Written by Dev Veer Vacher, a grade 9 student

Virginia: A federal judge in the U.S. state of Virginia approved the plea of a salvage firm to retrieve a  wireless telegraph machine called Marconi from the wreckage of the sunken ship, RMS Titanic on Tuesday, May 19. This plea was approved as the telegraph machine is seen to be historically and culturally important. It was used to send the final distress calls from the ill-fated ship, which saved 700 lives. The company, RMS Titanic Inc., plans to use an unmanned submersible to recover the artifact.

The Titanic was a British “Olympic-class” passenger steam-liner operated by White Star Line. It was built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland. Construction had started on 31st March 1909, and it was launched on 31st May 1911. It was the largest sea-worthy vessel at the time, measuring nearly 900 feet in length and close to 100 feet in width. It was seen as the epitome of luxury and was meant for the rich and famous, who wanted to travel in style. Declared an “unsinkable” by Phillip Franklin, President of White Star Line,  Titanic’s safety features were far ahead of its time. However, the ship could not be saved from the inevitable disaster that soon followed its departure from Southampton on its maiden voyage.

On the 14^th of April 1912, at  11:40 PM local time, the Titanic struck its starboard quarter into a gigantic iceberg. The collision tore open its hull, flooding five of its sixteen watertight compartments. It was to prove to be a fatal accident because the ship was designed to survive the flooding of a maximum of four of its compartments. Two hours and forty minutes later, the Titanic was completely under the water, taking more than a thousand passengers with it – of the  2,224 passengers on board, only 710 survived. Today,  the wreckage lies over three kilometres below the ocean’s surface. No more than a handful of expeditions to the famed wreckage have been carried out.

The Marconi Wireless Telegraph machine was created by an Irish-Italian inventor, Guglielmo Marconi. RMS Titanic Inc. wishes to retrieve this masterpiece before it is decayed by the harsh saltwater of the north Atlantic Ocean. It could hold critical information on what happened in the last moments of the ship. Losing it would really be a shame.

Know all about the Titanic, the people on the ship and its history here

Written by Dev Veer Vacher, a grade 9 student

Want to write for I Kid You Not? We publish children’s writing.Reach out at: ikidyounott@yahoo.com