Titanic salvage mission should be stopped say Irish maritime experts
International maritime experts from Cork have urged a judge to consider the many Irish victims of the Titanic still entombed onboard as a US salvage company seeks to enter the wreckage.
RMS Titanic Inc, based in Atlanta, Georgia, is currently seeking to penetrate the hull of the infamous shipwreck for the first time to retrieve the Marconi wireless telegraph.
However, experts argue that entering the wreckage in this way would disturb the “grave of the over 1,500 souls”, many of whom were Irish emigrants who lost their lives when the ship sank in 1912.
International Maritime Organisation consultant Michael Kingston, from Goleen in West Cork, has written to the US District Court judge currently presiding over the application, urging her to consider Ireland’s interest as a nation in the case due to its close connections with the ship.
In his letter to Judge Rebecca Beach Smith, Mr Kingston argued that there has been no consultation on the need to consider the families of those who died or the victims of the tragedy.
A large majority of those who lost their lives were Irish and British citizens, who at that time would have been fellow citizens.
“In combination, Irish and British, we are talking about the memory of 1,000 people, many of whom are entombed in the vessel,” Mr Kingston said.
As well as the Irish and British, many emigrants from other nations including Sweden and Croatia, who were embarking on new lives in the US, are also among the dead.
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“The ship is therefore not just an enormous grave site, but a monument to such wider family tragedy and hardship given that those who died were the hope for all family members back home, and that is the starting point – our moral obligation to the victims and their families. I respectfully submit that it overrides all other concerns,” said Mr Kingston.
In his letter, Mr Kingston also cites Ireland’s preservation order on the RMS Lusitania which prohibits any penetration of the wreck.
“The reason is a simple one — it is a grave,” he said.
“Hundreds of men and women went to their death in the hull of the ship.”
The community of Kinsale still remembers the “massive human cost” of the sinking, and is mindful of the many US citizens who rest in their local graveyards, the submission argues.
Mr Kingston’s letter has been co-signed by Ciarán McCarthy, a fellow Corkman and barrister, as well as a lecturer in maritime law at the National Maritime College of Ireland.
In a statement, Mr McCarthy said the Titanic disaster has maintained “an indelible stain” on Irish consciousness.
“It is a matter of intense concern that it is proposed that the hull of the wreck, essentially the grave of the over 1,500 souls, including the emigrants from Ireland who had boarded the ship in Queenstown in Cork in April 1912 in search of a new life in the United States, should be penetrated to facilitate the removal of relics,” he said.
The application is due to be considered today, February 20.
