Deterioration of the TITANIC wreck

Saw this report on TV a while back.  Scientists figured that within 50 yrs the only thing left will be the engines, props, prop shafts and anchors.

                                                                                             Pat.

Ah well... ashes to ashes and dust to dust and all that...

I suppose I'm torn between leaving it as is as a "grave site Memorial"  and wanting to see a bit more recovered as a standard memorial for others to see first hand.  BUT having said that, I belieave there is NO ONE left alive anymore who had anything to do with either the bulding, or sailing on her. SO I would think it's a coin toss.

Jake

I share your feeling of being torn about recovering artifacts. In one way it feels like grave robbing. On the other I'd hate history students in 50 years to identify Titanic as Leonardo DiCaprios first hit. Hasn't there been some question of recovering artifacts for profit? or is it just my oldtimers disease acting up again? Jake makes a good point about no one left alive. Now I think that it is becoming similar to recovering Civil War items, like the Monitor. Is there a Titanic museum or some sort of memorial that could display recovered items?

Thank Crackers for another good item.

I too feel somewhat uneasy about reclaiming artifacts from Titanic. Clearly in my mind, their only value is in illustrating in a tangible way a great human tragedy rather than fulfilling any academic, historical purpose. Something about this makes me feel uncomfortable. Perhaps it is because there is so little academic justification for doing it.

Indeed, as poignant as a personal artifact from Titanic is, we learn relatively little of significance about the period as a whole, or the technology, or the people.  Her design is well documented, all her drawings survive, photos are abundant, and examples of the majority of her decorative or technological features are preserved on dry land somewhere.  Similarly, there must be thousands of examples of the everyday personal possessions such as those that were lost along with those lives in 1912, and all preserved on dry land. We don't need to recover a titanic suitcase because we want to investigate what personal possessions peopple owned in 1912, but because we want to connect personally to the tragedy. With older wrecks, such as Mary Rose, the recovery of artifacts has given us a tremendous insight in to everyday life where other records are completely lacking. 

Tricky condundrum, but I'd be inclined to say, let it alone.

Big Jake

I suppose I'm torn between leaving it as is as a "grave site Memorial"  and wanting to see a bit more recovered as a standard memorial for others to see first hand.  BUT having said that, I belieave there is NO ONE left alive anymore who had anything to do with either the bulding, or sailing on her. SO I would think it's a coin toss.

Jake

The thing that concerns me with that line of thinking - the 'no one left alive anymore' - is that would seem to open up ANY site to 'exploration' if all the principles have passed.  So, for example, would we be justified in cutting into the USS Arizona's hull once all the Pearl Harbor vets have passed.

I kind of look at these types of sites in the same light that I look at backcountry hiking: 'We should take only pictures...and leave only footprints' (which doesn't really apply here...).

I think that, combined with the artifacts that have already been recovered, a detailed photo 'essay' of the ship and her decay would be the best memorial/exhibition.

Well, and no one seems to be inclined to go find RMS Britannic, her location is middling well known.

But, but... I was going to go to the site to find this! Maybe if the wreck rusts away enough, this stuff will be easier to find!

CapnMac82

Well, and no one seems to be inclined to go find RMS Britannic, her location is middling well known.

Indeed, and Britannic is arguably much better preserved than Titanic is, not to mention how easily accesible the wreck is. Relatively few people have conducted time researching her because she is just another twentieth century WWI wreck. I believe a few years ago (around 2006?) a group penetrated the wreck to study the disposition of her watertight doors and double hull in order to ascertain how she sank, but when the research was aired on tv, the program was billed as 'Why did Titanic's sister, modified after the sinking of that famous liner, still sink in under an hour?' , not a headline of  'a huge hospital ship with 1000 souls onboard sank in under an hour with the loss of only 30 lives: huge disaster averted!)

The variance between post-sinking the histories of these vessels must make us think about our own motivations for wanting to raise artifacts from Titanic. Certainly, those who want to raise artifacts from Titanic aren'y dispassionate historians or esle they'd be just as keen to do the same with Britannic, or any number of the inumerable wrecks sitting on the floor of our oceans.

Will

Bbrown,

My comment as compared to the Arizona really does not make it, as the Arizona is a war memorial and should never be cut up, besides they did that already to remove  the above water stuff anyway,and is accessible to the general public,  I suppose there is no real good reason for bringing up pieces of a rusted wreck for the public to see (they have pieces already (branson Missouri Titianic exhibut/musuem)

I was just stating MHO

"The thing that concerns me with that line of thinking - the 'no one left alive anymore' - is that would seem to open up ANY site to 'exploration' if all the principles have passed.  So, for example, would we be justified in cutting into the USS Arizona's hull once all the Pearl Harbor vets have passed.

I feel VERY strongly that the Titanic should be treated the same as the Arizona, the Bismark or any other sunken military vessel.  They are grave sites for hundreds of people and should be treated as such.  They should not be desecrated in the name of history or research.  It is no different than going to a land cemetery and digging up corpses for "research".

Darwin, O.F. 

we do it all the time with ships sunk for hundreds if not thousands of years, the vassa, mary rose & the css hunley are examples.

ddp59

we do it all the time with ships sunk for hundreds if not thousands of years, the vassa, mary rose & the css hunley are examples.

And in studying these wrecks we have learnt something significant about maritime history, technology, even everyday human life. What do we stand to learn about the first decades of the 20th century from studying Titanic's (or Britannic's) wreck?

Will

how they were built & why they sank.

i don't know about other countries but in the usa    many graveyards have been dug up to use the land for housing developments   so...... if they can do that for a stupid reason as that  why not for a good reason such as preserving the ship and history  i say go for it

ddp59

how they were built & why they sank.

We know how the Titanic was built and recovering a set of china teacups isn't going to tell us much about how she sank...

...rust happens...

when they retrieved a piece of hull plate from the wreck, the steel was found to made bad which they didn't know before. had to high of a sulphur content or something like that.

I know all about moving graveyards for buildings, they moved a large one to make way for the Superdome in the early '70's.

Is it strictly the wrecks of the oceans that are sacrosanct, or should this reverence apply to all vessels in which humans are killed?

If applied more broadly, there would be a heap of twisted metal littering the earth (along our roads and on our mountain sides). Or does the judgment stem from the limitations of accessibility? I'd like to think about that for a while before coming to a conclusion.

The collection and preservation of even the ephemera of significant (destructive) events can have beneficial results in the future. Who are we to define what is important to future interests?

Just a thought (or two).

HI! I want to chime in here. The fact is, the TITANIC sank because she was way ahead of her time in the type of metals used in her.What they did not know ,as so often happens in human endeavors,is that the metal ,including the rivets were extremely brittle below a certain temp.They did NOT know that then.All aside the ship sank because of the human nature concerning GREED ,pure and simple.The Captain wanted his retirement voyage to be a record breaker.The line wanted to be able to claim the blue riband for the fastest crossing and on and on.The sheer hubris of humanity brings events upon us that the little guys cannot defend against.Were there any stories written in the papers of the time about poorer "GENTLEMEN" who gave their life jackets to women even mentioned,Of course not!! Does the history of that sad event even begin to relate to the poor steerage passengers who left dependants behind!  Where,s the concern for their widows and orphans. Well,there were some very important "RICH"people on board that counted for more.How so? How many of those fine folks in steerege never hurt a soul , helped where ever they could. Who wrote about them years later?? No one,that,s who! I don,t mean this as a diatribe ,BUT,lets not worry what the ship will be in 25 to 50 years from now.That,s life .Now ,have we learned anything in metallurgy ?You bet! Have we learned better ways to protect pessengers and crews, certainly. But again ,hubris wins out. I wouldn,t trust my worst enemies dogs safety on those floating hotels they call cruise ships. I,ve seen better ships than them ,perfectly good ,cut up for scrap.  So they could build another floating deathtrap! I do apologise.I get so aggravated when the TITANIC comes up. How many of you know the amount of steerage passengers that had to wait for the other ships that were short on coal so the TITANIC could sail?? How many were litteraly homeless,granted for a short time ,but inconvenienced all the same. Why, so the great NEW "unsinkable TITANIC could make her record breaking voyage?Record breaking indeed.Held the record ,and I think still does for the greatest amount of passengers killed in a sinking. FINI....tankerbuilder

tankbuilder,

You raise a number of important and valid points. The lessons, and there are scores of them, to be derived from the event have been characteristically ignored and the errors repeated in their own fashion since then. But, the distribution of social favor and merit was as inequitable on land as it was on the ship in that age. It was, I think, a reflection of how society ordered itself then. And it felt justified in doing so, right or wrong.

We, too, have our prejudices and assumptions and our social definitions of merit which perplex me to this day. Income now goes to athletes, media stars and, as always, those who are best at stealing legally. The treatment accorded them is far different from that experienced by us commoners. You get, as always has been, all the justice you can afford. Perhaps, some day, this will be considered atrocious. But not now.

I'm a bit skeptical about the metallurgical claims that are made for ships coming to grief many decades ago. I have heard the hypothesis, but not seen the analysis. I'd really like to see a modeling of the stresses encountered vs. the construction techniques employed. I believe that I saw holes in the plate (in some of the dive videos) where there should have been rivets. I wonder if welds would have given way so readily. Pure speculation on my part, but I'm too old to jump to conclusions. I need to walk.

I would like, if I had the "one wish", for someone to drain the oceans and let me wander about until my curiosity about its secrets were visually revealed.

I remember blue water over the bridge (I mean the flying bridge) on the 4,100 ton DEG I lived on for 6 years during some gawd-awful storms in the North Atlantic and thinking what it might look like when we got "down there" if that bow didn't come plowing back up again. (Well, mainly what it might feel like to drown in icy water.)

The fate of the passengers of the Titannic is more than a theory to me. I can imagine it, but I didn't experience it, so I know I can't comment and feel clean about it.

But, I know all the words to the Navy Hymn 'cause I hummed it quite a bit back then.

It's a chunk of metal at the bottom of the ocean. We pillage and excavate ancient burial sites every day. So what makes the Titanic so special other than its place in history and the circumstances of her loss. Nothing. Get as much as you can from it and move on when it's gone. 

The ship hit an iceberg and sank...why do people make simple and obvious things so complicated?   I think it is because we refuse to believe tragic events can be explained so simply...sorta like the JFK assasination---we can't fathom that one man took him...so we invent conspiracies...

CapnMac82

Well, and no one seems to be inclined to go find RMS Britannic, her location is middling well known.

I assume you mean the HMHS Britannic, which sank in 1916. The RMS Britannic (1929) was a different Liner from White Star, that was finally cut up for scrap in 1960.

Kastastrophy, HMHS Britannic (sistership of titanic) was supposed to be RMS Britannic till renamed to HMHS Britannic  in nov 1915. the britannic you are referring to is the 3rd britannic built after the war.