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Sunken warships are graves (graveyards maybe, not a sailor myself). So stealing them is grave robbing.
by roel_v 10y ago
Sunken warships are graves (graveyards maybe, not a sailor myself). So stealing them is grave robbing.
- jfoster 10y agoWouldn't the sailors have a grave elsewhere? I don't think place of death (or last known location since many would abandon ship prior to death) qualifies as a grave. The first thought that came to my mind was that the scavengers are cleaning up a small part of the pollution in the oceans.
- Inconel 10y agoI'm certainly no expert on maritime disasters but I would think that if a ship goes down, particularly as a result of war, there may be significant numbers of the crew trapped inside. As to cleaning up the oceans, I'd love it if someone could do some back of the napkin type calculations on how much pollution is caused by these sunken warships as opposed to commercial shipping or industrial runoff. I would assume this is negligible in the grand scheme of things.
- Eridrus 10y agoYeah, but people notice when you steal a commercial shipping vessel, I think they even call you a pirate or something, and may even shoot you!
- sfifs 10y agoSo when westerners dig up mummies in Egypt, cart them to the Louvre and sell tickets for the privilege of visitation, that's historical research but when folks in poorer countries dig up metal from abandoned ships to sell, it's grave-robbing. Our ability for self-deception is breath taking.
- Inconel 10y agoThere's also the possibility that both cases are grave robbing and that those remains in the Louvre should be repatriated.
- Mvandenbergh 10y agoDo many of those mummies have living children? There are people alive today who survived the sinking of those ships. Most Egyptian mummies come from a culture that was staggeringly remote and ancient - to Cleopatra, to later Byzantine culture, and certainly to Egypt after the Arab conquest... which was 1400 years ago! Bronze age remains from Europe are not treated differently, you know. Those are also in museums around the world.
- ryanmarsh 10y agoYou mean more like northerners. Europe isn't all that far west of Egypt.
- Spooky23 10y agoThe passing of millennia blunt the emotional aspects. Also, to assuage your cultural guilt, Egyptians, who feel no linkage to ancient people, are now digging up artifacts to hock to various wealthy collectors in the Middle East and Europe.
- manarth 10y agoCultural sensitivity has increased, especially in the last 30 years or so. In the example of Egyptian mummies, they would be covered under the 1983 law of Protection of Antiquities. There's an ongoing controversy around the Elgin Marbles, which were removed to London between 1801 and 1805, and many people believe they should be returned. I think there's an increasing recognition that the historic behaviour of archaeologists removing artifacts for display wasn't necessarily acceptable, but addressing past wrongs is much harder than preventing new ones.
- Lordarminius 10y ago> Cultural sensitivity has increased ... It has not increased to any degree near adequate. But remove antiquities foreign antiquities from European museums and see how barren the halls and storage become... So I guess 'sensitivity' isn't going to increase any more than present levels.
- virtuabhi 10y agoAnd to return Kohinoor diamond, we will have to remove it from Her Majesty's crown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koh-i-Noor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koh-i-Noor
- EliRivers 10y agoSo when westerners dig up mummies in Egypt, cart them to the Louvre and sell tickets for the privilege of visitation, that's historical research No, that's grave robbing. When Westerners did that in the past, it was grave robbing. If they do it now, it's also grave robbing. I suspect a lot of Westerners agree.
- pavement 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial_at_sea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burial_at_sea I think it's generally well-understood that when your remains rest in the ocean, you become fish food. The vast expanse of water itself is your tomb, not some little square on the floor. Argue over the vehicle wreckage, but don't misplace your sentimentality.
- blackguardx 10y agoThe bodies aboard these ships are there because people were often trapped in compartments and couldn't get out. It isn't a wreckage with bodies littering the floor around it. The bodies are literally inside the wreckage.
- dvtv75 10y agoYour understanding is more-or-less irrelevant: war graves are legally protected by many nations, and you may not interfere with those nation's war graves them unless you have dispensation to do so.
- CPLX 10y agoA grave is a designated burial site for a body. They aren't graves they are just places where people happened to die. I am writing this right now in literally the exact spot where thousands died during the Battle of Brooklyn in the Revolutionary War. We subsequently moved on, they built Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO and a rather notable bridge here. It happens.
- trothamel 10y agoSure. But from what I understand, sunken military vessels are often designated as graves, since it's too difficult to retrieve the bodies from it. Both the US and UK seem to protect sunken military vessels for this reason.
- nitwit005 10y agoSo are crashed cars. When we find them in the wilderness, we take the bodies out, drag them off, and scrap them.