My Art Will Go On: Titanic Artifacts May Soon Be Auctioned

May 6, 2026

More than a century after the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic, the company that owns exclusive salvage rights to the shipwreck wants to auction about 100 artifacts raised from the ocean floor during the first recovery effort nearly 40 years ago.

The doomed vessel’s wreckage has been an object of fascination and controversy since it was found in 1985, and the newly proposed sale is already stirring fresh debate over the fate of the thousands of items pulled from the site.

When the company, R.M.S. Titanic, last proposed selling artifacts, in 2016, it was struggling through bankruptcy and the plan drew objections from the U.S. and French governments, as well as from UNESCO and other cultural institutions.

The latest potential sale was proposed in a document that R.M.S. submitted in March to the federal court in Norfolk, Va., which oversees the recovery effort and may have to approve the auction. The company placed the filing under seal, in an effort to keep the proposed sale secret while the court considered the request, but the judge decided it should be made public.

It is not known which items the company hopes to sell. Its website includes pictures and descriptions of “our top 25 artifacts.” Several from the first salvage expedition, in 1987, are on the list, including a bronze cherub statue from the ship’s Grand Staircase, a bell from the ship’s crow’s nest, a pendant necklace, a safe, a pocket watch and a White Star Line uniform button.

The Titanic, which set sail from England bound for New York, sank in international waters on that fateful night in 1912. It went down about 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, and sits on the ocean floor, 2½ miles below the surface.

The shipwreck was discovered in 1985 and the salvage company, under a different name, was born soon after. About 5,500 artifacts were raised from the seabed around the Titanic in seven expeditions from 1987 to 2004. Since then, the company has also conducted two scientific expeditions but has not recovered new artifacts.

R.M.S. Titanic makes money from public exhibitions that, the company says, have drawn more than 35 million visitors worldwide. But the company has experienced financial difficulties through the years. It emerged from bankruptcy in 2019, under new ownership, and is currently being sued for more than $4 million by a contractor.

The U.S. District Court in Norfolk has overseen the wreck’s salvage since 1992. Norfolk has a large community of maritime lawyers and many famous shipwreck cases have been heard in the city’s federal court.

The first Titanic salvage expedition in 1987, a joint American-French endeavor, raised 1,800 artifacts, and it is those pieces that are contemplated for auction. Recent sales of Titanic-related items have been quite lucrative. In April, a life jacket worn by a first-class passenger who survived the ship’s sinking sold for $906,000, and a gold pocket watch worn by John Jacob Astor IV when the ship sank sold for $800,000.

Much of the legal dispute surrounding the proposed auction has taken place out of public view, in sealed court documents. Some details have recently become public.

Two months ago, on March 6, R.M.S. Titanic filed a status report under seal with the court that included its intention to auction about 100 artifacts from the 1987 expedition. The company asked the judge to keep the report confidential, saying it contained business information that could be “highly damaging” if made public.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which monitors the Titanic’s salvage for the U.S. government, received a copy of the report and filed a response, also under seal, on March 31.

Two days later, the judge, Rebecca Beach Smith, issued an order, also under seal, stopping the salvage company from selling or marketing artifacts from the 1987 expedition until she could determine whether they were subject to the Norfolk court’s authority.

The proposed auction became public on April 21 when Judge Smith issued a public order concluding that the company’s auction plans should not remain confidential. “Of particular concern here, RMST seeks to seal the fact of its communicated intent to the court … to auction approximately 100 artifacts” salvaged in 1987, she wrote.

In this order, Judge Smith also revealed that NOAA, in its March 31 response, objected to the proposed auction, arguing that it violated previous court orders to keep the artifact collection intact. In 2018, Judge Smith ordered that any action that would break up the artifact collection “is subject to prior approval of this court.”

In a written statement to The New York Times, a lawyer for R.M.S. Titanic, Brian Wainger, said the company believes that “the law of the case permit the sale of these artifacts and that such sale is consistent with its obligations as a respectful steward of the artifacts collections.” Mr. Wainger declined to answer questions about why the company wanted to sell the artifacts and which ones were to be sold.

The U.S. attorney representing NOAA declined to comment on the case.

An element of the disagreement over the artifacts stems from the French government’s involvement in the 1987 expedition.

Those artifacts were initially brought to France, and a French court gave the company title to them in 1993, with the stipulation that they would not be sold. The artifacts were later brought to the United States, but France has remained keenly interested in their fate.

When R.M.S. Titanic chartered a French ship for the 1987 expedition, the charter agreement stated that any artifacts raised from the wreck “would not be sold but would only be used for exhibition purposes,” according to a court filing in 2016.

Also, R.M.S. Titanic is bound by covenants and conditions negotiated with the federal government in 2010. Those covenants state that the Titanic artifacts will be “kept together and intact and available to posterity for public display and exhibition, historical review, scientific and scholarly research, and educational purposes.”

Additional details about the proposed auction may be made public soon. In her April 21 order, Judge Smith required R.M.S. Titanic to submit a public document with more information about the auction, including the number of artifacts to be sold, a description of them, notification to the French government and the fact that the U.S. government opposes the sale.

The last time R.M.S. Titanic proposed an artifact sale, during the company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, it proposed a “limited sale” of 10 to 20 artifacts from the 1987 expedition to resolve the company’s financial problems. That prompted objections from around the world. A U.S. bankruptcy judge barred the sale and the company later was sold to a group of investors.

Today, R.M.S. Titanic owes more than $4 million to a Louisiana firm, C-Innovation, which leased a ship to the salvage company for a 2024 scientific expedition, according to a lawsuit filed in the state in August. The salvage company did not raise artifacts then, but videotaped the wreck and collected scientific data.

C-Innovation is now seeking possession of R.M.S. Titanic’s hard drives with video footage and other data from the expedition. The case is pending in federal court. A lawyer for C-Innovation, Thomas Kent Morrison, said he hoped proceeds from any artifacts sold would be used to pay the salvage company’s debts to C-Innovation.

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