Atlanta company criticized for plan to sell Titanic artifacts

RICHMOND, VIRGINIA - Federal appellate judges sharply criticized a request by an Atlanta salvage company to sell artifacts recovered from the shipwreck Titanic. <br> <br> Waving his finger for emphasis as he lectured RMS Titanic Incorporated attorney Mark Davis, Judge Paul Niemeyer said, ``Those artifacts never belonged to you. This is not your Titanic.&#39;&#39; ``Salvage is a trusteeship. It is not as if it is abandoned property and you can do with it what you want. It&#39;s not a finders keepers case.&#39;&#39; <br> <br> R.M.S. Titanic wants the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a lower court ruling barring it from selling the artifacts. <br> <br> A University of Virginia lawyer urged the three-judge panel to force R.M.S. Titanic to keep a ten-year-old promise not to sell six-thousand pieces of the Titanic. <br> <br> The Titanic, an 883-foot British luxury liner, sank in April 1912 on its first trip from England to the United States. It struck an iceberg and went down in the North Atlantic about 1,600 miles northeast of New York City. More than 1,500 people died. <br> <br> Neal Walters argued that R.M.S. Titanic got its sole-salvor status from a Norfolk federal judge in 1994 by promising never to sell the historic artifacts that the company raised from the ocean floor. <br> <br> Instead, the company said it would make money by showing off Titanic artifacts in museums and traveling shows. More than nine million people worldwide have seen the exhibits. <br> <br> Now, with the company in financial straits, it wants to sell some or all of the artifacts.