RE: Oral Testimony on the RMS Titanic Guidelines
Dear Sirs and Madams,
My name is James J. Sinclair and I have been both an archaeologist and conservator for shipwreck projects worldwide (please see attached vita). I come before you today in the hopes of clarifying what I believe are some fundamental misconceptions on the part of otherwise well meaning people.
Many times legislation is initiated with little input from individuals or entities that have solid experience in the field. In this case it is the formation of the international effort to preserve the Titanic’s remains as a memorial to those who were lost upon her. This is trying to be done by formulating guidelines as to the most proper ways to go about investigating the ship and "if appropriate conduct salvage".
A significant part of the underpinning of the entire set of guidelines is the idea of in-situ preservation and while this is a wonderful idea, it has little basis in reality. Although I have been a professional in the field for over twenty years I have rarely seen an instance where in-situ preservation is preferable to some sort of recovery of materials for the purpose of conservation.
I realize that there are some notable exceptions to this, for example the Vasa, the Mary Rose, and some of the Viking Ships that have been found in remarkable states of preservation, yet no one at the time recommended that these greatest of preserved ships be left in-situ. As a result some of the most respected and stunning shipwreck exhibits in the world, now exist.
That NOAA would attempt to follow such a course is unfortunate. One need only look at the current efforts to raise and preserve part of the hull of the Monitor to see how misguided in-situ preservation is. The first of the marine sanctuaries in the United States the remains of the Monitor were effectively put off limits to everyone in the early 1970’s and that was the way it stayed. Then in the 1990’s after many years of legal battles, a private group finally won permission to visit the site, for the purposes of photographic documentation. What they found was distressing to say the least, the Monitor was falling apart.
The next year a multi-million dollar expedition to the Monitor was put together by NOAA. This featured submersibles and the latest technology. Their finding? The Monitor was falling apart.
Of course there is now a very real effort to raise a significant section of this vessel and preserve the ship for future generations. If only this had been done when it was first found nearly a generation ago there would be much more to work with today.
It does not take a scientist to view the remains of the Titanic from video documentaries, to be alarmed by the effects of the ocean in so short a time. What I saw was appalling. In just the relatively few years since the ship went down, the Titanic for all her size and unsinkability, is being quickly destroyed by the natural forces acting upon it..
Like all shipwrecks the Titanic is a time capsule of the period it came from. However, increasingly smaller amounts of that time capsule will be available if we simply let it sit for the purpose of in-situ preservation. Even if in-situ preservation were to be undertaken, the engineering costs of protecting the hull from further collapse alone would be staggering. It is just not a practical vision.
Like the Monitor, if we continue with this misguided idea of in-situ preservation, or perhaps await a public institution to resurrect it, we will be in the position in twenty years time of trying to play a futile game of catch up with this important piece of our maritime heritage. Unfortunately the same holds true for the majority of the shipwrecks in the world - they are simply following the physical law of entropy – things fall apart – especially under these types of conditions.
What I believe we actually have here is a situation that I have seen, unfortunately, too many times in the past. This is more an issue of who should control the resource rather than the preservation of the actual site. I have included for your files a small review I wrote on this very subject.
In essence I believe that a small group of people, in other words institutional archaeologists, have come to the conclusion that they and they alone are in possession of the requisite knowledge to administrate the entire resource or underwater cultural heritage. This simply is not true nor should it be. Ask yourself this….. how many archaeological works have you read in the last year ? What was one of the biggest movies of the past decade? Titanic! The popularized story of the ship with big name stars. Seen I am sure by more people than even the original Ballard documentary. Archaeology can not be just for the scientific community nor just for scientists – but for the greater good of the people and community. The Titanic deserves to be seen by as much of the public possible. Not many have the where with all to rent submersibles to visit the site.
In my opinion RMS Titanic Inc. has performed a service to the world by recovering and conserving these parts of our maritime heritage and presenting them to the public, cultural artifacts which are in iminent danger of being lost forever to the sea. Is it because this company stands to make some sort of profit from the exhibition of these items that this controversy exists? Could it be the fact that the original team missed this opportunity? If that is the case I would urge this group and all the interested parties to stand back from the issues for a moment and take the long view.
From what I have seen RMS Titanic Inc. is doing a marvelous job of retrieving the archaeological data from the wreck. At great cost in time effort and money, not to mention the risks to life and limb, they have retrieved artifacts from this great ship, they have done a proper job of conserving the items, and then displayed them for all the public to see. This has all been accomplished at no cost to any public agency. In the years that they have been recovering these items some 5,000 are said to have been retrieved. Many more remain, falling inexorably into a state of dissolution.
Any physical scientist will tell you the specifics of what is occuring on the Titanic - the prognosis is not good. Instead of a multi-national effort to end or severely curtail the recoveries on the Titanic and other shipwrecks, there should instead be a multi-national effort to find ways to work with the private sector and its resources to rescue shipwrecks and the information that they yield. Archaeologists and historians should rightfully only be interested in the information the artifacts impart not the ultimate disposition of each piece. Ultimately there is no such thing as an intact collection. As is mentioned in the guidelines, current curation practices sometimes dictate that items be de-ascessioned sold or disposed of even deposited as waste.
In-situ preservation is not realistic in the majority of shipwreck sites, if we are interested in expanding our knowledge of our cultural heritages. Neither is it correct to assume that governments or archaeologists are the only people who can manage the resource in question. They are certainly not the best folks to disseminate the information to the public at large. Again, when was the last time you read an archeology book?
When we think back on great recoveries of shipwrecks, of what do we think? Is it about some project in shipwreck preservation that was undertaken by our Department of State? Was it NOAA, (lets now save the Monitor!),
No - usually we think of individuals, Bob Ballard, Mel Fisher and Tommy Thompson to name a few. Although the situations were different for all of these, we get the feeling that it was because of these individuals that these wrecks were re-located. One dedicated individual with a dream. Does anyone know of a bureaucratic institution with a dream? I think not.
I would urge all concerned with the preservation of shipwrecks – Titanic included - to re-assess the idea of in-situ preservation. It simply does not work. Every photo and video from the Titanic as it lives now, screams the fact that it does not work.
Thank you for allowing me the chance to have some input.
James J. Sinclair, Archaeologist
Board of Directors, IMAC Digest