‘It’s like grave robbing’: Plan to auction off Titanic artifacts draws pushback

More than a century after the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the North Atlantic, a federal court in Virginia could decide whether a salvage company can sell artifacts recovered from the iconic wreck, a plan that has faced pushback from the U.S. government and stirred controversy among historians.

U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith in Norfolk heard arguments Thursday from RMS Titanic Inc., which holds exclusive salvage rights to the Titanic wreck, on a proposal to auction about 100 items recovered in a deep-sea expedition decades ago. The company has amassed thousands of Titanic artifacts over the years under a court-imposed agreement that it maintain the artifacts as a complete collection, and courts have blocked previous attempts to sell them off.

In court filings, RMS Titanic has outlined its plans to auction jewelry, cutlery and a bronze cherub that once adorned the grand staircase, among dozens of other objects raised from the depths. It has not disclosed the identity of the auctioneer, where the auction would take place or where it plans to display the items. RMS Titanic filed the notice under seal in March, in an effort to keep the auction confidential. Smith later ordered that the documents be unsealed.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which represents U.S. interests in the case, has strongly opposed the plan, arguing that the sale would violate the requirement that RMS Titanic keep the artifacts together. The agency also argued that the company has repeatedly committed not to sell salvaged artifacts, according to court records.

“The public interest strongly favors maintaining all artifacts … together as an intact collection that is available to posterity for public purposes. It is also indisputable that, over several decades, RMST has repeatedly committed to do just that,” according to a government filing.

But the Georgia-based company contends that the artifacts it wants to sell are not subject to the court’s jurisdiction. According to the company, the artifacts were unearthed in a 1987 expedition, a joint undertaking between RMS Titanic’s precursor and the French government, and the company obtained artifacts from that endeavor under a special arrangement. Unlike the vast majority of its collection, which was gathered in expeditions after the U.S. district court in Norfolk granted exclusive salvage rights, the “French Collection” was never bound by those conditions, the company argued in a filing.

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia, which is arguing the government’s case, declined to comment on the case Thursday.

RMS Titanic Inc. and its attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.

Christopher Abel, a maritime law professor at the William & Mary, said the company’s argument appears to be “a bit of a stretch.”

“It seems to me that the NOAA has the better version of the argument. Their case for why ‘No, everything means everything and it includes the French artifacts’ seems to have both the best logical and legal argument being made,” Abel said.

News of the sale has prompted outcry from the archaeological and scientific communities on both sides of the Atlantic, with more than a dozen scholars and academic organizations writing letters urging the court to block the sale.

“Dispersing the collection would constitute a profound and irreversible loss,” Catherine Green, president of the National Maritime Historical Society, wrote in one letter filed with the court. “The historical value of these artifacts lies not solely in the individual objects, but in their collective integrity, provenance, and interpretive context. Once separated into private ownership through commercial sale, that integrity cannot be restored.”

The French Embassy in Washington has also protested the proposed auction, writing in a diplomatic note that selling the artifacts would violate the existing arrangement.

The embassy “would like to remind RMST that its interest in the fate of the artifacts is high, and that not only would the dispersion or sale of the artifacts infringe upon the due respect to the memory of its initial owners but also violate the principle of sovereign immunity,” according to the letter that was also included in the case file.

A subject of enduring popular fascination since its sinking in 1912, the Titanic’s legendary status has only increased since the wreck was discovered in 1985. In recent years, several Titanic artifacts that were either kept by survivors or found floating in the water by rescuers have fetched eye-popping sums. In April, a life jacket worn by a passenger as she escaped the sinking ship sold at auction for $906,000. Last year, a gold pocket watch belonging to a man who perished on the ship went for $2.3 million.

In 2012, a trove of more than 5,000 artifacts salvaged from the Titanic, valued at an estimated $189 million, went up for auction after Smith, the Norfolk federal judge, ruled that the collection must be sold together.

The sale of Titanic-linked items, and RMS Titanic’s salvage operations, has long been a subject of controversy among ocean explorers, archaeologists and historic preservationists.

“Their primary goal is monetary. It’s not to preserve the history or the archaeology. It’s to make money off of it,” said Paul Johnston, a former curator of maritime history at the National Museum of American History. “It’s like grave robbing. I mean, Titanic is a grave site. Fifteen hundred people died on Titanic, and so they want to go into this grave site and break through the fabric of it and recover some of the grave goods from that wreck.”