NORFOLK, Va. — The company that owns the salvage rights to the Titanic said Thursday that it hasn’t settled on plans to retrieve more artifacts from the shipwreck, potentially cooling down a legal battle with the U.S. government.
The Georgia-based company, RMS Titanic Inc., wrote in a court filing that it won’t visit the wreck in 2025 and is still considering the legal and financial implications of future salvage operations. The court-recognized steward of Titanic artifacts since 1994, RMST has recovered thousands of items from silverware to a piece of the ship’s hull, which millions of people have seen through exhibits.
The U.S. has been warning RMST for years that entering the Titanic’s severed hull — or disturbing the wreck — would violate a 2017 federal law and a corresponding agreement with Great Britain. Both regard the site as a memorial to the more than 1,500 people who died when the ocean liner struck a North Atlantic iceberg in 1912.
The firm’s last salvage expedition was in 2010, before the law and agreement took effect. But in recent years, RMST has submitted plans before a federal admiralty court in Virginia to recover more artifacts, drawing the ire of the U.S. government.
RMST has previously challenged the constitutionality of U.S. efforts to “infringe” on its salvage rights to a shipwreck in international waters. And it has argued that only the admiralty court has jurisdiction over the matter.
The recent legal disputes between RMST and the U.S. government have played out as the world’s most famous shipwreck rapidly deteriorates on the ocean floor — and as tragedy unfolded. Last year’s implosion of the Titan submersible claimed five lives, including RMST’s director of underwater research, Paul-Henri Nargeolet,
RMST’s stated its position regarding future expeditions on Thursday at the admiralty court’s direction. A federal judge has been considering a legal challenge by the U.S. to restrict RMST’s activities at the site.
The U.S. filed its challenge last year when RMST initially planned to take images inside the sunken ship’s hull and pluck items from the surrounding debris field. RMST also said it would possibly recover freestanding objects from the room where the Titanic broadcast its distress calls.
The company ultimately scaled back its dive plans, stating that it would only take external images. That was because of Nargeolet’s death in the Titan implosion. The experimental craft was operated by a separate company, OceanGate, to which Nargeolet was lending his expertise. Nargeolet was supposed to lead the RMST expedition.
After RMST revised its dive plans, the U.S. stopped trying to block that particular expedition, which occurred over the summer. But the U.S. told the court it wanted to leave the door open to challenging subsequent expeditions.
Specifically, the government said it may still pursue its motion to intervene as a party in RMST’s salvage case. The U.S. asked the court to delay ruling on the motion until the company announced future salvage plans.
The firm said Thursday that it needs more time to make a decision on any upcoming operations. RMST also said it opposes the U.S.’s motion to intervene.
U. S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith presides over Titanic salvage matters at the federal court in Norfolk, Virginia. She said during a March hearing that the U.S.’s case against RMST would raise serious legal questions.
Congress is allowed to modify maritime law, Smith said in reference to regulating entry into the Titanic. But the judge questioned whether Congress can strip courts of their own admiralty jurisdiction over a shipwreck, something that has centuries of legal precedent.
In 2020, Smithgave RMST permission to retrieve and exhibit the radio that had broadcast the Titanic’s distress calls. The U.S. government challenged the expedition in court.
The legal battle never played out. RMST indefinitely delayed those plans because of the coronavirus pandemic.