Salvagers Ready to Dive for Titanic’s Treasures

Salvagers reached the spot Wednesday where the Titanic sank 75 years ago, ready to bring up its treasures despite opposition to disturbing the grave of the liner’s 1,500 victims.

The 54-day expedition is being financed by international investors grouped under Ocean Research Exploration Ltd., according to the French Institute for Research and Exploitation of the Sea, which helped locate the ship in 1985.

The $2.25-million project has been kept under wraps, in part because of fear of a public outcry against salvaging artifacts from the ship. The institute said any objects recovered will be sent to museums for exhibition, not sold.

The salvage team of the French research ship Nadir, at the Titanic site 350 miles off Newfoundland, is to start searching today for treasure, including a strongbox said to hold a fortune in jewels.

To reach the wreck 2 1/2 miles below the surface, the Nadir is carrying a deep-diving submarine, Nautile, and its robot, Robin.

The Titanic sank April 15, 1912, on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England, to New York, and 1,500 of the 2,200 people aboard were lost.

The American partner in the 1985 expedition that located the liner, the Deep Submergence Laboratory at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Cape Cod, Mass., believes the wreck should be left in peace on the ocean floor.

“Many people lost their lives and it is our position that . . . the Titanic should be left as a memorial,” said Christopher von Alt, a Woods Hole spokesman.

Von Alt said strongboxes probably would be empty, because passengers had time to retrieve their jewelry to take on the lifeboats or wear to their deaths, but other artifacts might be worth a fortune.

The U.S. Congress passed a bill last year, which President Reagan signed in October, providing for diplomatic negotiations toward making the wreck an international memorial. It recommended that the Titanic not be disturbed until guidelines were established.

Doug Llewelyn of the Westgate Group film company, a Hollywood partner in the current salvage operation, said the material should be retrieved for posterity.

He said his company will recoup its investment by selling videotape shot by the robot submarine. “We don’t think it’s a big sin to pick up items sitting in the mud,” he said.