SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WBZ NewsRadio) — The Titanic Historical Society in Springfield is opposing a push by a salvaging company to retrieve a radio from the site of the sunken ship.
RMS Titanic, Inc. wants to recover the Marconi wireless telegraph because it is a valuable piece of history.
Karen Kamuda, president of the Titanic Historical Society, told WBZ NewsRadio “that’s rubbish.”
Courtesy of NOAA/Institute for Exploration/University of Rhode Island (NOAA/IFE/URI)
“To go down and try and salvage things and say ‘We can learn from this,’ well you can learn by going to museums,” Kamuda said. “There was nothing on the Titanic that was unique — the furnishing, the fashions and so on. You have all these same things in museums, especially in the U.K.”
Kamuda said this same wireless set can be seen at the Antique Wireless Association in Bloomfield, N.Y.
She also said that back in the 1980s when the survivors were alive, some “were very much against it.”
The R.M.S Titanic Maritime Memorial Act was enacted in 1986. It was meant to “regulate research, exploration and appropriate salvage activities” at the site of the shipwreck, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
“Several decades later and we’re back to the same old thing again,” Kamuda said.
David Gallo, a Titanic expert and consultant to the RMS Titanic Inc., told the Boston Globe that the expedition would be “minimally invasive.”
The company is bringing the case before a federal judge.
WBZ NewsRadio's Laurie Kirby (@LaurieWBZ) reports
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