The RMS Titanic was at her time, the largest passenger steamship in the world; and although her size in modern times has come to be easily surmounted, the magnitude of her presence can and will never be because her devastated maiden voyage. Though she lays at rest, embedded deep into the ocean’s floor and amongst great threats of decay from underwater microbes that eats away at her iron, the RMS Titanic lives gloriously in our memories; her tragedy romanticized and further made legend by blockbuster movies such as that by director James Cameron depicting her sealed fate.
The rediscovery of the RMS Titanic back in 1985 launched a debate over ownership of the wreck and the valuable items inside. It was a long and painful process that ultimately saw the RMS Titanic Inc., a subsidiary of Premier Exhibitions Inc. awarded ownership and salvaging rights by the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on 7 June 1994. Since 1987over 5,500 historic objects have been salvaged from the tragic watery grave. Most of the objects now lay as part of museum exhibits but some are part of private collections while others are ‘recycled’.
Yes, parts of the tragic ship wreck that carried so many secrets and hosted so many memories has been stripped down and reduced to its bear essence – iron/steel and recycled to now sit on wrists as watches. It is difficult to say if it is agreeable that the RMS Titanic, a ship of such grandeur and significance (it is in truth it is the grave of many lost lives) should be have its parts ‘recycled’ as though it were common waste because it would seem disrespectful, as though it were a derision.
But perhaps the fact that these watches are part of a limited collection under named Titanic-DNA (2012 pieces only) by luxury watch designer Romain Jerome (part of the DNS of Legends Collection) and therefore only affordable to the wrists of the rich might give some peace to the mind as it would seem to have returned/restored the RMS Titanic back to glory days of being an exclusive luxury.
I have seen the watches and they are beautiful. There’s just something haunting about them with their rusted steel bezel that resulted of the extraordinary fusion between authentic steel from the wreck lying 3,840 metres under the sea, and steel supplied by the Harland & Wolff shipyards in Belfast, the makers of the RMS Titanic.
The hands of the watch are inspired by the Titanic’s anchor and rotate on a dial of deep black achieved with coal collected from the legendary wreck itself, whilst the small seconds hand at 9 o’clock evoke the counters used on the steam engine dials.
Under the DNA of Legends Collection, Romain Jerome has also ‘recycled’ parts of the Apollo XI spacecraft to come out with their Moon Dust-DNA Collection (only 1969 pieces are made).
