ABSTRACT
Maritime law, broadly speaking, covers all aspects of commercial shipping and international trade, as well as the law of the sea. However, the area of maritime law that is most closely connected to heritage is the law of wreck and underwater cultural heritage (UCH). Wreck covers the remains of vessels, and in some countries, aircraft, which have sunk or washed ashore. UCH includes wrecks, but also the remains of structures permanently covered by water. These can range in size from the city of Heracleion, near the Canopic mouth of the Nile in Egypt, to fish traps constructed by Māori on the coasts of New Zealand. Wrecks and other UCH are usually identified as heritage by the length of time they have been wrecked or submerged. If the site is in the waters of a state party to the 2001 UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, the designation is a rolling 100 years. As wrecks present a preserved time capsule, they are of particular value to heritage workers. It is critical that they are aware of the applicable national and international legal regimes. In addition to the relevant heritage law regimes, wreck and UCH also involve a tangled web of property rights: wrecks will originally have had owners and probably insurers, and the crew and passengers may have lost personal possessions which may or may not be insured. In the initial stages, the law of salvage may also be involved. This chapter will cover the applicable national and international legal regimes, as well as the ethical issues arising from dealing with wrecks and objects removed from them. Should wrecks and the objects in them remain in situ, and, if objects are removed, should the removal be commercialised? Case studies examined will include the ninth-century CE Belitung wreck and the issues arising from the controversial recovery of its Tang Dynasty cargo; the Titanic and the issues arising from the claim of jurisdiction and decisions of the US District Court, Eastern District of Virginia; the Ventnor in New Zealand waters, with the skeletons of Chinese immigrants and whether they should remain in situ or be repatriated to China; and the May 2019 review of the 2001 UNESCO Convention and its implications for future heritage matters.
