St. Pete Times Article...
For treasure seeker, a possible new find
Needing a big payday, Odyssey Marine Exploration of Tampa may have found a valuable shipwreck off the British coast.
By SCOTT BARANCIK, Times Staff Writer
Published October 6, 2006
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A Tampa treasure-hunting company whose recovery of a valuable shipwreck in 2003 provided a glorious, if brief, respite from years of frustration says it may have found another sunken treasure near the mouth of the English Channel.
Odyssey Marine Exploration recently told a federal judge in Tampa that a wreck it discovered about 1,000 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean this summer could be a 17th-century merchant vessel that sank with “valuable cargo” on board.
In keeping with the treasure hunter’s tradition of guarding its finds, Odyssey’s court filings provided no details on the ship’s likely name, country of origin or wreck date. The company merely identified a point on the globe, said the wreck site was within a 5-mile radius of it, and handed the U.S. Marshals Office as evidence of the find a bottle it recovered from the site. Co-founder Greg Stemm declined to comment Friday when asked about the ship.
“When we’re ready,” he said, “we’ll be announcing a bunch more information.”
It’s a welcome turn of events for Odyssey shareholders, particularly those who withstood years of failure before its 2003 discovery of the SS Republic, a sidewheel steamer that sank 100 miles off the coast of Georgia in 1865. Odyssey eventually sold the gold and silver coins it found on board for tens of millions of dollars, thus replenishing its coffers, credibility and stock price.
Since then, however, the company has had another round of setbacks. Though lucrative, the Republic ultimately yielded just one-quarter of the coins the company’s research suggested would be found. Last year, Odyssey’s inaugural shipwreck museum closed just 90 minutes after its grand opening in New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. Co-founder, chairman and CEO John Morris took temporary leave from his executive posts after being diagnosed with cancer. And Odyssey’s imminent plans to excavate a ship believed to be the HMS Sussex -- which sank in 1694, the company says, with millions or possibly billions of dollars in coins aboard -— was postponed after years of complex international negotiations when a Spanish regional authority jumped in with a last-minute claim.
Such is life at what may be the country’s only publicly traded company of its kind. Odyssey’s hope of achieving a consistent cash flow by having several projects in the pipeline at once has not yet materialized. Still, the company has made the best of its situation, such as performing sonar scans of the ocean floor in high-traffic areas when weather or legal conflicts interrupt. Odyssey wrote the Securities and Exchanges Commission in 2005 that it hoped to locate and salvage five separate wrecks it identified in the English Channel.
James Delgado, executive director of the Institute for Nautical Technology at Texas A&M University, said a large number of ships wreck in the busy corridor north of the Bay of Biscay. “You are at a crossroads of maritime trade that has been so for centuries,” he said. “These are not easy waters.”
Odyssey’s request for exclusive access to and control of the wreck site will be discussed at a court hearing Tuesday. Under international maritime law, salvors typically request such permission from their own court system or that of the jurisdiction nearest the wreckage.
Even if the federal court approves, it could be months or even years before the company is permitted to send remote-operated vehicles down to begin sifting the wreckage. Odyssey could face legal claims or challenges from parties such as the ship’s country of origin, the descendants of its insurers or owners and archaeologists who consider for-profit salvage an abomination.
And though Odyssey says the ship lies 100 meters beyond any country’s territorial boundaries, and thus, presumably, in international waters, history suggests the nearest government will make a claim anyway.Odyssey’s stock closed Friday at $2.49, down six cents a share. It has fallen 30 percent this year.
