Now there are moves to make our marine cultural heritage part of the World
Heritage regime, but they face a difficult passage. In October, a UNESCO Charter
(a consultative document) that was ratified in 1966 will become a legally
binding International Convention for the Protection of the Underwater Cultural
Heritage. Protection will be extended to inland waters, shallow seas and the
ocean deeps, and archaeologists will be allowed to unlock the evidence of past
civilisations and present this material and knowledge for all humankind. With an
estimated 3 million “heritage” wrecks worldwide, ratifying the charter will
surely be a worthy way to usher in the new millennium.

Like motherhood, who could be against it? The moves towards a convention have
been given added urgency by the technological advances that enable remote
working at greater depths than divers and crewed submarines can go. These tools
are already being used by commercial companies to exploit wrecks in
international waters at depths of several thousand metres.

In addition, new harbours and marinas, oil pipelines and undersea cables all
affect the archaeological potential of coasts, river banks and even the deep-sea
floor. To take an extreme example, Israel—which is rich in submerged
ancient port structures—is heading for a solid concrete shoreline, a
senior figure has warned.

Some traditions of the sea are not helpful. Fishermen and sports divers
hunting for souvenirs shelter behind the “finders keepers” custom. So cannon,
porcelain, early instruments and amphorae end up in homes as decorations. The
story that they would have told in context is lost forever, while prising these
artefacts loose does untold damage to what is left behind. Some salvage
operations even use dynamite to free treasures. Archaeology involves the
interpretation of objects in their context, not simply displaying them in a
glass case. On-site procedures are crucial, but archaeology also relies on
painstaking work in the lab—recording, conserving and analysing.

These archaeological requirements are catered for by the proposals, but for
the convention to have full effect more specialist archaeologists and divers
must be recruited, conservation facilities must be expanded and developed, and
new “heritage” finance found. Most important of all, sea-blind governments will
have to be convinced and national laws changed.

One of the more distasteful features of the present situation is the way
developing countries with weak economies are offered a cut of the proceeds,
possibly amounting to millions of dollars, by foreign salvage companies in
exchange for rights to rich historical wrecks in local waters.

So far, the negotiations surrounding the convention have been driven by
lawyers. The input from archaeologists—marine or otherwise—has been
muted. Neither Britain nor the US fielded archaeologists at the key Experts
Meeting in July, leaving the powerful and articulate lobbies of commercial and
salvage interests to make their case unchallenged.

UNESCO has made a direct appeal to archaeologists to play their part in the
deliberations. They are, after all, the practitioners with experience and
knowledge of what is involved. The convention opens up wonderful possibilities
for them and their science.

The voices of objection are shrill compared with the resonances of the
convention. What better sailing directions could there be for the convention’s
uncharted journey into the future than the words of veteran American ship-saver
Peter Stanford? “. . . these ships should be allowed to complete their
unfinished voyage and unload their cargo of knowledge.”

FOR most people shipwrecks are an unknown part of Britain’s national
heritage—despite the fact that there may be as many as 80 000 “heritage”
wrecks strewn around the coast. And there is little written about these, so it’s
a pleasure to get a fine book like Historic Shipwrecks, which deals
with the 47 sites of historical, archaeological or artistic merit designated by
the 1973 Protection of Wrecks Act. Most of those licensed under the act to
explore wrecks are enthusiastic amateur divers working in their own time and
with their own money—and a great deal of both it takes.

But it’s well worth the effort. The find of numerous Bronze Age axe heads on
the seabed off Dover, for example, reveals a brisk cross-Channel trade in scrap
bronze by 1150 BC. And this new picture of Middle Bronze Age sea-going is
underpinned by a recent find of similar date: a superb oak-planked sea-going
craft with timbers shaped to fit without benefit of nail or peg and, at 15
metres long, a substantial cargo capacity.

Elsewhere in the book, strange lead-covered cubes, found aboard a
Batavia-bound East Indiaman that sank off the Shetlands, offer a slightly
bizarre perspective on early Dutch colonists, They are heads of golf clubs,
attesting to a craze for golf about 1664. More seriously among the fingerprints
of history retrieved from the seabed, cargoes of base metal have proved a key
research tool. They illuminate the arrival of new metals and technologies, such
as distilled zinc from China, and the huge expansion of trade by water which
transformed post-Medieval life in Europe.

Almost in spite of itself, the wrecks act has struck lucky. Valerie Fenwick
and Alison Gale have done it, the investigators and the reading public an
inestimable service in putting the material together in this lively, learned,
timely and attractive volume. My only cavil is that the plans of the wrecks are
too small.

They make it crystal clear, however, that the act is inadequate because it
prevents Britain from qualifying for UNESCO’s Convention for the Worldwide
Protection and Management of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, due in October
1999. What a disgrace!

Lumb was aware of this: ‘I suffer from a pigeon-hole problem . . .’
she would say. Classed as ‘commercial art’ or ‘historical recording’, it
was easy for the critics to dismiss her work and to avoid writing about
it. Despite the propaganda on the public understanding of science and acres
of print trying to bridge the gap between the two cultures, the art world
has remained leery of industrial and engineering subjects. The divide between
art and science so apparent in the perception of Lumb’s work, says Miller,
seems if anything to be growing deeper.

Unfashionable Lumb’s work may be, but unpopular it is not. She has always
sold well and had a strong personal following. In recent years the success
of the ‘business art’ development, where established artists are commissioned
to provide appropriate art for offices and boardrooms, has demonstrated
a demand for figurative work unrecognised by art critics. Here Lumb was
supreme. ‘Invited to record she comes away with art . . .’ as a commentator
wrote some years ago (��è����Ƶ, 26 September 1975). She had the capacity
to find a perspective, an angle or a time of day to make the most unpromising
subject interesting, even dramatic. If she could not find this point of
inspiration she would turn down the commission. Lumb ran on excitement
(a favourite word of hers) just as motorcars run on petrol.

‘Other people have painted nuts and bolts because they were asked to
– I paint them because I want to.’ Have other figurative painters been lazy?
Working in the textile mills and steel foundries, in the London sewers,
the main towers and bascule chambers of London’s Tower Bridge, and on the
quarries and slag heaps of Yorkshire was physically demanding and sometimes
dangerous. Immersion in her subject and its surrounding was total and she
considered it paramount – to the extent that she refused to plug her ears
to the din in a steel mill and sat within feet of the racing ropes in a
rope-race shaft.

In some telling slides Miller showed that the art/science divide scarcely
existed through most of the 19th century. Many of Lumb’s industrial themes
were common to earlier painters: she was by no means the only artist to
enjoy painting quarries, for instance. Several of the early watercolourists
including Turner, as well as some of the impressionists, relished industrial
smoke and funnels belching steam. In the early part of this century, Muirhead
Bone did many studies of building constructions and demolition sites in
the style of Piranesi.

Nevertheless, there is no record of any artist working in the sewers,
‘a magical world of half-light’, where she completed a series of 10 huge
gouaches. Nor are there parallels for the magnificent interiors of Tower
Bridge. The art critics often failed to handle these unconventional subjects
emerging through traditional painting techniques, particularly watercolour.
Here the public seems to be ahead of the critics.

Is the artist responsible for making the art or for the inspiration
behind the art? In Lumb’s case it is both; she was a superb technician.
Miller is clear too that Lumb’s contribution is to make a successful fusion
between art and science: ‘She took art into industry but synthesised that
industry into art.’ But even as one reaches this conclusion a voice is raised:
‘Is it not technology that we are talking about?’ Science in this context
has become a catch-all term and here smudges the issue . . . if anything,
there is a deeper divide between the arts and technology and even less understanding.
Where science is alien and misunderstood, technology is patronised and despised.

The visual arts at present play only a small part in healing this rift.
Yet the eye is probably the most potent teacher of all. Lumb, always practical,
asked that all her unsold work (and she was prolific) go into a trust to
endow a scholarship for a student of painting in her own tradition. She
herself taught art for 11 years. In a radio interview, shortly before she
died last year, she said: ‘I believe I have taught more since I stopped
teaching than I ever did when I taught.’

Angela Croome is a science writer and executive trustee of the Edna
Lumb Artistic Trust.

The Edna Lumb Artistic Trust (Registered Charity no. 1015970) may be
found at: Flat 2, 14 The Paragon, London SE3 OPA. Tel: 081 852 8189.