Titanic Artefacts

The raising of the ship remained as a tantalising prospect but gave way to the more practicable recovery of objects in a debris field the area of London. Soon, deep-sea photographs of chinaware, dolls, shoes, etc. were mesmerising us. But the removal of such objects and the granting of exclusive rights to do so to an American company made the waters around the wreck a sea of controversy. Is the site primarily a graveyard, an archaeological site, or corporate property belonging to the salvors-in-possession? RMS Titanic Inc at first restricted themselves to the debris field, but soon objects from inside the wreck were brought to the surface for display in enormously successful exhibitions.
 

The discoverer of the seabed Titanic, Robert Ballard, spoke out against what he called “plunder” of the wreck, advocating instead our “telepresence”, robotic documentary footage from inside the wreck, thereby preserving the ship’s splendour. Others see the wreck as an historic site with the objects retrieved from it as having immense social-historical value. In any case, all of the objects brought to the surface (ship’s parts, interior decoration, personal items) have been transformed by tragic circumstance and the astonishing charisma of Titanic into artefacts of strange beauty and attraction. If the bronze bell that Frederick Fleet rang in the crow’s nest to warn of the fatally looming iceberg is moving to contemplate, so too is even the huge chunk of hull, especially when one can touch it.

“Artefacts” is too dispassionate a word to describe the personal belongings that exhibition visitors can now see: necklaces and bracelets, a steward’s jacket with a still readable name-tag, vials of perfume, watches, trousers, a clarinet, wallets, identification cards and even paper money. These human effects exert a powerful and poignant fascination.