American Plans to Recover Artifacts from HMS Tilbury

A personal point of view

Individual spirit of adventure, a treasure hunt, the joy of discovery, the pleasure of the attempt even if unsuccessful, are, I believe, part of the good things in life.

Diving on a warship - even an old one - which is also her sailors' burial place, and employing an outsize in suction pumps to strip the wreck of anything saleable, seems to me to be desecration. With every set of sailor's buttons deposited in the filter, a set of sailor's remains may have passed through it.

If a serious attempt is to be made to excavate the 1757 Tilbury site, according to marine archaeology precepts, then perhaps, if the safeguarding of history and children's education are the main purposes, a real-time weekly television programme showing the search, including the history of the vessel, its crew, their life context and style, followed by the construction of an exact replica from the original plans by the then methods ... might be a good method of achieving those aims. With the profits and the replica to go to the "Sail Training Association" to continue that purpose.

Destroying the site to recover maximum value, and making a film about it, seems to me to resemble "Titanic-fever".

Caroline, 10th June 2007 - (CMTilbury, siteholder 'Tilberia' living in Paris, France, b. UK)