Titanic dispute over underwater heritage

[Andrew Clarkson]

The current hullabaloo over the Titanic artefacts (Report, 27 October) demonstrates the complexity, hypocrisy and ferocity of argument over the ownership, discovery and disposition of underwater cultural heritage – indeed over the definition of that term itself – which in another two years will, under the Unesco convention on the protection of the underwater heritage (a monster of international bureaucracy and interpretation), extend in some jurisdictions to the Titanic itself and all its contents, irrespective of ownership.

Much pressure has been put on successive British governments to ratify this convention, and the Titanic disputes will give the strong lobbying power of the archaeological establishment more fuel to add to the fires. Government should not give in. There has never been a full public and parliamentary debate over the issues – who owns the cultural heritage, how and by whom should it be managed, where it needs saving and preserving, how should it be funded?

At present woe betide any museum in the UK that dares to curate, and exhibit for the public, Titanic recoveries. The National Maritime Museum did some years ago and got an undeserved tirade in the press afterwards. If the convention had been in effect when the Mary Rose was discovered, it would have been covered up, reburied and left for an indefinite future. Is that what the public wants?

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk