A U.S. court in Virginia that oversees the exclusive salvage rights to the infamous remains of the Titanic has moved to unseal a secret filing by the historic ship’s salvage rights-holder, which hopes to auction off 100 artifacts recovered from the wreck. The disclosure has appalled archaeologists and historical preservationists worldwide, some of whom have written letters petitioning Judge Rebecca Beach Smith to deny the proposed sales. In what The Times of London called “an Indiana Jones touch,” marine archeologist Jeneva Wright, chair of the Advisory Council on Underwater Archaeology, urged Judge Smith to “place the Titanic collections under the curation of an accredited museum.” Cathy Green, president of the nonprofit National Maritime Historical Society, also pleaded with the court to stop the auction: “The Titanic occupies a singular place in global maritime history,” Green wrote in a letter to the court. “The wreck site is both an internationally significant archaeological resource and the final resting place of more than 1,500 individuals.”
This isn’t the first time R.M.S. Titanic Inc., which won the “salvor-in-possession” rights to the ship in 1994, has tried to sell artifacts from one of history’s most infamous shipwrecks. The last time was in 2016, when it was teetering on the verge of financial ruin. Its parent company Premier Exhibitions—creators of the controversial human anatomy exhibit “Bodies,” which became infamous for its display of dubiously sourced actual human remains—had just filed for bankruptcy.
