Selling Titanic items is wrong says survivor (From This is Hampshire)

Selling Titanic items is wrong says survivor

12:06pm Monday 30th October 2006

A HAMPSHIRE Titanic survivor has slammed black market dealers who are selling relics from the world-famous shipwreck.

Britain's last survivor Milvina Dean, 94, of Woodlands, near Southampton, said the sale of items from the ship which sank killing more than 1,500 people in 1912, was "awfully wrong" and showed the greed of those involved.

A porthole from the White Star liner was priced at £20,000, while crockery recovered from the debris field, two-and-a-half miles down on the bed of the Atlantic, sold for £60 on the black market.

Ms Dean, who was just a baby when the Titanic, then the largest luxury liner ever built, sank on its maiden voyage from Southampton to New York in 1912 when it hit an iceberg off Newfoundland.

She said: "My father is still on there. It's awfully wrong to take things especially from a ship where so many people perished. I don't suppose these people thought of that - they just thought of the money."

The Titanic is protected by rulings from a US court which forbid the sale of relics and give salvage rights to an Atlanta-based company called RMS Titanic Inc only on condition items raised are preserved and put on public display.

However, an investigation by the BBC's Inside Out programme due to be aired tonight found some items, including the porthole, were being offered for sale on the black market.

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