Firm has no plans to salvage more Titanic artifacts, snuffing out legal fight
NORFOLK, Va. — The US government has been abolished his lawsuit against the company that owns the salvage rights to the Titanic, noting that the company no longer has expedition plans to the shipwreck that could violate federal law.
The scuttling of the government’s latest legal battle does not necessarily mean the end of RMS Titanic Inc.’s efforts. to penetrate the rapidly deteriorating ocean liner or retrieve more historical artifacts. The company said last month that it was still considering the implications of future expeditions.
But the US on Friday withdrew its motion to intervene before a federal admiralty court in Virginia, which is overseeing the salvage cases of the world’s most famous shipwreck. The withdrawal concluded the second of two legal battles in five years that the US has waged against RMS Titanic Inc, the company that recovered and displayed the ship’s artifacts.
The US filed its last legal challenge in 2023 when RMST planned to take images inside the ship’s hull and pluck objects from the surrounding debris field. RMST also said it may recover detached objects from the ocean liner’s transmitting chamber are emergency calls.
The US has argued that enter the hull — or disturbing the wreckage — would violate a 2017 federal law and a corresponding agreement with Britain. Both consider the site a sacred memorial to the more than 1,500 people who died when the ship struck an iceberg in 1912.
RMST eventually has scaled back his diving plansstating that only external images are needed. The change followed the 2023 implosion of the Titan submarinewhich resulted in the death of RMST’s director of underwater research Paul-Henri Nargeolet and four others on board.
The experimental Titan craft was piloted by a separate companyOceanGate, to which Nargeolet lent his expertise. He would lead the RMST expedition.
After RMST revised its dive plans, the US stopped blocking that particular expedition. which provided detailed images of the wreck in September. But the government told the federal court in Norfolk last year that it wanted to leave the door open to challenging subsequent expeditions.
However, RMST told the court in December that it will not visit the wreck until 2025 and has not yet made plans for future expeditions. The company said it will “continue to diligently consider the strategic, legal and financial implications of conducting future recovery operations at the site.”
In response, the US withdrew its motion to intervene.
“Should future circumstances warrant it, the United States will file a new motion to intervene based on the then existing facts,” the government wrote in a filing on Friday.
RMST has been the court-approved steward of Titanic artifacts since it acquired salvage rights to the ship in 1994. The company has recovered and preserved thousands of objects, from silverware to a piece of a ship’s hull, which millions of people have seen through exhibitions. .
The company’s last expedition to recover artifacts was in 2010, before the federal law and international agreement went into effect.
The first federal enforcement occurred in 2020, when RMST wanted to collect and exhibit the radio that broadcast the Titanic’s distress calls.
U.S. District Judge Rebecca Strand Smithwho is in charge of the Titanic’s salvage operations, authorized RMST. But the US government quickly questioned the plan. The legal battle never ended because RMST delayed the expedition indefinitely in the wake of the corona pandemic.
Smith During a hearing in March, he noted that time for expeditions within the Titanic is running out. The ship is deteriorating rapidly on the North Atlantic seabed.