Titanic's discoverer Robert Ballard says sunken ships found in Turkey protected by gvt
Robert Ballard said fortunately, the ships they found in Turkey were protected by the Turkish government.
"But a ship like the Titanic in the high seas has no protection. So if you can not protect the Titanic, what can you protect," Ballard told an exclusive interview with AA correspondent in London.
Ballard said he had been working in Turkey for 13 years, and he had been working between Sinop and Eregrli in the Sea Marmara, in Gelibolu.
"We found an Ottoman ship, Germans have given them for the Battle of Gallipoli (Gelibolu)," Ballard said. Ballard said, "if you have a historical site like Sultanahmet Mosque (Blue Mosque), you take care of it, you do conservation. I honestly believe we should do conservation to Titanic, it's not that difficult."
"I've been finding ancient shipwrecks in Turkey for 13 years. In Sinop, I've found a Byzantine shipwreck 1500 years old, we put that ship in a museum in Sinop. So the ocean of the world is a museum, there is more history in the deep sea then all the museums in the world combined but there is no lock on the door," he said.
Ballard said, "fortunately, the ships we found in Turkey are protected by the Turkish government, but a ship like the Titanic in the high seas has no protection. So if you can not protect the Titanic, what can you protect? There is supposed to be a jewel covered book of Omer Hayyam and it's never been discovered, it is still inside Titanic."
Robert Duane Ballard (born June 30, 1942) is a former United States Navy officer and a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island who is most noted for his work in underwater archaeology: maritime archaeology and archaeology of shipwrecks. He is most famous for the discoveries of the wrecks of the RMS Titanic in 1985, the battleship Bismarck in 1989, and the wreck of the aircraft carrier USS York town in 1998.
RMS Titanic was a passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912 after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City.
The sinking of Titanic caused the deaths of 1,514 people in one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history. She was the largest ship afloat at the time of her maiden voyage. One of three Olympic class ocean liners operated by the White Star Line, she was built between 1909–11 by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. She carried 2224 people.
