Opinion: Time to raise the Titanic before it rots away
Part of the famous railing on the ship’s iconic bow has dropped to the sea bed and there are fears that the entire wreck could be reduced to a pile of rust in just a few years. Last year, amidst reports of the implosion of the Titan submersible, which killed all five people on board, I wrote that the Titanic wreck should be left in peace. It’s a designated grave site, a maritime memorial, and I felt it was time to finally let the doomed vessel and the poor souls who perished with her rest in the sea.
After all, surely there’s enough Titanic footage around. It has been the focus of countless documentaries, films, TV dramas, even a musical. Many of the 5,000-plus relics salvaged from the ocean liner – from tableware, pocket watches and menus to Wallace Harley’s Stradivarius violin – have been displayed in museums, then there’s all the spin-off merchandise in the gift shops.
But now, with news that the mighty wreck is falling apart, I’m inclined to think we should try to preserve what’s left of it before it’s too late. This summer RMS Titanic Inc, a company that holds salvage rights to the wreck, completed its first trip to it in 14 years. Images of the expedition released this week show a site that continues to change more than a century after the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic on April 15, 1912.
The salvage crew spent 20 days at the wreck, capturing more than two million of the highest resolution pictures of the site ever taken. The findings “showcase a bittersweet mix of preservation and loss”, says the team. A highlight was the discovery of a bronze statue feared lost, but a significant section of railing on the bow deck has fallen off.
The company says this, and other evidence of decay, “has only strengthened our commitment to preserving Titanic’s legacy.” Now it plans to process the data so “historically significant and at-risk artefacts can be identified for safe recovery in future expeditions”. It is said that attempting to raise the Titanic would be as futile as re-arranging the deck chairs when it hit the iceberg.
Filling it with ping-pong balls, injecting it with tons of Vaseline and encasing it in a man-made iceberg are among several wacky suggestions for bringing it up. But after more than a century at the bottom of the ocean, the wreck may be too fragile for any kind of rescue process. Perhaps it’s something that should have been attempted a long time ago.
Whether it’s raised by ping-pong balls or left to turn to rust, the Titanic will be continue to fascinate us. Of all the thousands of shipwrecks across the world, it is this one that lures people to the sea. When the ship went down it was an appalling disaster, killing 1,517 people, yet it has become wildly romanticised.
It is, of course, the ‘Jack and Rose railing’ – forever immortalised in cinematic history – that was revealed this week to be decaying. While thousands of relics have been salvaged from the ocean liner, it seems the bodies have been left alone. Yet, on dry land, the contents of old cemeteries have been shifted for all kinds of reasons, not least to build housing developments and motorways.
There must come a cut-off time when human tragedy can become a day trip destination, otherwise no-one would visit Pompeii, the First World War battlefields or indeed Titanic Belfast.
If enough time has passed for Titanic the Musical to be acceptable, surely it’s time to lift the shroud of romance and mystery from this 112-year-old wreck and try and salvage what’s left of it, as a valuable piece of maritime history.