British maritime museum to host Titanic display

British maritime museum to host Titanic display

By Caroline Brothers [10pt ML]

LONDON (Reuter): Britain's National Maritime Museum, denying charges of grave-digging, said last month it would host a controversial show of artifacts retrieved from the sunken hulk of the Titanic.

Some 1,513 passengers of the "unsinkable" Royal Mail Ship Titanic drowned when the British ocean liner struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York on April 15, 1912.

Nearly 3,000 objects, including children's marbles, cut glass vases, paper traveler's cheques, dictionaries, gold chains, shaving brushes, keys, dinner plates and pipes have been brought to the surface since salvage work began in 1987.

"The story of the Titanic is one of history's most famous human dramas which has captured the imagination of millions of people worldwide," said Admiral Lord Lewin, chairman of the National Maritime Museum's trustees.

The first full exhibition of Titanic objects will open at the museum at Greenwich, on the River Thames east of London, on October 4.

The museum's decision to kick off the worldwide show is the result of an agonizing ethical debate and has drawn criticism from survivors and maritime archaeologists.

"I object to the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel," said survivor Eva Hart, 89, who was seven years old when she lost her father in the world's most sensational maritime disaster. "I do not think one should go down and rob people's graves."

"If I stopped to think about it I'd feel very unhappy about the whole thing," said another survivor, 82-year-old Millvena Dean, nine months old when her father died in the catastrophe.

Too modern

Historians argue that the objects are too modern to be archaeologically significant, and accuse RMS Titanic Inc., a New York-based company that has become the wreck's legal salvor, of treasure-hunting.

Guarantees are still needed to assure survivors the objects will not be sold off once the show is over.

The wreck of the Titanic was discovered in 1985 by Robert Ballard of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The hull was split in two and lying nearly three miles (five kilometers) deep in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

RMS Titanic Inc., working with French marine researchers IFREMER, has spent $12 million bringing 2,600 objects to the surface during 47 deep sea dives since 1987.

Karen Kamuda of the Titanic Historical Society, a U.S. body that has forged links between survivors and preserved the history of the wreck for 31 years, condemned the National Maritime Museum's decision.

"Basically it's exploitative," she said. "They've given up their principles for money."

But the museum, lending its prestige to the show that will travel the world for the next five years, says the exhibition will constitute a more lasting memorial than the rusting hulk whose contents are slowly disintegrating on the ocean floor.

"We recognize the sensitivities. But we also recognize the objects are going to disappear. (This way) they will be a permanent memorial to the victims, especially if the objects are kept together," said the museum's director Richard Ormond.

"We feel it isn't really a grave site, it's a wreck site," he added. "It's such a major, universal thing and one feels in this case that 1912 is very long ago."