The National Museum of Ireland (NMI) protested to the arts and heritage department after part of the Lusitania shipwreck was dropped to the sea bed during an unsupervised dive last summer.
Raghnall Ó Floinn, the director of the NMI, wrote on July 14, the day of the dive off the west Cork coast, complaining that the museum had not been consulted about the lifting of certain obligations from the dive licence.
“I have just been informed that in the course of today’s unsupervised operation involving the retrieval of the Lusitania’s telegraph and pedestal, the telegraph has been dropped by the divers [while] being lifted from the water to the dive vessel,” Ó Floinn told Terry Allen, the director of national monuments at the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs.
Saying he was “shocked” by the 90-metre fall and by the damage to the bridge telegraph machine, which was brought ashore on a second attempt, Ó Floinn wrote: “This is the consequence of permitting such work to be undertaken without the appropriate archaeological methodology in place.”
The Lusitania, a Cunard passenger liner torpedoed by Germany during the First World War, was declared an underwater heritage site under the National Monuments Act by Michael D Higgins, as heritage minister, in 1995.
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The attack on May 7, 1915, killed 1,198 passengers and crew, and acted as a catalyst for America to enter the war.
All diving activity on the wreck, which is 11 miles south of Kinsale lighthouse, must be licensed by the department. It was a condition of the last licence, issued to Gregg Bemis, an 88-year-old US millionaire who owns the wreck, that an archaeologist should attend each dive. That licence expired in December 2015.
According to Ó Floinn’s letter, the July dive took place without a project archaeologist being present.
“Our view is that the supervision of a customised method statement for this particular dive project by a project archaeologist is the core, essential condition for the granting of a licence by the minister,” he said.
“It was on this basis the [NMI] agreed somewhat reluctantly to the raising of archaeological objects from the site.”
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Ó Floinn asked for reassurance that “this turn of events can be understood as exceptional and is not representative of a major change of policy in relation to the protection of underwater archaeological heritage in Irish waters”.
An NMI spokeswoman said: “We understand that a response to the director’s correspondence of July 14 was sent by Mr Allen, but as yet we have not received this letter.”
Yesterday the department supplied The Sunday Times with a copy of a letter dated July 19 from Allen to Ó Floinn denying there had been any “shift in policy with the licence”. Allen said two licences were issued in April for the July dive, each containing 20 conditions.
“The licensee made a strong case to the department that prevailing conditions were unlikely to facilitate a prior survey, as had been envisaged by the licence,” he said. The department had agreed to the dive proceeding without the survey on the grounds of “exceptional circumstances” and on a “once off basis”, Allen said.
Peadar Tóibín, a Sinn Fein TD and chairman of the Oireachtas arts and heritage committee, has put questions about the July dive to Heather Humphreys, the arts and heritage minister.
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“In [that] instance, the underwater archaeology unit of my department, under the remit of the acting chief archaeologist, contributed in full to the consideration of the application in question and to the comprehensive terms and conditions attached to the licence,” Humphreys told him.
“I am satisfied the licence issued was appropriate to the circumstances and properly reflected the input of the professional archaeologists in my department. I believe the approach taken is consistent with the policy of licence input and supervision by my department. Ultimately, an important recovery was made in this case, which will be available to the public once conservation work is completed.”
Last year Bemis said a forensic dive he had planned for the centenary of the sinking of the Lusitania in 2015 could not proceed because of what he called “impossible conditions” being laid down by the department, including indemnity for the minister and any items recovered.
Paddy O’Sullivan, a retired professional diver and author of The Sinking of the Lusitania: Unravelling the Mysteries, wrote to Humphreys last year asking that the dive restrictions be eased.
“They’re padlocking history,” he said. “If that rule had applied in Egypt, Howard Carter would not have been able to bring the treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb to the world.”
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In its collection, the NMI has a life-jacket, a buoy and an oar previously recovered from the Lusitania.