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Earlier this week, news broke that RMS Titanic, Inc. intends to recover equipment from the wreck of the RMS Titanic, including portions of the Marconi wireless radio system. RMS Titanic, Inc. holds salvage rights to the sunken vessel which lies two-and-a-half miles under the North Atlantic Ocean southeast of Newfoundland, Canada. The RMS Titanic sank in the early hours of April 15th, 1912 with a loss of over 1,500 passengers and crew. Thought lost for decades, the remains of the ship were re-discovered in the early morning of September 1st, 1985 by a joint French-American mission.
This is not the first time objects have been recovered from the RMS Titanic. In the years after its discovery, numerous expeditions have brought up safes, suitcases, clothing, coal, cargo and fragments of the vessel itself. A section of the ship’s hull, dubbed the “Big Piece” took years to recover and is on display at an exhibit owned by RMS Titanic, Inc. in Las Vegas, Nevada.
For this operation, the company would send down robots to “surgically remove” the metal deck over the wireless radio room to recover the equipment used in the final hours of the RMS Titanic‘s life above water. This in turn poses many questions and concerns regarding not only how the work would be carried out, but also moral issues considering it is a grave site for those who perished well over a century ago.
The wireless radio itself was relatively new invention, first available between 1895 and 1901. Seen as a novel curiosity, the Marconi equipment was not owned by the White Star Line, the owner of the RMS Titanic, but by the Marconi Company, named after Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi who devised the technology. The operators, senior officer Jack Phillips and junior officer Harold Bride, were not members of the ship’s crew and thus dined and lived separately and had no commission outside of their two-room office. Primarily used by the passengers who paid to have telegrams sent from the ship using Morse Code, the Marconi Company staff did not prioritize navigational traffic over paying customer traffic — notices sent by other vessels to the RMS Titanic advising of weather and ice conditions only made their way to the bridge when time permitted.
In accounts of the disaster, Phillips and Bride were busy relaying messages to the wireless station in Cape Race, Newfoundland on the evening of April 14th, 1912, leading to a “rude” brushoff to reports of field ice by the SS Californian just west of the direction the RMS Titanic was headed. Phillips was working through a backlog of messages due to the wireless system breaking down earlier — any navigational messages would have to wait.
Following the collision with the iceberg, Captain Edward Smith entered the Marconi office and asked the two to begin requesting assistance using a longitude and latitude calculated by Fourth Officer Joseph Boxhall. Phillips and Bride began using the international standard for distress “CQD” before switching to the newer “SOS”. Because the RMS Titanic‘s wireless set was so powerful, multiple ships heard the call, including her sister ship, the RMS Olympic, almost 500 miles away. Only the RMS Carpathia heeded the call, nearly four hours distant and steaming the opposite direction.
With electricity fading (the engineering crew remained at their posts up until the ship split apart in the final minutes to ensure the decks were lit and the wireless equipment could function), Phillips and Bride abandoned their posts as water seeped into their office. Sadly, only Harold Bride survived the sinking; Jack Phillips perished and his body was not among those recovered in the following days.
The Marconi offices occupied two rooms located on the Boat Deck, the topmost on the ship just aft of the first funnel. The 2003 movie Ghosts of the Abyss saw filmmaker James Cameron return to the wreck of the RMS Titanic following his 1997 blockbuster epic Titanic to explore more of the ship and understand better its condition. Cameron used new remote submersibles to swim into the interior capturing astounding images of intricate woodwork in the first class dining saloon, as well the ruined state of the Marconi rooms. Like most of the ship, the rooms have deteriorated with much of the equipment heavily rusted and covered in silt and other debris. The first room was the main office where Jack Phillips and Harold Bride spent their time sending and receiving messages using the telegraph; the second room, named the silent room, housed the noisy spark generating equipment needed to transmit the radio signals via the wires high above the funnels. This room had thicker walls to muffle the sounds generated by the machinery within.
Recovering any equipment from these two rooms is challenging. Following the discovery in 1985, portions of the bow section have rapidly declined where the gymnasium has collapsed upon itself and the Boat Deck is falling into the A Deck promenade. Captain Smith’s bathtub, once visible in its stark white porcelain compared to the darkened metal and rust, have all but disappeared. Recovering items from inside a crumbling superstructure will be tenuous and extremely expensive. Then arises the questions: What happens with the roof piece? What happens if all the Marconi equipment is not recovered? What happens if the recovery operation damages more of the ship, or worse, the causes it into implode into the decks underneath? Where does the recovery stop? Now that this was successful, is the next attempt to raise the propellers? How about an anchor? Life boat davits? Perhaps the lone brass telemotor standing so nobly on the ruined bridge? When the ship’s bell was removed from the foremast, the crowsnest where lookouts Frederick Fleet and Reginald Lee first spotted the iceberg, was destroyed and disappeared into the open hold below. Based on the wreck’s current state and that past attempts have damaged the fragile remains, more harm than good will come of it.
The RMS Titanic is rapidly being consumed by metal eating bacteria — some metallic objects fare better than others in these dark, crushing depths. Its time on the ocean floor is short and before long, just a memory in pictures, video, and the minds of those who have dived to the site in the last 30 plus years. We also must remember that this is a graveyard for more than 1,500 men, women and children. Many who left Europe looking for a new life in the United States. Many working to support families in Southampton, England. Many returning from a business trip or taking a tour around the world. And many just trying to live their life. You could argue “This is no different than opening a tomb in Egypt.” And you’re right — but we don’t know much about those who lived 3,000 years ago, but we do know plenty about those who lived 107 years ago. The blueprints of the great vessel still exist. We have photographs of her. We know the stories of who travelled upon her. We have even recreated the dinner menu from that fateful night. When Cameron made his 1997 film, the company that wove the carpets inside the ship was able to recreate that pattern for use in the production.
Also during this week, the United Kingdom and United States of America finalized a treaty signed in December 2019 to protect what’s left of the RMS Titanic, an agreement that RMS Titanic, Inc. intends to flout as they continue their pillaging of this final resting place where one of history’s most told tragedies culminated into the morning of April 15th, 1912.
Sources: BBC, The Telegraph
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