A bronze statue has been recovered in the first salvage expedition of the Titanic since 2010.
Diana of Versailles was last spotted in 1986 among the wreckage of the infamous passenger liner, which sank during its maiden voyage in a desolate corner of the North Atlantic 112 years ago. RMS Titanic Inc, a Georgia-based company that owns the legal rights to the wreck, shared the rediscovery on Monday, along with new photography that captures how the ship continues to be subsumed by the sea floor. RMS Titanic told the Guardian that a large section of the railing that surrounded the bow’s forecastle deck (the upper deck of the front of the vessel) had broken off.
“The discovery of the statue of Diana was an exciting moment. But we are saddened by the loss of the iconic Bow railing and other evidence of decay which has only strengthened our commitment to preserving Titanic’s legacy,” Tomasina Ray, director of collections for RMS Titanic, said in a statement.
The RMS Titanic crew spent 20 days excavating the site. This involved mapping the wreck and debris field and taking more than 2 million of the highest-resolution pictures of the site to date. This data and more will be made widely accessible so that “historically significant and at-risk artifacts can be identified for safe recovery in future expeditions,” the company said in a statement, as quoted by the Guardian.
Well-preserved artifacts from the Titanic can fetch small fortunes at auction. In April, a gold pocket watch recovered from the body of John Jacob Astor, the richest man on the Titanic, sold at a UK auction house for £1.18 million ($1.47 million). The sale of the watch surpassed the previous record-holder for most expensive Titanic artifact, a violin that played as the ship sank, which fetched $1.6 million in 2013 via the same auctioneer, Henry Aldridge & Son.
Objects related to the Titanic, auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said at the time, “reflect not only the importance of the artifacts themselves and their rarity but they also show the enduring appeal and fascination with the Titanic story.”
