Soon after remaining evidence from the imploded OceanGate Titan submersible was recovered on 4 October, long-held plans to salvage contents of the Titanic’s Marconi radio-room were put on ice because of the deaths that had occurred on Titan – and one in particular.
Safety engineers from the US Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation brought to the surface components of the Titan that included the aft titanium end-cap and what were presumed to be human remains. The submersible’s central section had been constructed separately to the end-caps using carbon fibre, a primary factor in the investigation into the cause of the implosion.
The Titan had been on a tourist dive to the Titanic wreck-site on 18 June when it went missing with five people onboard, as reported on Divernet. Their deaths were confirmed on 22 June.
Following the 3.8km-deep salvage mission, conducted under an agreement with the US Navy Supervisor of Salvage & Diving and including investigators from both the US and Canadian transportation safety boards, the materials were taken for forensic analysis in the USA.
A week later, Georgia-based RMS Titanic Inc (RMST), which owns the salvage rights to the Titanic liner wreck, announced that it was stepping back from its controversial plans to continue retrieving artefacts from the site on an expedition planned for May 2024.
Citing as a reason the death of its long-time expedition-leader Paul Henry Nargeolet as a passenger on Titan, RMST’s decision was shared with the US District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, which oversees Titanic salvage matters, on 11 October.
“Out of respect for PH Nargeolet and his family, and the other four people who perished so recently at the site, and their families, the company has decided that artefact recovery would not be appropriate at this time,” stated RMST. As the company’s director of underwater research, Nargeolet had been due to lead the scheduled expedition.
RMST stated that it would now neither recover artefacts “nor conduct other activity that would physically alter or disturb the wreck”, and said it had no plans to send another manned submersible to the Titanic site until investigations into the Titan disaster were complete.
Legal challenge
RMST won its Titanic salvage rights in 1985 soon after the wreck was discovered, but had been facing a legal challenge from the US government over its intentions to retrieve contents of the Marconi radio-room, from which Titanic had transmitted Morse-coded distress signals after hitting an iceberg in 1912.
The radio-room, in a deck-house near the grand staircase, holds the ship’s wireless telegraph machine, and RMST had proposed either to send an unmanned submersible in through a skylight or to cut through the corroded roof, removing loose silt while manipulator arms severed any wiring.
US District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith had originally given RMST permission to carry out the work in May 2020, stating that the radio could soon be lost to decay and that its recovery would “contribute to the legacy left by the indelible loss of the Titanic”.
A few weeks later, however, the federal government had filed its legal challenge, and RMST had postponed its plans because of the Covid pandemic.
The opposition was based on a 2020 agreement between the USA and UK to treat the Titanic site as a memorial to the 1,500 people who had died in the sinking, and forbid further disturbance of artefacts or any human remains that might still exist.
RMST had countered that the wreck’s continuing deterioration had opened spaces in the hull big enough to allow an ROV to penetrate to recover “free-standing objects” without interfering with the structure, while other artefacts remained recoverable in the debris field.
RMST displays the artefacts it has salvaged from the Titanic over the years at exhibitions, mainly around the USA. Some 5,500 items, including sections of the hull, had been recovered on 37 submersible dives supervised by Nargeolet.
Also on Divernet: Lost Titan submersible crew named, Fall-out from the Titan disaster, Calling the dive: 8 who missed Titan’s final descent, Deep dive back in time on Titanic, Wreck Tour 161 Special: The Titanic
