THE TITANIC was supposed to be the largest, most luxurious passenger ship of its time and was said to be unsinkable.
The ship is now one of the most famous wreckages in the world and in April 2012 it became a Unesco cultural heritage site.
Who owns the Titanic wreck?
The ownership of the Titanic wreck is extremely complicated.
In April 2012, historian Paul Louden-Brown told TheJournal.ie: “Under Admiralty Law which the US, Britain, and other major maritime nations adhere to, a vessel lying in international waters is effectively without ownership and no one can actually stake a claim on it.”
Since the ship was voyaging from the United Kingdom to the United States, the two countries “share management of the ship’s remains”.
The wreck has been subject to Unesco regulations since its discovery, with an international agreement between the US and UK signed in 2003.
This came into force at the end of 2019.
The agreement stated that RMS Titanic should be recognized as a memorial to all of those who died.
It was also pointed out that it was an “underwater historical wreck of exceptional international importance having a·unique symbolic value”.
The agreement allows the US and UK governments to grant or deny licences to people wanting to enter the hull section of the wreck
It also lays out instructions for the removal of artifacts from the wreck.
It states all artifacts recovered from RMS Titanic should be “conserved and curated” in accordance with the agreement’s rules, and that they should be “kept together and intact as project collections”.
The UK’s Maritime Minister Nusrat Ghani said: “This momentous agreement with the United States to preserve the wreck means it will be treated with the sensitivity and respect owed to the final resting place of more than 1,500 lives.”
She added: “The UK will now work closely with other North Atlantic States to bring even more protection to the wreck of the Titanic.”
American company RMS Titanic Inc was granted salvage rights to the wreck by a United States Federal Court order in 1994.
It has recovered over 5,500 items from the wreck since 1994.
Frenchman Paul-Henri Nargeolet served as the company’s director of underwater research,
The “maritime expert” was part of more than 35 dives to the Titanic wreck site.
Sadly Nargeolet tragically died aboard OceanGate’s Titan sub after it failed to return from a mission to explore the wreckage on Sunday, June 18, 2023.
Can the Titanic be raised?
The Titanic will likely never be raised.
It split in two when it sank.
In April 2012, ABC News spoke with archaeologist James Delgado, chief of the maritime heritage office at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
He said: “Titanic is a wreck that the world cannot leave alone.
“We can’t raise her, and we can’t keep her forever as it is now.
“But we can celebrate her and let her tell her story to future generations.”
The publication also spoke with University of Rhode Island explorer Robert Ballard, who co-led the team that discovered the ship’s resting place in 1985.
Ballard said that raising the Titanic “would destroy it.”
Who was the Titanic’s original owner?
The Titanic was originally owned by J Bruce Ismay who was chairman of the White Star Line.
The British businessman was determined to produce a fleet of luxury ships that would blow his biggest competitors out of the water.
First was The Olympic which was completed in 1911 and was a complete success.
Along with Harland and Wolff, who controlled the Belfast shipbuilding company where the ship was built, the Titanic followed in 1912.
Ismay was on the Titanic when it hit the iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York.
The ship sank on April 14, 1912, claiming the lives of 1,517.
Despite the order that only women and children were allowed on the lifeboats – of which there were only enough for about half of the souls onboard – Ismay boarded the collapsible lifeboat.
He would later claim that there were no women and children around when he got on the lifeboat.
Nevertheless, Ismay was branded a coward and was largely shunned.
Where is the Titanic now?
The Titanic wreck lies at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean at approximately 12,500 feet below sea level.
It is located about 350 nautical miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
The wreckage is split into two main pieces, located approximately 2,000 feet apart.
On June 2023, Titan, a submersible sent out by OceanGate Expeditions took five people to see the iconic wreckage.
The Coast Guard began searching for the sub after it failed to resurface or make contact with the mother ship.
After days of searching, all five passengers onboard deaths were pronounced dead after they confirmed a “catastrophic implosion” had taken place.
Experts had previously cautioned this may occur due to the intense pressure at extreme depths and further warned the Titan’s hull could implode.
After five days of searching, “major pieces” of the Titan were found near the Titanic wreck.