seek to protect it are not immune: 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. 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.Įver since the wreck was found in 1985, it has become a vehicle for profit. It would be criminal if the Titanic’s story was allowed to slip beneath the waves for good. “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. The company – which has faced financial difficulties – argues that the wireless would be a teaching tool. 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. Now, they insist that the secrets hidden inside the Titanic itself must be uncovered before they are lost in the crumbling wreck forever. For three decades, they’ve had a monopoly on raising thousands of items from the ship’s debris field – hats, handbags and jewellery. The would-be salvagers are RMS Titanic Inc, a US company backed by private equity. 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. 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. 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. It was among the real-life “mysteries” in a book bought by my mother. Children can be morbid, can’t they? I speak for myself, of course, and my youthful fascination with the Titanic. ![]()
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