The Titanic and Edmund Fitzgerald are both considered gravesites. Why only one is off limits
Search continues for missing submersible
Darren Muljo's grandfather, Ransom "Ray″ Cundy, was a watchman aboard the SS Edmund Fitzgerald when it went down during a Nov. 10, 1975, storm on Lake Superior.
And it was his mother, Cheryl Rozman, who has since passed away, who helped pressure the Ontario government to make the site mostly off limits and preserve it as a grave for the 29 lives lost.
"The families wanted to have it declared a gravesite," to protect it against commercialization with strict limitations for only "legitimate archeological, scientific or law enforcement purposes," said Muljo, who was five when he last saw his grandpa at the docks in Duluth, Minn., in the summer of '75.
An amendment to the Ontario Heritage Act in 2006 severely limited access to the remains of the ship, which was immortalized in Gordon Lightfoot's hit song The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald.
But that's not the case for the resting site of the RMS Titanic, where researchers, explorers and tourists (for a hefty price) have made numerous trips — raising some controversy over whether such visits to an area also deemed a gravesite are proper.
One of those tourist trips aboard the submersible Titan, pegged at around $250,000 US a person, is now the focus of attention after the seven-metre craft with five people on board was reported missing Sunday evening
Titan's trip to the remains of the British vessel — in international waters off the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador — is just one of several that have been made by craft operated by OceanGate Expeditions.
The Titanic hit an iceberg on April 14, 1912, during its maiden voyage. Of the more than 2,200 individuals on board, approximately 1,500 perished.
In 1986, the U.S. government passed the Titanic Memorial Act to regulate exploration and salvage activities of the ship.
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), says the Titanic serves "as a maritime memorial for those individuals who lost their lives."
"The remains of many of these individuals were never recovered, and Titanic serves as their final resting place," NOAA says on the its website.
But because it's in international waters, enforcing restrictions and creating new legislation with more teeth has proved challenging.
"The tourism industry around Titanic at this point is not regulated," said Philadelphia-based lawyer Craig A. Sopin, who is also a Titanic historian.
There are rules and regulations concerning visits to the interior of the ship and there used to be others concerning the exterior, he said.
But when lawsuits over rights to the Titanic allowed visits to the wreckage — provided they just looked — more tours started happening, Sopin said.
"They've actually been going on for about 20 years," he said. "There is a controversy as to whether people should be visiting."
Complaints have been raised by both family members and by survivors themselves, he said.
Following the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, a number of expeditions were made to the wreckage — including one in 1980 helmed by Jean Michel Cousteau, son of the famous French explorer Jacques Cousteau.
WATCH | Tourist submersible missing:
But a three-day submarine expedition in July 1994 particularly sparked the ire of the surviving family members after the marine explorer used pictures of the underwater remains of a crewman in a 20th anniversary book and video.
"I can't believe he's doing this to us,″ said Cheryl Rozman at the time, as quoted by The Associated Press. "That is my dad's grave and it should be respected."
"You don't go digging up graves on land here, looking at bodies, taking pictures. There's laws against that and there should be laws protecting an underwater grave site."
Although Rozman had already started looking into ways to preserve the site, that same year the families also commissioned the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum to conduct one last expedition.
"Family members wanted something tangible, so they asked if we could organize a expedition down to cut the bell off," said Corey Adkins, a spokesman for the museum, based in Paradise, Mich. "And that literally took two governments working together and making that happen."
A ceremony was conducted after the bell was retrieved, and is on display at the museum, where it is rung 29 times as part of a memorial service every year on Nov. 10.
"A lot of family members still do come and ring the bell in honour of their loved ones," Adkins said.
After that, Adkins says, there was a lot of pressure from the family members to make the site off limits, with Rozman — along with Ruth Hudson, whose son Bruce was a deckhand on the Fitzgerald — leading the charge to push Ottawa to ban expeditions to the wreck. The wreck is in Canadian waters.
Muljo said his mother would travel to Toronto and reach out to the provincial leadership to get the Ontario Heritage Act amended. That regulation was put into law in 2006, and anyone wishing to dive to the site or operate research equipment near it would require a site-specific licence issued by the province.
"We are thankful that the site is protected from unauthorized visits, and we can now be at peace," Rozman and Hudson said in a statement issued by the government at the time.
Since then, Muljo says he hasn't heard of any authorized exploration of the site.
"It does give us comfort because you know we never want to see the site of the Fitzgerald commercialized It's still very sensitive to many of the family members," he said.
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With files from The Associated Press