TITANIC LAW & POLICY

This open access book highlights the historical significance of Titanic, and its impact on law, including the first treaty on maritime safety - the Safety Of Life at Sea Convention (SOLAS). The work covers the laws that protect Titanic, e.g., the 1986 RMS Titanic Maritime Memorial Act, the international agreement on Titanic, and the 2017 implementing legislation that enabled its Entry into Force between the US, and UK. UNESCO's 2001 Convention has also protected Titanic since 2012. The authors specifically address the evolution of these laws and policies from their perspectives.
 
They explain how a US District Court has jurisdiction over a British flagged vessel under the high seas and the decades of litigation that resulted in Orders of the court that protect the public interest in Titanic. It has taken decades for the Agreement to become law, which now seeks to safeguard the wreck site of Titanic as a Maritime Memorial, a historic and archaeological resource that is being preserved.

James P. Delgado is a maritime archaeologist with five decades of experience and field projects that include being the first archaeologist not associated with the salvage to dive to Titanic.  His work emphasizes the ships and wrecks of the 19th and 20th centuries. He was the founding director of the U.S. Government’s maritime preservation program in the National Park Service, and his subsequent role as the director of NOAA’s maritime heritage program.  In that role he was the U.S. Government’s policy lead for Titanic.  He also served as the lead scientist for the 2010 scientific mapping of the wreck site of Titanic undertaken by RMS Titanic, Inc., Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, NOAA, the NPS, and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA), and at that time was INA’s President and CEO.  He is the author or editor of more than two dozen books on maritime archaeology and history.
 
Ole Varmer, adviser at The Ocean Foundation, has practiced the UCH law for 35 years. He was the lead attorney on the Agreement, Guidelines, legislation and litigation on Titanic.  He was the attorney in the establishment of the Florida Keys, Stellwagen Bank, and Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuaries. He represented NOAA in shipwreck litigation in the Keys, Channel Islands and the Brother Jonathan Supreme Court  case. He advised on the inscription of Papahānaumokuākea on UNESCO Mixed Natural and Cultural Heritage List and was the heritage expert for the US in negotiations leading to the 2001 Convention on the Protection of UCH. In 2019 he was the legal expert for UNESCO’s Evaluation Report on the 2001 Convention. He has dozens of publications, including the 2014 UCH Law Study,  articles about Titanic and  the chapter on US UCH law for The Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage: National Approaches in an International Context (Brill, 2025).