Legal obstacle removed to open Titanic, retrieve Marconi radio

After clicking on some of the provided links, I only have this to say:

Everywhere I look these days, I see attempts to re-write history--even history that has occurred in the past 3 years!

The way the Radio Act of 1912 is written, one can infer that there were incidences of "hams" interfering with Navy traffic. But to say hams were interfering with the CQD or the SOS from the Titanic caused this tragedy? I call BS.

After all:

"Everyone is eager to point the finger at someone else," says Naval Historian Kit Bonner. "But in reality no one person can be blamed. The collision with the iceberg was the culmination of several minor mishaps and 'if only's.'"

All major man-made catastrophes I've analyzed (including a murder trial I was a juror on) have been caused by a "series" of poor choices, simple unsafe conditions and/or a failure to perform a simple action or duty--any of which, if changed, would have altered the outcome into something insignificant.

The tragedy of the Titanic is no different. Pressure from the owners to get it in the water, pressure from the Captain to finish his career (last voyage) on a high note by making it to the other side faster than any other passenger boat of the day (and saying "the heck" with a break-in period for the engines), moonless night, failure at first to believe a giant piece of steel could actually sink, the hubris of the designers to think they didn't need life rafts for *all* aboard, etc, etc, etc. The radio part of the story is only a minor part.

Salvage some stuff from the Titanic? Why not? It's just "stuff." It's no worse than all the "stuff" that's been salvaged from the bottom of the Mediterranean, the "stuff" that's been salvaged from beneath the Pyramid of Giza, or the "stuff" salvaged from the La Brea Tar Pits.

All souls have long departed. They won't mind.

 

Agreed.

 

or QRZ Swapmeet, lol (for some reason that doesn't surprise me.)

 

Agreed!!!

 

"To heavy to ship, local pick-up only"...

 

Presuming that the transmitter and receiver were encased in wood, would any of the wood have been preserved by the cold, salt water under tremendous pressure or long ago eaten away by organisms?

I was in the U.S. Coast Guard in the 1970's and 1980's and was involved with the International Ice Patrol tracking icebergs as they moved south into shipping lanes.

One of the things we did in the 1970's was to drop radio transponders on the icebergs and track them. We had a satellite receiving station at the U.S. Coast Guard Oceanographic Unit at the Washington Navy Yard in S.E. D.C.

While on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Hamilton doing 200 mile limit fishery patrols we passed the then known location of the sinking of the Titanic several times. Once time I tossed an expensive buck knife overboard at the location. But at the time we didn't know that the then known location of the Titanic was inaccurate.

 

Tom, there are pictures of the TX. Take a look at the earlier posts for the link Much seems to be in pretty good shape as of ...18 years ago?

73
Chip W1YW

 

I found your knife, do you want it back?

TOM K8ERV Montrose Colo

 

If the brass still isn't shiny then I don't want it.

 

Yeah that is cool. the restoration of the radio and key would be great to see. hope it is on display one day in a museum some where .
As for this site being a graveyard, there is nothing left of any human , the sea reclaimed them many years ago.

 

It is the other way around.

The Telefunken operators, if it should be believed that they actually answered the distress calls of the Titanic, followed the rudimentary international protocol (Berlin Radiotelegraph Regulations of 1906) of giving priority to distress calls and traffic, but as Marconi wanted a world-wide monopoly of maritime communications, their stations were discouraged to exchange traffic with them.

This became a quite heated subject of the Senate hearings later in April 1912. There were witness testimonials that the Marconi operator on the Titanic actually told a caller to "keep off". The circumstances were however quite unclear.

The mandated free intercommunication between stations belonging to different systems and owners became one of the first issues to be considered at the London Radiotelegraph Conference later in 1912.

73/
Karl-Arne
SM0AOM

 

Old antique radio gear eh? There's only ONE THING I desire of the Titanic... Cough up for me John Jacob Astor IV's wallet with the secret compartment holding ALL of the Account Numbers and Pass Codes to his NUMBERED SWISS BANK ACCOUNTS. Anything less is far worthless than the corroded HW-100 pulled from a fire and now rotting on a shelf of some old ham's Garage.

 

The following site is, in my opinion, the best techie resource for Titanic radio. If radio is your "thing," this is definitely worth looking at: http://jproc.ca/radiostor/titanic.html

 

Take a look at the following: http://jproc.ca/radiostor/titanic.html