Statement on U.S. Signing of an Agreement to Protect the RMS Titanic Wreck Site

 
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This morning the United States signed an international agreement to protect the Titanic wreck site from unregulated salvage operations. Under the agreement, the Titanic is designated as an international maritime memorial, recognizing the men, women, and children who perished in the icy waters of the Atlantic 92 years ago and whose remains it entombs. Any country that signs the agreement pledges to prevent its citizens and vessels flying its flag from making unregulated, illegal dives to the wreck or selling artifacts from it. It also ensures that artifacts from the Titanic are collected and curated in accordance with current scientific standards and kept in tact and available to the public as a collection.

Although it rests 12,000 feet deep, no other maritime site or vessel has captured the attention or stirred the emotions of people around the globe as Titanic. This agreement will protect this scientific, cultural, and historical treasure from future harm. It will allow the more than 1,500 souls that were lost that frigid night, April 15, 1912, in the North Atlantic to rest in peace.

The agreement was first called for in the Titanic Maritime Memorial Act signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. In signing the Act, President Reagan stated that the Titanic leaves a “durable imprint of the disaster upon the consciousness of succeeding generations.”

Now our task is to work with Congress to gain the necessary implementing legislation that will allow this agreement to enter into force. In addition, working with the U.K., who has already signed the agreement, we will ask other nations to join us in our effort to preserve what Dr. Ballard has called a “museum of the deep.”