I couldn’t help but notice that the American treasure—hunting firm Odyssey Marine Exploration is at it again this week—joining forces with a new corporate partner to scour the seafloor off North Carolina in search of a Colonial merchant ship and its cargo of gold. Odyssey, as you may recall, is a Florida-based company specializing in deep-water shipwrecks. It has both an obsession for corporate secrecy and a flamboyant talent for making headlines.

For those who missed all the controversy over the past few years, here’s a brief primer.   In 2002, Odyssey quietly struck a deal with Britain’s Ministry of Defence to salvage a 17th century warship, HMS Sussex, which supposedly carried bullion worth nearly $4 billion today to the seafloor off Gibraltar. The treasure has as yet to be raised. In 2005, Odyssey turned its attention to the coast of Georgia, where it found a Civil-War-era wreck, SS Republic, and stripped it of 51,000 gold and silver coins and other artifacts. The company then began selling off many to collectors. Finally, last year, Odyssey raised 500,000 silver coins from a shipwreck—which it calls “Black Swan”—off the Gibraltar coast, a find company officials called the largest haul of coins ever retrieved from an ancient shipwreck. Now both Spain and Peru have filed major lawsuits against Odyssey, claiming ownership of the mysterious “Black Swan” and its cargo. 

Like many others interested in nautical archaeology, I have been following Odyssey closely in recent years. This week I read a detailed motion that Spain filed concerning the identity of the “Black Swan.” I think it sheds much fascinating light on Odyssey’s methods.

To begin with, the motion alleges that “Black Swan” is a very important 19th century Spanish warship, Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, which sank off Gibraltar in 1804 during a fierce naval battle with British ships.  At the time, Mercedes was carrying more than 900,000 coins from Peru and Uruguay.

Spain contends that Odyssey began targeting the Spanish warship in 2005, commissioning extensive historical research on Mercedes.  A year later, in November 2006, the company requested consent from Spanish authorities to recover and sell artifacts from historical shipwrecks of interest to Spain.  According to Spain, “Odyssey’s request was denied in no uncertain terms.” However, alleges Spain, this did not deter Odyssey from raising treasure from Mercedes. In mid-May, 2007, Odyssey chartered an aircraft to fly to Florida more than 500,000 coins and artifacts it had recovered from an undisclosed colonial shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean.

Odyssey, on the other hand, insists that it failed to find sufficient evidence to conclusively identify the ship that carried the coins. This is a critical point in maritime law, because if the ship is Mercedes, then Spain has a very strong claim to it. Simply put, countries retain ownership of their warships—sunken or otherwise—under the “Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.”

 As I discovered from reading the Spanish motion, two renowned nautical experts have concluded that wreck is indeed Mercedes. Admiral Teodoro de Leste, director of the Institute of Naval History and Culture in Spain, for example, analyzed the historical data on where Mercedes sank. He determined that the likely location matched the coordinates of Odyssey’s mystery wreck. Marine archaeologist James Delgado, president of the Institute of Nautical Archaeology in Texas, examined Odyssey’s own photographs and videos of the wreck site. He also made some compelling observations. First of all, Delgado points out that the site is a shipwreck—complete with hull remains, parts of a ship’s riggings, anchors, cannons, and the like—rather than the vestiges of jettisoned cargo from an unknown vessel, as Odyssey has suggested. Moreover, Delgado notes that the wreck bore a distinctive copper sheathing—just as Mercedes did—and that coins from the wreck ranged in date from 1773 to 1804, the year the Mercedes sank.  Finally, as both De Leste and Delgado observed, the wreck site contained two obsolete bronze cannons, known as “culebrinas.” Mercedes is known to have carried two of these cannons.

Did Odyssey knowingly plunder Mercedes, a warship belonging to Spain? That, of course, is a matter for a U.S. District Court to decide. But I think Odyssey is facing some heavy seas.

This entry was posted by Heather Pringle on Friday, October 17, 2008. You can leave a response below (all comments are moderated before posting).

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