“It creates a visceral reaction for everybody.” “Issues like this are used simply to raise public support,” Hunchak said.

President Bretton Hunchak told The Associated Press the government’s position is based on emotion rather than science. People on both sides of the human-remains debate claim the issue is being played down - or up - to support an argument. The Titanic was traveling from England to New York in 1912 when it struck an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic. The case is pending before the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond. attorneys argue the agreement regulates entry into the wreck to ensure its hull, artifacts and “any human remains” are undisturbed. government filed a legal challenge in June, claiming the undertaking would violate federal law and a pact with Britain recognizing the wreck as a memorial site. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith wrote that recovering the radio “will contribute to the legacy left by the indelible loss of the Titanic, those who survived, and those who gave their lives.”īut the U.S. In May, a federal judge in Norfolk, Virginia, approved the expedition. The dispute stems from a larger debate over how the Titanic’s victims should be honored, and whether an expedition should be allowed to enter its hull. It broadcast the sinking ocean liner’s distress calls and helped save about 700 people in lifeboats. The company, RMS Titanic Inc., wants to exhibit the ship’s Marconi wireless telegraph machine. “You can’t possibly tell me that some human remains aren’t buried deep somewhere where there are no currents.” “Fifteen hundred people died in that wreck,” said Paul Johnston, curator of maritime history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. And they say the company fails to consider the prospect in its dive plan. They cite archaeologists who say remains could still be there. government have raised that question in an ongoing court battle to block the planned expedition. No one has found human remains, according to the company that owns the salvage rights.īut the company’s plan to retrieve the ship’s iconic radio equipment has sparked a debate: Could the world’s most famous shipwreck still hold remains of passengers and crew who died a century ago?įor 2023 news, see: Pilot and 4 passengers of the Titan submersible are dead, US Coast Guard says People have been diving to the Titanic’s wreck for 35 years.

Legacy dredge 2020