On Friday the U.S. government filed to dismiss its legal challenge with the federal court overseeing the Titanic salvage. RMS Titanic, Inc has stated it has no expeditions planned at this time that would violate federal law governing the wreck. This ends a legal battle that began several years ago when the company wanted to retrieve the Marconi radio from inside the wreck.
Massacre of the Innocents Matteo di Giovanni (1435–1495) Public Domain
Today is the feast of the Holy Innocents (28 December) which commemorates the children killed in Bethlehem by Herod. According to the Gospel of Matthew, the magi had promised to return to Herod to inform him about the messiah. However, they were warned not to return in a dream. Herod ordered the killing of all male infants ages 2 and under. Joseph was told in a dream to take Mary and the baby Jesus to Egypt to wait until Herod was dead. This particular story is only recounted in Matthew and not in Luke leading many to doubt it occurred. However, considering how Herod ruthlessly killed those that opposed him, it would not be out of character either. Executions were common back then, so it probably was of little note in a sea of tribulation. The Feast of the Holy Innocents was observed as far back as 485 AD and most Christian denominations observe it. Although it is a somber observance, many Spanish speaking countries celebrate Día de los Inocentes (Day of the Innocents) but in a more light-hearted manner. It is similar to April Fools’ Day where harmless pranks and jokes are done. Forgiveness is offered by the victims to the prankers (in Spanish innocent often means naïve, though that can vary in different countries).
Now for some Titanic news. A few days before the Christmas holiday, it was announced that Spanish government owned Navantia has concluded a deal to acquire Harland & Wolff. While the exact terms were not disclosed yet, they include the four shipyards (Belfast, Arnish and Methil in Scotland, and Appledore in southwest England) and will save 1,000 jobs. The U.K. Royal Navy contract will continue but some terms have been renegotiated. Also the U.K. is providing financial support was well but the exact amount is undisclosed.
The recent auction of the Rostron watch by Henry Aldridge & Son broke a record with the highest amount paid at £1.56m ($1.96m). The 18-carat gold watch was presented to Captain Rostron by some of the survivors who were rescued by him in April 1912. The November auction left many wondering who the buyer was since it was done anonymously. However, it has now been disclosed that the purchaser was none other than Tiffany & Co, the luxury jeweler who originally made the watch back in 1912. “Captain Rostron’s pocket watch is an incredible expression of thanks and gratitude, and we are humbled to welcome this extraordinary treasure home to Tiffany & Co,” said Christopher Young who is the retailer’s vice president of creative visual merchandising, events, and the Tiffany Archives. The watch will go on display at LVMH Watch Week in Miami on 28 Jan-1 Feb. The watch will also go on display at special events and at Tiffany locations as well.
After many years away, Titanic: The Exhibition returns to Dallas on 14 February 2025 at Pepper Square. According to Tom Zaller, president and CEO of Imagine which holds this exhibition,: “Titanic has been a part of my life since the late 90’s when I had the incredible opportunity to dive to the wreck site, and since that firsthand experience, I’ve presented hundreds of exhibitions about the ship, her people and her stories.”
To salvage or not to salvage is still a question to be determined by RMS Titanic, Inc. Their most recent journey to the wreck didn’t include removing anything from the wreck, but they are reserving the right to do so down the road say various news reports. However, while they don’t plan to salvage the wreck in 2025, they are not closing off not doing it later. This puts them into potential conflict with the U.S. government which had argued salvage was not permitted by treaty and U.S. law. While that issue was not litigated, it will surely come back if and when the company decides to retrieve artifacts from inside the wreck.
For the moment, the company has no plans to salvage from the wreck. There are those who are planning to restart tourist dives to Titanic, but nothing has been announced yet regarding those ventures for 2025.
Diana of Versailles bronze statue. It was on the fireplace mantel in the First Class Lounge. It was last seen in 1986 but subsequent expeditions could not find it until now. Image: RMS Titanic, Inc ®
In a remarkable find during the recent expedition to Titanic was the discovery of a miniature bronze statue once thought lost since 1986. The statue- Diana of Versailles– was on the fireplace mantel in the First Class lounge on Titanic. After 1986 subsequent expeditions were unable to locate it until 2024. The discovery has brought much excitement and shows that after all the time underwater it is still in relatively good condition. Sadly, however, the iconic bow has suffered. The railing that surrounds the forecastle has collapsed, but otherwise is still intact. While some newspapers are saying that the ship is collapsing, that is not the case. It is slowly decaying as evidenced by photos of the wreck taken over the years.
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RMS Titanic pictured in Queenstown, Ireland 11 April 1912 Source:Cobh Heritage Centre, Cobh Ireland/Wikimedia Commons
The BBC is reporting that the upcoming dive by RMS Titanic Inc. will be gathering the most detailed photographic record of the wreck. They will be using state of the art technology and remotely operated vessels to go over every part of the ship they can.
NTSB drone image of Francis Scott Key Bridge and Cargo Ship Dali (26 Mar 2024) NTSB Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
When the freighter Dali struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, it sought protection from liability using an 1851 law called Shipowners’ Limitation of Liability Act of 1851. This act was famously used by the owners of Titanic to limit liability claims and became known as the Titanic Act since then. This act limits the liability by setting the value to just the value of the ship and its contents. It is from this pool that all liability payments will be drawn from. This forces all claims to go to this one court and limits the damages the company pays. The act was done to prevent American ship owners from having to pay out huge liability awards that could result in the company shuttering.
Now this limitation is quite striking when you consider air or rail disasters that result in significant legal damages often having to be paid either by court judgment or settlements. So for a ship owner, this can really keep you from being sued for astronomical sums of money. The downside, of course, is that for those who lost cargo or relatives, the money to be paid out will be quite small. Now the law does have some qualifications. If it can be proven the ship owner was negligent, then they cannot get coverage under this law. In the case of the Dali, they are using the act to limit the damages they will pay out. Not only did a bridge come down but several people died. So the City of Baltimore is challenging their claim arguing they were negligent and thus cannot be afforded protection under this act. The city is only going to get $300 million from Chubb, and the cost of building a new bridge will be a lot higher than that. A good review of the law and how it will be used in this particular case was done by two New York attorneys who wrote for their state bar association. It is worth a read to understand how this law works.
Titanic: The Artifact Exposition is coming to Boston on 17 October 2024. It will be at the Saunders Castle at Park Plaza. For information and details, go to https://titanicboston.us/ for information on dates, times, and how to purchase tickets.
Lord, Walter, A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, Holt Rinehart and Winston, New York, New York, 1955. Multiple revisions and reprints, notably Illustrated editions (1976,1977,1978 etc.)
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Titanic Wreck Bow Image: Public Domain (NOAA-http://www.gc.noaa.gov/images/gcil/ATT00561.jpg)
RMS Titanic Inc. is set to dive to Titanic later this month. Originally, they wanted to retrieve the Marconi wireless before further decay of the ship made it impossible. However, the U.S. government objected to the dive as it would be a violation of the Titanic Treaty now in place and thus the wreck a protected gravesite. RMS Titanic countered it had already sought and obtained permission from the court overseeing the salvage. The company has scaled back its plans and will no longer seek to remove anything from inside the hull. Also, they will not be using manned submersibles but remotely operated vehicles for the actual dive.
Lord, Walter, A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, Holt Rinehart and Winston, New York, New York, 1955. Multiple revisions and reprints, notably Illustrated editions (1976,1977,1978 etc.)
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The recent disaster of the Key Bridge being downed by a container ship invokes a law Titanic’s owners used to escape liability. The big difference is that this was a freight ship and not a passenger or cruise ship. While the law was amended to make changes after a small boat caught fire off California (and nearly everyone died), it does not apply here. You can certainly guess though that families that lost loved ones will be filing lawsuits. The Coast Guard and NTSB are both investigating but final report will be at least one to two years away.
The company could face a bevy of lawsuits from multiple directions, including from the bridge’s owner and anyone who sues for personal injury or emotional distress. Damages claims are likely to fall on the ship owner and not the agency that operates the bridge, since stationary objects aren’t typically at fault if a moving vessel hits them, said Michael Sturley, a maritime law expert at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Law. But an 1851 law could lower the exposure to tens of millions of dollars by capping the ship owner’s liability at how much the vessel is worth after the crash, plus any earnings it collected from carrying the freight on board, said Martin Davies, the director of Tulane University’s Maritime Law Center. The law was passed initially to prevent shipping giants from suffering steep and insurmountable losses from disasters at sea. An eight-figure sum, while still hefty, would amount to “considerably less” than the full claims total, Davies said.
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One wonders if the person who bought it is one of those movie buffs that will add to their collection or perhaps a gallery or museum which will put it up to attract visitors. Or could it be that Clive Palmer bought it to be displayed on Titanic II?
The floating piece of wood that kept Titanic’s Rose alive has been sold for $718,750 (£569,739) at auction. The listing noted the prop “has caused much debate from fans”. The sale was made during an auction of props and costumes owned by restaurant and resort chain Planet Hollywood.
It may seem odd that the Johnsville Centrifuge and Science Museum, which celebrates Bucks County’s significant history in the race to outer space, will hold a fundraising dinner April 6 featuring the first-class menu from the ill-fated Titanic on the night the ship sank. But guest speaker Fred Hagen, a Bensalem businessman, is both an aviation and underwater researcher who has visited the sunken wreck of the Titanic. He was aboard the submersible Titan on an Atlantic Ocean mission to the Titanic before the one in which it tragically exploded last June.
A Night to Remember, a special fundraising event featuring a recreation of the last meal served on the R.M.S. Titanic, will take place from 6-10 p.m. Saturday, April 6 at Spring Mill Manor, 171 Jacksonville Road, Ivyland, and will benefit the capital campaign of the Johnsville Centrifuge and Science Museum. In addition to an elegant menu recalling that served in the first class dining room aboard the ship on its final night, the event will include a live quartet playing period music and an exhibition of Titanic artifacts from the private collection of Titanic expert Craig Sopin, secretary of the Titanic International Society. Additionally, the program for the evening will include a presentation by explorer, adventurer and businessman Alfred (Fred) Hagen, who will share the story of his two journeys to the Titanic wreck aboard the submersible Titan.
This is not about actual Titanic memorabilia but rather items from Cameron’s Titanic that are being put up for auction. The once iconic restaurant started seeing a serious drop off in repeat customers causing its profits to drop considerably. The food was considered underwhelming by most reviewers. And while it had the Hollywood vibe, without repeat customers, it started losing money and shuttered many restaurants and finally had to head to bankruptcy court to sort things out. You know things are bad when the very celebrities you once banked on to give your place that Hollywood vibe were rarely seen or none at all. You can read a news article about it at https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/what-really-happened-to-planet-hollywood-and-where-you-can-still-find-them/ar-AA1b6LSb.
The debate over Jack and Rose’s potential survival atop a wooden panel during the climax of Titanic has once again taken center stage, this time as a highlight of a local auction event in Dallas hosted by Heritage Auctions. Titanic’s infamous wood panel is among the 1,600 items owned by Planet Hollywood, as reported by The Dallas Morning News.
A planned expedition to the resting place of the Titanic could get the go-ahead after plans were scaled back in the aftermath of the fatal Titan implosion last year. The US government is seeking more information on the revised plans for the expedition, which is scheduled to go ahead in May, Kent Porter, an assistant US attorney, told a federal judge in Virginia on Wednesday.
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Here we go again. He tried this in 2012 and 2018. He did get some preliminary work done (mostly designing and lining up others to help out) but the shipyard never got the order. Or if it did, it never got acted on. Both Palmer and China got into a big snit (it had to do with one of his businesses) so that delayed the project being built. And then the Covid Pandemic hit and that knocked things out. Now he is back again with this mammoth project. Believe me, a lot of people would like to see an actual floating replica of Titanic but costs have soared since then. And then he has to find a shipyard to build it (I cannot see him going back to China to do this). I have real serious doubts this will be built. A Chinese version that was going to be built for an attraction never got built either (and you would be able to stay aboard it and even experience the “Titanic Sinking Simulator” as well.
Clive Palmer, 69, unveiled his latest plans at Sydney Opera House on Wednesday, claiming his build would be ‘far superior than the original’. The mining tycoon told his audience that his company, Blue Star Line, would construct ‘the ship of love and the ultimate in style and luxury’ but admitted he does not currently have a shipyard secured to complete the construction. Palmer reassured his audience that he was confident he’d be able to find one and start construction by 2025, with the ship’s maiden voyage from Southampton to New York – replicating the ill-fated 1912 voyage of the original. The construction of the mega 56,000-tonne replica is estimated to set Palmer back by £1billion but the businessman is set on bringing the RMS Titanic back to life.
You would think that someone at OceanGate might have sent a letter, email, or just called to express their sadness that her father died aboard their craft.
The daughter of the French Titanic expert who died in the Titan submersible implosion last summer slammed the ill-fated sub’s creator for not reaching out to her family following the tragedy — but said trips to the famous shipwreck should continue. Sidonie Nargeolet, the 40-year-old daughter of the deep-sea explorer known as “Mr. Titanic,” Paul-Henri Nargeolet, says no one at OceanGate offered condolences after her father perished aboard the submersible as it approached the wreckage of the Titanic on June 18, 2023. “My anger is mostly because no one from OceanGate contacted us to say we are sorry for your loss,” Nargeolet told Pen News. “At least I think they could have contacted us to say we are sorry for your loss.”
Fiona Kilbane, from Somerset, said her great-grandmother Mary Roberts was a “determined” woman. She was the head stewardess on the Titanic when it sank in 1912. Two years’ later she was saved by the RNLI when working as a nurse on the Rohilla, which sank off the coast of Whitby in North Yorkshire. Hayley Whiting, RNLI heritage and archive manager said: “We can never really decided if Mary Roberts is really lucky or unlucky, it depends on how you want to look at her.”
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This is a nice story of a kid who saw a LEGO replica and decided to build one himself. It took him several months to complete.
A local teenager has helped the Titanic reach its destination, at least in LEGO form, after embarking on the building of a replica of the famous ship, during a journey that took months to complete.
Enormous ships have always captivated the imaginations of the general public. The RMS Titanic ocean liner and the Seawise Giant supertanker are among history’s most iconic and memorable vessels. Although at 1,504.1 feet long, the Seawise Giant is the longest ship ever constructed, eclipsing the 882-foot length of the Titanic, the two ships are still considered titans of their respective eras.
It looks like the strange knocking sounds heard by rescuers, which some believe was done by those on the Titan, was something else. They are not sure what caused the sounds, but they did happen.
The mysterious knocking sounds heard beneath the Atlantic Ocean that gave false hope that the Titan submersible and its occupants could be rescued has been revealed in a haunting new audio clip. After the underwater craft lost contact with its mothership on a journey to the Titanic wreck last summer, reports on the second day of the frantic search said that banging noises were reverberating in the depths at 30-minute intervals. An upcoming British documentary from Channel 5, “The Titan Sub Disaster: Minute by Minute,” played the audio for the public for the first time, which sounds like a person “knocking” against metal.
Nellie recalled four sailors carried her into the dining saloon where she saw her two youngest children being tended to by the doctor. Both Ruth and her mother would state one of their most vivid memories was the sight of scores of women standing at the rail looking out to sea, searching in vain for their husbands, after the last survivors were brought onto the Carpathia.
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Titanic Wreck Bow Image: Public Domain (NOAA-http://www.gc.noaa.gov/images/gcil/ATT00561.jpg)
RMS Titanic, Inc is planning another dive to Titanic this year. Not to bring anything up, but to scan the wreck and see what has happened to it.
The forthcoming expedition by RMS Titanic, Inc., in collaboration with leading imaging companies and C-Innovation, represents a significant leap forward in underwater exploration. The deployment of cutting-edge imaging technology and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) will allow for high-resolution documentation of the Titanic wreck and its expansive debris field. This endeavor is not just about capturing images; it’s about conducting a detailed analysis to understand the current state of the wreck and identify artifacts for potential future recovery.
In July 1904, the steamship SS Nemesis was transporting coal to Melbourne, Australia, when it ran into a powerful storm and vanished. All 32 people on board were considered lost, and in the weeks that followed, the bodies of crewmembers and debris from the iron-hulled ship washed ashore, but the location of the 240-foot vessel remained a mystery. Until now. The ship has finally been identified more than a century later. It was initially spotted when a company searching for sunken shipping containers came across the wreck by accident, the New South Wales Ministry of Environment and Heritage announced this weekend.
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You do have to wonder, when you see how staggeringly huge these new cruise ships are, at what point is it too big?
In the photo, both ships — identified by another post in the r/pics forum as Royal Caribbean’s 1997 Rhapsody of the Seas and the company’s considerably larger 2022-launched Wonder of the Seas (identifiable by the name on the stern) — are moored at the same dock, clearly highlighting the egregious difference in their sizes.“Just give it a few decades, at this rate they’ll end up having to install shuttles,” said one user wryly. Another put it bluntly: “This should have stopped when the Titanic sank.”
A conspiracy theory on X that suggested that the Titanic sinking was an inside job has been debunked by experts. “Rumors are circulating that they sunk the Titanic to kill the powerful men on board who opposed a central bank,” the post from Matt Wallace read. A similar rumor was circulated on social media site Telegram in 2022. But according to Snopes, the fact-checking website, these claims are baseless. While the Telegram post was from 2022, the conspiracy theory had been doing the rounds for years before that date.
The company that owns the salvage rights to the Titanic shipwreck has axed plans to retrieve more artifacts from the site days after the US Coast Guard pulled additional human remains from the doomed Titan sub. The decision was taken ‘out of respect’ for the firm’s director, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who was among the five people killed in the horror implosion earlier this year, according to court documents filed in a US District Court on Wednesday. RMS Titanic said its plans now only include imaging at the wreck site and surveys to refine ‘future artifact recovery.’
The Cox Science Center & Aquarium on Tuesday unveiled “Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition,” for a preview of the exhibit that opens Thursday. The exhibit, which has drawn crowds around the world, allows visitors to play the role of passengers or crew as they travel through the history of the R.M.S Titanic and experience the more than 100 recovered items on display.
Michael Chillit, an analyst who has conducted a search into the missing MH370 flight over the past five years, also launched his own investigation into the Titan submersible. Discussing the recent finds on X (formerly Twitter) he identified a possible point of failure that led to the implosion. He wrote: “Will now be even more interesting to know if they have ever recovered any part of the observation port? There was a lot of speculation that it was the observation port that failed, but now a damaged landing frame and a fully intact rear hemisphere suggests to me that failure occurred in the composite near where it was joined to the frame and the aft hemisphere. Time will tell. Important advance.” He later clarified that the failure was “in the area where the landing frame, the hull, and the Titanium end-cap were joined.”
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Countdown to Halloween!
Here is a tune from the old Disney classic Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Released in 1949 with as part of a movie called The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, and was narrated by Bing Crosby. The short animation included Crosby some wonderful tunes. In the 1960’s, Disney released an updated version of many of its famous tunes. One of them was the song Headless Horseman that was originally sung by Bing Crosby. Using the distinctive sound of Thurl Ravenscroft, it made the song more deeper-and scarier-than what Crosby did. His distinctive voice was used all over Disney and in their parks. And this particular rendition is worth a listen. You can listen to it on YouTube.
The USS Samuel B. Roberts (DE-413) circa in June 1944, while off Boston, Massachusetts (USA) Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons
The destroyer, USS Samuel B. Roberts was identified on Wednesday, broken into two pieces on a slope at the depth of around 6,985 meters (around 22,916 feet). To put things into perspective, the popular Titanic sank and rests at a depth of around 12,600 feet. The destroyer participated in the Battle off Samar, the final phase of the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944, where the Imperial Japanese Navy suffered its biggest loss of ships and failed to dislodge the US Forces from Leyte that they invaded earlier as part of the liberation of the Philippines. Previous records have indicated that the destroyer took down a Japanese heavy cruiser with a torpedo while damaging another. After it lost all of its ammo, the ship was critically hit by the lead battleship Yamato, which caused it to sink.
He went back up to help women and children onto the escape vessels, throwing some in because the Titanic was tilting, which made the lifeboat swing “about a yard and a half from the ship’s side”. When the order for him to board the boat as the captain never came, Charles assumed it was full and went back to his room once more, where he “had a drop of liqueur” with water at his feet.Upon remerging above deck, “all the boats had gone”, so Charles started throwing deck chairs into the water as flotation devices. All the while, the Titanic listed further to one side until Charles “heard a kind of a crash as if something had buckled”, like the “iron was parting”.
A British gold coin, two US bank notes and a block of coal retrieved decades ago from the detritus of the doomed passenger liner wrongly fell into the hands of a company that is trying to auction them off, claims RMS Titanic Inc., which owns the salvage rights to the ship and is suing to stop the auction. RMS Titanic is the “steward and custodian” of the wreck, and claims in Manhattan Supreme Court papers that one of its former execs, G. Michael Harris, took the artifacts, which were then sold off to Mobile Grocers of America Inc. when Harris later filed for bankruptcy. Harris claimed the four items had been gifted to him by another Titanic exec, George Tulloch, with whom he frequently butted heads, the group charges in court papers. RMS Titanic contends Tulloch had no right to gift the artifacts to anyone.
March 6, 1912: Titanic (right) had to be moved out of the drydock so her sister Olympic (left), which had lost a propeller, could have it replaced. Robert John Welch (1859-1936), official photographer for Harland & Wolff Public domain
RMS Titanic Inc has formally notified the federal court overseeing the salvage award that it is postponing retrieval of the Marconi wireless from Titanic. However it does plan to eventually do this at some point once logistics and income from exhibitions makes it feasible. There is no date given when they might try again.
It cited the “increasing difficulty associated with international travel and logistics, and the associated health risks to the expedition team”, as well as a lack of revenue due to visitor numbers to its vast collection of Titanic artifacts plummeting amid the pandemic. RMS Titanic Inc has also had to lay off high-profile experts in the field: Dave Gallo, PH Nargeolet, Bill Sauder and William Lange. The company, however, maintained that it’s financially secure. It said the radio expedition remains a top priority and will “take place as soon as reasonably practicable”. The postponement is likely to increase fears that the priceless artifacts hidden in the wreckage may not survive if left for too long.
On Friday the U.S. government filed to dismiss its legal challenge with the federal court overseeing the Titanic salvage. RMS Titanic, Inc has stated it has no expeditions planned at this time that would violate federal law governing the wreck. This ends a legal battle that began several years ago when the company wanted to retrieve the Marconi radio from inside the wreck.
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“Titanic Sinking Conspiracy Theory on Social Media Debunked by Experts.” Irish Star, 21 Feb. 2024, 
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