Posted on 06/18/2004 6:24:56 PM PDT by Indy Pendance
WASHINGTON, June 18 (UPI) -- The United States has signed a treaty that designates the Titanic as an international maritime memorial.
The pact with Great Britain still needs approval by the Senate. The treaty limits visits to the Titanic, now resting on the ocean floor 225 miles from Newfoundland, and regulates the taking of artifacts from the ship.
The Titanic struck an iceberg and sank in April 1912, killing hundreds of people. Oceanographer Robert Ballard, who discovered the ship in 1978, hopes France, Canada and Russia will also sign the treaty. With the United State and Great Britain, they are the only countries capable of designing the kind of submarines used to visit the wreck.
Ballard says that souvenir-hunters have done considerable damage to the wreck.
So9
I agree. I never understood why Ballard and others are so hell bent to preserve what will be gone anyway.
What about Indian arrowheads, are they restricted too?
Ok, here I go, sticking my nose in adult affairs again.
Titanic is a national monument in itself. Taking something from Titanic would be equivalent to stealing from, say, the Washington Monument, or the Vietnam Memorial. I'm no treasure hunter, but that's what this sounds like to be: thievery. Titanic was one of the greatest tragedies ever to occur, and no one should ever take anything from it.
I'd just like to add, that picture of the skeletons on the Titanic's bow is somewhat disturbing, to say the least. Unfortuanetly, site rules do not allow me to go any further, otherwise I would give you my opinion, which probably isn't worth much, of what this entire conversation sounds like.
~Kalking Nokali
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