Norfolk, Virginia — The U.S. government has dismissed a lawsuit against the company that owns the rights to salvage the Titanic, noting that the company no longer has plans to explore the wreck that could violate federal law.
An end to the government’s latest legal battle does not necessarily mean an end to RMS Titanic Ltd.’s attempts to gain access to the rapidly aging ocean liner or bring back more historical artifacts. The company said last month that it was still considering the impact of future exploration.
But on Friday, the United States withdrew its application to intervene in the federal Naval Court in Virginia, which oversees the salvage of the world’s most famous shipwreck. The evacuation marks the second of two legal battles in five years between the United States and RMS Titanic Inc, the company that recovered and displayed the ship’s remains.
The United States filed the latest legal action in 2023, when RMST planned to take images of the interior of the ship’s hull and pull items from the surrounding debris pile. RMST also said there was a possibility of recovering an independent object from the room where the ocean liner broadcasted its distress signals.
The United States argued that entering the hull or disturbing the wreck would violate a 2017 federal law and a corresponding agreement with Britain. Both regard the site as a sacred memorial to the more than 1,500 people who died when their ship struck an iceberg in 1912.
RMST scaled back its dive plans, saying it would ultimately only take exterior images. The change comes after the explosion of the Titan submersible in 2023 killed RMST’s underwater research director Paul-Henri Nargeolet and four people on board.
The experimental Titan spacecraft was operated by OceanGate, a separate company to which Nargeolet lent his expertise. He was supposed to lead the RMST expedition.
The United States halted its attempts to block certain expeditions that produced detailed images of the wreck in September after RMST revised its dive plans. But the government said last year it wanted to leave open the possibility of challenging the subsequent exploration in the Norfolk Federal Court.
However, RMST told the court in December that it would not visit the wreck until 2025 and had not confirmed any future exploration plans. The company said it “will continue to diligently consider the strategic, legal and financial implications of conducting future salvage operations at the site.”
In response, the United States withdrew its request for intervention.
“If future circumstances permit, the United States will submit a new application for intervention based on the facts that existed at the time,” the government said in a document submitted Friday.
RMST has been the court-recognized custodian of the Titanic artifacts since acquiring salvage rights to the ship in 1994. The company has recovered and preserved thousands of items, from silverware to pieces of ship hulls, that have been seen in exhibitions by millions of people. .
The company’s last expedition to recover the artifacts was in 2010, before federal laws and international agreements went into effect.
The first federal execution was in 2020, when the RMST wanted to retrieve and display radios broadcasting distress signals from the Titanic.
U.S. District Judge Rebecca Beach Smith, who is presiding over the Titanic salvage case, gave RMST permission. However, the U.S. government immediately objected to this plan. The legal battle never got underway because RMST postponed the expedition indefinitely due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Smith noted at a March court hearing that time may be running out to explore the Titanic’s interior. The ship is rapidly deteriorating on the North Atlantic seafloor.
