Sir, Frank Pope (Opinion, Sept 6) has opened a debate about the future of our maritime underwater heritage that has largely been carried on between vested interests of Government, international bodies and academics rather than with an informed public, who after all (with scholars) should be the principal beneficiaries, able to enjoy the mysteries and knowledge to be whispered up from historic ships.

The fact is that our policy for “protecting” historic shipwreck sites administered by the loose confederation of the Department for Culture and English Heritage is a failure, and that adoption of the Unesco convention would be a disaster, as has been the implementation of a policy of preserving wrecks in situ (which is often one of “watching it rot”, with an expensive strategy of “monitoring”) after the over-hasty ratification of the Valletta Convention — a policy not backed by any hard and fast scientific data.

The other barrier to a change of attitude is the Unesco convention’s embargo on the dispersal of collections by sale or trafficking, as it describes the marketing of even fully recorded and serial objects recovered from an historic wreck. Why shouldn’t the public be able to buy, study and enjoy any one of thousands of musket balls, Chinese porcelain or even silver coins that almost no museum in the world could display, conserve, preserve, store, curate and insure?

The Protection of Wrecks Act 1973 was brought in as a temporary measure. Now, 35 years later, it is a hopelessly inadequate instrument for either protecting wrecks or encouraging divers to follow a serious and responsible attitude towards the maritime heritage. The advisory committee set up under the Act has attempted to enlarge its inadequate remit by a series of back-door extrastatutory criteria embodying many of the principles of the unratified Unesco convention. The Act has no right of appeal against its designation orders. The advisory committee is appointed by English Heritage, which manages the meetings, reports to the committee, manages the consultation process, and presents the recommendations to the minister at the department.

Is it any surprise that the Minister has never refrained from accepting the recommendations? Or that there is a feeling of injustice and unfairness in many of the amateur archaeologists and divers who discover shipwrecks and at their risk give time and work towards the recovery of the historic past? Without them the Mary Rose would never have become the jewel in our heritage it now is.

Rex Cowan

Undersea Search and Location

Former member of the Government

Shipwreck Advisory Committee

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