It's very sad, but the Titanic will one day be unrecognizable, just a pile of rusty rubble on the ocean floor. Todays salvage technology and the hostile environment in which she rests ensures an inevitable and tragic end for the "ship of dreams".

But it's no good us dreaming about raising her... the hulk is too far underwater, too deeply buried in the silt on the seabed, and too badly corroded to survive any attempt at salvage.

Remember when George Tulloch tried to raise the "Big Piece"?

A single piece of hull plating weighing about twenty tons was almost salvaged by attaching huge flexible tanks of diesel fuel to it. The diesel fuel, being lighter than water, raised the chunk of hull alright, but the problems of retrieving it from where it hung just below the surface on the lines connecting it to the the tanks proved too difficult.

The "Big Piece" broke free, and now lies once more in the darkness and cold of the North Atlantic, far from its original resting place. And we can be thankful it didn't land on the wreck when it plumetted to the bottom...

Think about it. Twenty tons of hull plating was too much to handle. How about twenty thousand-odd tons of bow section?

Then there are the moral questions too. I'm willing to bet that the Titanic will crumble on the ocean floor. Sad - but unchangeable.