The caretakers of the Titanic are battening down the hatches for a court battle to prevent four artifacts recovered from its wreckage site from going up for auction.
A British gold coin, two US bank notes and a block of coal retrieved decades ago from the detritus of the doomed passenger liner wrongly fell into the hands of a company that is trying to auction them off, claims RMS Titanic Inc., which owns the salvage rights to the ship and is suing to stop the auction.
RMS Titanic is the “steward and custodian” of the wreck, and claims in Manhattan Supreme Court papers that one of its former execs, G. Michael Harris, took the artifacts, which were then sold off to Mobile Grocers of America Inc. when Harris later filed for bankruptcy.
Harris claimed the four items had been gifted to him by another Titanic exec, George Tulloch, with whom he frequently butted heads, the group charges in court papers.
RMS Titanic contends Tulloch had no right to gift the artifacts to anyone.
The coin and the paper currency were recovered during a 1987 expedition to the wreck site in the North Atlantic, and the chunk of coal was retrieved during a 1994 dive, according to the legal filing.
A preview by UES auction house Guernsey’s trumpeted that the items — billed as “The Saga of Four Titanic Treasures” — would be part of an online sale in the “late spring, 2022.”
Guernsey’s agreed to put the auction on hold after lawyers from RMS Titanic Inc reached out, according to court papers.
“We are waiting to hear the outcome of this legal action,” Guernsey’s President Arlan Ettinger told The Post this week.
RMS Titanic wants a judge to declare it the rightful owner of the artifacts and wants them returned.
The Titanic sank off the coast of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic Ocean after striking an iceberg on April 15, 1912. The wreck was discovered on Sept. 1, 1985 at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, some 13,400 feet underwater.
Seven expeditions to the wreck site — in 1987, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2004 — have recovered more than 5,000 artifacts, the suit says.
Neither lawyers for RMS Titanic nor defendant Mobile Grocers of America LLC returned messages.
