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Legal Fight Surrounds Shipwreck Treasure
• Spanish government challenges ownership of record treasure
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By
The Minx, contributing editor
Thursday,
12 July, 2007
update: 18 July 2007
Spanish police boats intercepted and searched the Ocean Alert, an Oydssey Marine Salvage ship, in the western Mediterranean this week looking for signs of any treasure trove being removed from local wrecks. Nothing was found and the ship was allowed to proceed. The news item about this on European tv contained some limited footage of coins being found in a wreck on the ocean floor but it was not clear if this was the recent haul. It seems unlikely as the coins shown were not encrusted with any scale or growth as would be likely if they had been buried in the ocean floor for 250 years.
Now read on
A record shipwreck haul of 17th century silver coins has pitted the Spanish government against the salvagers, Odyssey Marine Exploration of Tampa, Florida. Details of where the treasure was found remain a mystery as both sides square up for a legal battle.
Odyssey announced in May, to major headlines world wide that it had recovered 17 tons in silver coins and other artifacts, worth an estimated $500 from a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean code name — the "Black Swan."
"The only thing we're saying right now is that we've really recovered about a half-million coins, and a number of artifacts that are from the colonial period ... that were in the Atlantic Ocean," said Greg Stemm, one of the founders of Odyssey Marine.
However Odyssey Marine announced it had found the treasure only after it had unloaded the silver coins in Gibraltar, a small island just off the coast many hundreds of miles south of the first presumed site of the Black Swan, off the west coast of England.
Gibraltar, a small island at the western entrance to the Mediterranean sea, is run by the British but in Spanish territorial waters.
Odyssey had been diving in the waters off Gibraltar with permission from the Spanish and British governments. The shipping lanes in the area are the site of many famous and valuable wrecks, but the company had not been given permission to remove anything from the sites and the Spanish government regards such finds as Spanish property.
Greg Stemm of Odyssey, said the company has been secretive to prevent unscrupulous salvage operators from looting the site, and because it is still researching the find. "I can tell you that as of today, I don't know what shipwreck it is. And so I don't think anybody else would know," he said.
Spanish threaten to intercept Odyssey ships
Stemm's comments have not satisfied the government of Spain. Spanish officials have filed a claim against the company and are pressing for answers. Spain's minister of culture has even threatened to use the country's navy to intercept and search Odyssey Marine's ships when they leave Gibraltar.
Odyssey Marine has agreed to make more information available on July 23, in response to the claim filed by Spain in a U.S. district court. But it is not yet clear whether the company will verify the ship's identity at that time.
"Sovereign Immunity " claimed by Spain over Spanish treasure trove
Spain has retained lawyer Jim Goold, who has successfully represented the country in other admiralty cases.
In previous cases involving the Juno and the La Galga — two Spanish warships found by a salvage company in 1998 — U.S. courts have ruled in favour of Spain, saying that the ships and any treasure they contained did not belong to the salvage company.
Goold said the U.S. government supports a well-established principle called "sovereign immunity," which protects a government's right to its treasures lost at sea.
Stemm countered that his company does not go after ships which it can't keep. "We won't typically go and start work on a shipwreck if we think that the ship is subject to sovereign immunity," he said.
Stemm will not say what shipwreck his company was looking for when it found the Black Swan, or what part of the Atlantic Ocean it was in. He won't even say what nation minted the silver coins that were found in the wreckage.
British speculation
In Britain, there is widespread speculation that the ship is actually the "Merchant Royal." The 17th-century British merchant ship was carrying Spanish silver and gold when it sank off the coast of Cornwall, a county on the southwest edge of England. Odyssey had permission to dive in the area where it sank, which is not believed to be in British coastal waters, although it could be in territorial waters round the Isles of Scilly, a small group of islands 30 miles off the western tip of Southern England.
The British receiver of wrecks appeared, at the time of the original announcement, to share Odyssey’s view that past owners had no claim over wrecks in the open seas, but this is clearly not a view shared by the Spanish. It is also possible that the salvaged ship was a chartered ship insured with Lloyds of London which still exists.
Historian questions who owns maritime history
Maritime historian James Delgado, head of the Institute of Nautical Archeology, an educational and scientific group that has explored dozens of shipwrecks over the past 30 years, said the question of ownership has never been properly answered. "I think we really need to look at the question of who owns the past," he said.
Delgado questioned Odyssey Marine's practice of selling some of the artifacts it brings up from the ocean depths. He said that turns history into a commodity. "If all shipwrecks are viewed merely as a commodity and a source of potential treasure, they're the only archaeological resource in the world that would be hit in this way and taken apart," Delgado said. "We wouldn't tolerate that on land."
This one could run and run……………..
The Naked Reader 2007
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