Graveyard of shoes

[Michael Cundiff]

Hello Mr. Rogers and Ms Geyer...

I wish to offer two articles that you may find interesting. The first being the *abstract* of "Diving on the Titanic" (ARCHAEOLOGY) @
http://www.archaeology.org/0101/abstracts/titanic1.numi,http://www.archaeology.org/0101/abstracts/titanic1.nunu

...I trust that you will enjoy the photograph on page 3. Memorials left at the bridge telemotor.
I went into some detail on these at an earlier date...compliments of my correspondence with Mr. Emory Kristof.

The second article which furthur pertains to this thread can be enjoyed @ http.//caner-times.com/autoconv/newsworld98/newsworld55.nunu

Andrew, the latter site will provide you with some insight of a gentleman I think you are familiar with...Evgeny Cherniaev. Below I offer a brief quote of MIR submersible pilot Cherniaev. Perhaps it will bekon your curiosity as well...

Cherniaev has never seen the bookcase before, never landed at this section of the wreck.
"Titanic," he says softly, "shows you something different every dive."
He guides the spotlights past the books to the shadowy outline of a pair of shoes, spaced a few inches apart in the sand. Large and flat, they look like a man's.
"Shoes," Cherniaev says with a shrug. "We will see many shoes."

The aforementioned articles are fine examples of open-minded summaries.

I hope that you will both enjoy them!

Goodnight,

Michael A. Cundiff
Carson City, NV

 

[Michael Cundiff]

POSTSCRIPT,

Seems the link failed to provide the article.

In recourse, use your YAHOO search engine inserting: Diving on the Titanic (For article #1)
Mir submersible visit to Bismarck (For article #2 entitled..."Tourist take a visit to the grave of
Titanic".

BTW Mr. Rogers, I am looking very forward to any and all wreck photographs you can contribute to
this invaluable site contrived by Mr. Hind!

(Sleepy eyed

 

[Colleen Collier]

I urge everyone to look at the link that Beverly gave us. If you look at #4, it shows that their intention was to retrieve artifacts from INSIDE the Titanic. I thought the courts said "NO".
I am puzzled as well about (#6) why they say that if an item is not 100 years old, it is not "Historic". I have a pick up truck that is 41 and qualifies for all the historic perks. A ship is obsolete at what... 20? (Mike S., are you listening??)I just found that curious, and wondered where they got the number.
Thanks Beverly for the site. It was informative!
Colleen

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Colleen, a ship's lifetime depends very much on it's use and how severe the service is. There are some like the Stockholm which continue in service under new names and ownership nearly half a century after their first voyage. 25 to 30 years is about the average though.

Warships are rather more problematic for two reasons. One is that they serve under some brutal conditions that merchent marine vessels never face, even if they never get shot at. Another is that a new development can render an entire class hopelessly obsolete and it's not cost effective to refit them to new standards. The nuclear powered cruisers in U.S. service are an example. We had some with plenty of life in their hulls which were decommissioned and scrapped after less then 17 years of service. Technology had simply passed them by.

Cordially,
Michael H. Standart

 

[Beverly J. Crowder]

Colleen,

You are very welcome... I thought I had read that they were retreiving shoes from the wreck.

Beverly

 

[Andrew Rogers]

Wow! I've got a bit of catching up to do!
Beverly
Phil has added a couple more pictures to the "More Wreck Photos" heading.
As you can see in the B-deck hand rail shot there is some wood that is in very good condition.
Some marine engineers down here in Aust told me that it would be highly treated teak .
The porthole pic (complete with crab!!) shows that some of the forward lower hull plates are also in good shape. There seems to be a lot more corrosion in the places that were subject to the greatest stresses.
Thanks for the link to the list of recovered items from the 2000 expedition. This is the first time I have seen anything like that. A step in the right direction I think.

Michael
I agree, my presumptions were a little farfetched!
But speculation will happen (even if a little frivolously at times) when we hear reports of 6000 items being recovered, less than half of which is being exhibited all over the world (except for Australia), leaving a good few thousand items totally unaccounted for . Where are they? What are they? Is there really only 6000? I know that it takes time to identify and catalogue these things but if a simple inventory of items from each expedition was accessable to us all I, for one, would not feel the need to speculate. Beverly found the 2000 list for us and I'm sure such lists exist for each salvage expedition, so why not show them to us!
I am a fence-sitter on the salvage issue and can see value on both sides of the arguement but some of the actions of the salvors do lead me to question their motives. I should also mention that it is not a particular beef that I have with Mr Tulloch, more the company in general, no matter who is at the helm!
My Sept. '98 dive was on no prescribed course, Genya did take us to the major features when we were near them but he also went anywhere that we asked him to go, this meant a lot of back tracking and seeing things twice. Our dive was a total of 11 hours and the average dive on recent expeditions is about 9 to 10 hours.
During our dive we looked over the scatter-field twice in two different areas for a total of about 75 minutes. I can only guess that we would have covered about 10 - 20 % of it's vast area, so yes, there are many things (including shoes) that we obviously didn't see.
The day after I went down was the day that Genya sighted the book case that you mentioned. One of his passengers that day was an Associated Press journo from NY!! somehow and for some reason they decided to keep it quiet for a while.
I was unable to check out the link you posted (re:bookcase) but I would be interested to know if there was a date on that article? Actually I was unable to get to any of those links... when I get time I will try the search as you suggested.
Michael, I have a few good photos and a reasonable amount of good video of the dive but I have plans for most of it that might take me some time to get together.
Phil has asked me to put together a kind of dive scrapbook and put it in with the ET articles. I was planning to do it without a single bow, prop, anchor shot at all, but lets see.
I also have a lot of info on all the Australian connections to the Titanic (including our crew and passengers) most of which I have kept under my hat until a recent presentation I put together for the Aust. National Maritime Museum here in Sydney... As a result I am going to write (with some expert help) a book or booklet that will feature the best of whatever pictures I have.
Unfortunatly time is against me and this is all spare time stuff for me.

Christine
Funny you mentioned the thing about the RMST people having an artifact or two at home, we also asked Genya what he had on his mantel-piece back in Moscow! (we were only joking) He assured us that he had nothing!

Falling asleep
Bye
Andrew

 

[Michael Cundiff]

Hello Andrew:

Perhaps by now you have managed to access the
aforementioned article which dated Sunday, Oct. 18, 1998. I am certain that of the...five Americans, five Germans, an Austalian and a Briton mentioned in the report...that it was you the sole Aussie...

BTW, are you a restaurateur? There was mention of..."A copper kithchen pot reminds an Ausralian of the pots he cooks with back home".

I also feel your concern in the uncertainty on the wherabouts of the artefacts in question. The least that RMSTI could provide us with is even a rudimentary
image of the artefact, directly following it's recovery. Due course along RMSTI/IFREMER's previous standard should have followed the procedure of a photograph and catalog arrangement of each separate artefact rocovered from TITANIC.

I am aware of an ample quantity of the artifacts that were treated for preservation and subsequently stored at one of two conservation labs in France. This is the last I heard.

BTW, my favorite of these lamentable connnections to the tragedy was one of two first-class vases recovered...red in color and bearing handles of gilt. My first exposure to the one was a 1987 Newsweek artile (w/photos) informing it's readers of the..."Treasures of the Deep". Subsequently Jennifer Carter was to share an image in her book of the same vase.(Compliments of Ralph White) I don't believe either of the vases partook in representation of TITANIC artefacts at past exhibitions.

I can hardly comprehend any sole with a sound consious, knowing well of the controversy which embattles this issue, holding a single TITANIC artefact in his/her collection...all the while acting oblivious to the laws which were implemented in hope of providing a secure environment for the artefacts.

Off to bed...

Michael Cundiff

 

[Beverly J. Crowder]

Hello Andrew,

I thank you for adding your wreck pictures. They are really something. The emotion it evokes opon me I can't put words to.

I believe Phil is on the money asking you to put together a scrapbook of wreck photos.

I can't write much now as I am still taken aback from viewing the photos.

Beverly

 

[Colleen Collier]

FWIW. I just watched a moving National Geographic documentary on a sub called the I-51. In it, a man found the manifest and is on a quest to search for gold bars that were stowed away on the sub, and it was sunk by Americans during the war. Mir 1 & 2 were the subs on the mission, as the wreck was about 3 miles down. I wont give away the outcome, but, I will say that he did pick up a few items, and among them was a shoe. He went back to Japan, about a year later and showed the families the pictures he had taken, presented the shoe to them, and they held services at the old Imperial Navy cemetery, as it was the only thing that they had for the 112 victims. It was closure, as this was a secret mission and the families never knew what became of them. Regardless of how one feels about the war, it was comforting to see such an action, and I wish that something like this would happen with RMSTI and the shoes they gathered. I guess it is all in how it is looked at.
Colleen

 

[Andrew Rogers]

Colleen, The I-52 doco was fascinating but hard to watch at times, I found myself cringing with some of the problems on the surface.

Michael, Unfortunately I have been very busy and have not had the time to check out those links but I will soon.
Yes, I am in the restaurant business (among other things) and I was the Aussie mentioned in the article but not the sole Aussie, there was another, Mike McDowell!
Just a moment ago it occurred to me that it is 3 years ago (to the minute) since Mir II, with me inside, entered the water to begin our descent. A wonderful memory but somehow todays events in the US seem to have numbed my mind and I find it hard to think about much else.

Andrew

 

[PRR5406]

Dr. Ballard made a lot of imperial statements at the time of the discovery. In years following, many have been amplified or corrected, and such is the nature of science. I have always maintained that people went to the bottom inside the ship, and decayed insitu, leaving buttons, jewelry, shoes, bones and teeth exactly where they fell. Bones will decay, particularly in seawater, as will most untreated organics. Those remains found around the ship didn't flutter down on target, but were disgorged upon impact and collapse of the ship. Inside the deeper recesses of the ship, I would look in places where we know people to have been trapped by gates or who willingly stayed at their posts, resigned to die while savings others.
Regarding those buried at sea by the "McKay-Bennett", they had drifted far from the ship when they were consigned to the deep. Weights would be all that would be left, and those deep in the mud.
Not many were accounted for on the surface in terms of the 1502 known to have died. I must assume that they either lost buoyancy and gently fell to the seabed after drifting away from the sinking location, or went down inside the ship itself.