HMS Victory Wreck

[VOC]

Results from the UK consultation

Looks like they want to leave it to Rot and be trawled around until it disapears for ever, just as UNESCO wants.

Details: http://www.culture.gov.uk/images/con...y_response.pdf

[jeff k]

VOC... What they want, may not be what they get. Stay tuned!

[MORE AND BEYOND OSSY]

VOC... What they want, may not be what they get. Stay tuned!

Sure Jeff, The British will never sell off any part of the Victory. Dream on

[Panfilo]

VOC, what is the date on that report? I couldn't find one.
Panfilo

[jeff k]

VOC, what is the date on that report? I couldn't find one.
Panfilo

July 19th.

http://www.culture.gov.uk/consultations/6566.aspx

[VOC]

"VOC... What they want, may not be what they get. Stay tuned"

I really hope they get to excavate this wreck or at least recover all the guns for recording and display.

It would be an absolute crime to leave this wreck in-situ now it has finally been discovered.

The British Goverment would never sanction the cash to do the excavation themselves, and I cannot see any charitable trust ever raising the sums needed to work in these depths.

The general public knew very little of this wreck or its history until it was located and published by Odyssey and the rest of the story should be told.

A lot less information will be lost through excavation and (if needed for funding purposes) the sale of duplicate items (after recording), than will be by leaving the wreck where it is to be looted, trawled over and destroyed by environmental forces.

At least 90% of the obtainable knowledge about the ship and its contents have been lost already, so the loss of another 1% or 2% through excavation is immaterial compared with the remaining knowledge we would gain.

If this is how all goverments are going to act in the future, there will be no point at all in researching and locating wrecks just for them to be left in-situ, as their location will only increase the chance of looting.

Much better to locate, excavate and record as its the knowledge that we need and not necessarily the long term preservation of material items.

Knowledge of our past is the real value for our future generations, and not just boxes filled with artefacts sat in museum archive stores.

Apart from a few Salvors and interested wreck hunters who have looked for this wreck for years, I believe their has been no academic institutions or goverment departments that had every spent a day looking for It, but now it’s found the heritage departments all appear out of their offices to have a say on its future.

The public have a right to their history, and it should not be the right of any unelected archaeologist to prevent this information coming to light.

[Salvor6]

Well said VOC. The cultural heritage belongs to the people and they should be the ones who decide what to do.

[mariner]

The Mary Rose museum in Portsmouth, England, is a wonderful example of what can be done when Government, the Public and a Non-Profit Organization get together and work on a project. Of course, the Mary Rose sank within sight of land and was therefore much easier to recover, and mud had buried and preserved half of the ship, which was then raised more or less intact.

My own view is that Option 2 in the report will eventually be pursued, with surface artefacts such as the cannons being recovered, and distributed/sold to Museums around the world to pay for the reecovery work, even though this option received the least support. This will make the site far less attractive for subsequent looting.

The fact that this ship wreck is almost certainly a genuine Sovereign Vessel and the graveyard for a thousand British sailors will, I think, moderate the extent of further excavation that will be allowed or publicly supported.

Mariner

[jeff k]

The following is from the consultation response by, The Society for Nautical Research.

"The wreck is stated to lie beyond the outer boundary of the 12 nautical mile Territorial Sea of the United Kingdom. As we understand it this makes protection of the wreck site under the Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 impossible since the UK has no comprehensive jurisdictional mechanism for protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage (UCH) beyond its territorial waters. Neither can the site be protected under the Protection of Military Remains Act 1986 as the ship sank prior to 4 August 1914."

http://www.snr.org.uk/misc/DCMSvictory.pdf

[mariner]

Which doesn't put it beyond the protection of the law. Take the Titanix as an example. Although a court gave a salvage company limited rights of recovery, the same kind of court could rule that the Victory is a protected site.

Mariner