The Titanic Is Posing A Weird Problem That Experts Can't Solve
When you think of “landmark,” images of the Eiffel Tower and Stonehenge probably pop into your mind. We visit these places because that’s what you’re supposed to do with a landmark: Visit, appreciate, even gawk at the world-famous wonder. So why, then, is one of the world’s most famous landmarks also one of the world’s more controversial?
The Titanic is between a rock and a hard place...and not just literally. For over a century, people have itched to journey far beneath the waves to view the famed ship in person. As more people flock to the scene of a tragedy, though, experts are struggling to address the one historical issue no one saw coming.
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Before it was a spectacle, the Titanic was a catastrophe. What happened the morning of April 15th, 1912, was mourned by a generation...but generations die, and what began as an international tragedy has since been transformed into something else entirely.
Once traveling to the deepest depths of the sea became a possibility, it didn’t take long for people’s grief to turn into a kind of morbid curiosity about the Titanic. The number one question was: Can we go there?
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The ship’s passengers were once mourned, but now their remains are plundered for artifacts. Rich tourists go to snap photos in front of the withering wreckage. It’s a landmark akin to the Eiffel Tower, and all because of what happened in 1985.
For decades after the Titanic sank, people have yearned to visit the wreckage themselves...and possibly even bring it back to the surface.There was a rumor that the ship’s safes were filled with diamonds, which sparked even more Titanic fever...and more failed expeditions.