I have touched the Titanic...

...and the Titanic has touched me

Sunday evening, we went to Denver Museum of Nature and Science to see Titanic: The Artifact Exhibition. This is a fascinating show. We wandered around the display cases for almost two hours and it seemed like thirty minutes.

There are hundreds of items on display that were recovered from the sea bed; many are simple shipboard items like plates, glasses and decorated window frames, but there are also a lot of personal items such as hand mirrors, combs, razors, spectacles, purses, suitcases and clothes. Quite a few of the personal items were identified as belonging to specific passengers.

There are also pieces of the ship itself, including a small section of the hull inside a case with hole and a sign inviting you to touch. I did. It felt a bit strange, touching a piece of metal that had been associated with 1500 lives and sat under a couple of miles of water for something like eighty years.

The conditions down there do odd things. The pressure is around three tons per square inch, and the seafloor silt has a pH of about 5, which I think makes it about as acidic as vinegar. Cast iron items that have been under that pressure for so long explode when they're brought up to the surface and a lot of materials simply crumble. It's incredible that anything survived to be recovered, and yet even paper items such as banknotes, letters and envelopes have been found. All the same, things are eroding and won't be around forever. Glass and ceramics break down, metals corrode; the ship itself is being slowly eaten by iron-consuming microbes. In the end everything will turn to dust and be carried away by the current.

Here's a tricky question: Bob Ballard, who discovered the wreck in 1985, considered it a grave site and said nothing should be touched - something I agreed with at the time. I was saddened when others went down with the intention of recovering things. But Kate asked me if a few of my belongings in a display case in museum was how I'd choose to be remembered, and that got me thinking. My first reaction was that at least it's better than vanishing without a trace; at least there's something left. No, it wouldn't be my choice - but if the only choice is between being remembered that way and being wiped off the planet as if I'd never existed, I'll take the first option.

So who's right? Should the site be considered sacred and untouchable, or is it better to recover personal belongings? There's no easy answer. My own opinion has changed; I don't think Bob Ballard is 100% right on this any more.

I agree that it should be considered a grave site and treated with the appropriate respect. I'd hate to see somebody trying to make a fast buck by yanking things out of there, packaging them and selling them as product.

On the other hand leaving everything untouched is, in my opinion, also not the right thing to do. Grave sites serve as memorials, too - and what's the point of a memorial that nobody can visit, and that's slowly being eroded to nothing? Better, I think, to recover the things that can be recovered, restore them and identify the owners as far as possible, and put them somewhere up here on land where everyone can see them and give thought to what happened that night in 1912.

I know not everyone will agree with me. As I said, it's a complex and emotional question and not one that can be answered by logic alone; probably the only people who have a right to make the decision are the relatives of those that died. But having seen the exhibition I've given this quite a bit of thought and I think it's a question that needs an answer.