"An underwater salvage company was granted approval this week to cut into the wreckage of the Titanic to try to recover a Marconi telegraph"
Q/ Is The Titanic a wreck or a grave?
"The radio transmitter could unlock some of the secrets about a missed warning message and distress calls sent from the ship, said the company, which obtained the salvage rights to the wreckage in the 1980s."
That's seems specious.
"“The Marconi device has significant historical, educational, scientific and cultural value as the device used to make distress calls while the Titanic was sinking,” Judge Smith wrote in her ruling."
That seems fair enough.
Q/ But how does that value compare to our reservations about, er ...
I think that as time goes by and the number of living people that have a direct connection to the tragedy diminishes, we will see an increased willingness to salvage the site. The public has a HUGE appetite for all things Titanic.
Dialysis, damned if you do...dead if you don't 21 May 2020 08:51:41am
re: Cutting into The Titanic
Stamps forums like this support publishing deceased people’s private communications all the time. When it gets pointed out that the writers would be spinning in their graves if they knew that their private correspondence were being made public the feedback has often been opinions like ‘they are dead and do not care’ or ‘they are dead and do not have rights’.
Don
Cemeteries on land are often dug up and the deceased re-interred somewhere else. In some countries, grave sites are reused after a time, with the former "occupant" removed and buried in a common or a family grave.
I’ve watched the Titanic footage of the wreck today. There is nothing left of human remains, it was all returned to dust a long time ago. It will eventually collapse upon itself, so if someone wants to spend a lot of money to retrieve some artifacts, go for it!
One hesitates to set higher standards for the rich ("to whom much is given"), but the combined wealth of the descendants of those lost on The Titanic must be enormous.
If those families did not bother to buy the salvage rights, why should anyone else care ?
Cheers,
/s/ ikeyPikey
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