A submarine hit the Titanic wreckage months ago, records say. The fallout is in court
The first humans to see the Titanic wreckage since 2005 accidentally knocked into it during a series of dives last summer, court documents filed in Virginia show.
Now the company considered the “exclusive steward” of the Titanic wants to know why it wasn’t told sooner.
EYOS Expeditions, a UK-based adventure firm, was permitted by court order to shoot footage and conduct research near the wreckage over 10 days in 2019, according to a letter filed with the court on Jan. 8.
“Due to the presence of the intense and highly unpredictable currents during the dive, accidental contact was occasionally made with the seafloor and on one occasion the wreck,” the letter states. “In our assessment these interactions were of a minor nature and not material events.”
The letter, dated Aug. 11, was first sent to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In it, expedition leader Rob McCallum detailed the events from July 25 — when his team arrived at the wreckage site — until Aug. 6 — when their two-person submarine resurfaced.
On its maiden voyage from England to New York, the Titanic hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic Ocean and sunk about 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, in April 1912, according to TIME and other historical accounts. It came to rest on the ocean floor at a depth of about 12,600 feet.
At the time of last year’s dive, EYOS reported no one had visited the site since 2005. Between strong currents, corrosion and “metal eating bacteria,” EYOS said the Atlantic ocean now threatens to consume much of wreckage.
As to the collision, McCallum told Divernet.com they didn’t notice anything until after completing one of their dives — when “a red rust stain” appeared on the side of the submarine, according to the Washington Post.
“No impact was felt at the time,” EYOS reportedly told Divernet.com, an online resource for scuba divers.
But RMS Titanic Inc., or RMST — the U.S. salvage firm with exclusive rights to the Titanic’s artifacts — said it should have been informed earlier, according to a Jan. 27 court filing.
An accident of this nature could implicate the court’s initial order signing off on the expedition, which said EYOS could collect its research “without damage to the wreck, the wreck site or any associated artifacts” and “without scraping or causing ‘damage [to] the hull or any other part of the ship,’” according to RMST.
“That EYOS and NOAA failed to inform RMST and the court for nearly five months raises a series of troubling issues, which respectfully, must be investigated RMST, in keeping with the company’s obligations and responsibilities as salvor-in-possession,” RMST said in the filing.
An RMST representative was reportedly allowed on the EYOS expedition but also failed to report the incident upon return, RMST said.
A spokesperson with NOAA told McClatchy News in a statement Wednesday that they “reminded” EYOS to “provide a copy of the report to the court and RMST.”
“NOAA takes its role in protecting the Titanic wreck and wreck site from disturbance very seriously, and has the responsibility, both by law and at the direction of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, to ensure the public interest in the Titanic is upheld,” NOAA said.
RMST has since demanded EYOS turn over footage from the dives and asked the court to compel testimony as to “the cause and effect of the collisions.”
“Once this video has been produced, RMST will review it and file with the court the appropriate segments showing EYOS’ collision with the Titanic so there will be no uncertainty about the condition of the wreck site after the EYOS expedition,” the response states.
The fallout is part of a larger legal battle involving a request by RMST to extract certain artifacts from the Titanic, which NOAA said isn’t directly linked to the EYOS expedition.
According to the NOAA, RMST wants to “to cut open the hull and extract artifacts from inside the ship, which is prohibited by existing court orders.”
“To conduct such activities, RMST would need to obtain approval from the court, which previously barred RMST from cutting into or detaching any part of the wreck,” NOAA said.
Early filings by RMST indicate the firm wants to retrieve a Marconi Wireless Telegraph — what one expert described as “the actual voice of Titanic” — from the wreckage.
From its perch in the ship’s “Silent Cabin,” the telegraph recorded the final moments of the Titanic as wireless operators described the events until the ship went down, Parks Stephenson, a deep-sea explorer who has visited the wreckage multiple times, said in the filing.
There has been extensive debate and policies set as to which artifacts “should be left untouched and that which should be recovered for public display and continued research,” Stephenson wrote.
The telegraph, he said, could plausibly be restored if they get it in time.
“In the next few years, the overhead for the Silent Cabin is expected to collapse, potentially burying forever the remains of the world’s most famous radio,” he wrote.
The court is expected to address the issue during a Feb. 20 hearing, according to NOAA.
This story was originally published January 30, 2020 at 7:31 PM.
