piratediver
Sr. Member
£254m battle of the Black Swan
> Dispute over sunken ship involves US firm, Spain and Peru, and raises
> British fears
> Sam Jones
> Monday March 24, 2008
> Guardian
> The crew of Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes must have thought their ship
> had fought its final battle on the morning of October 5 1804. A little
> after 10 o'clock, their seven-month voyage from Peru, via Uruguay, to
> almost within sight of the Iberian peninsula came to an end with the
> British broadside that sent the treasure-laden frigate and 200 souls to
> the bottom of the Atlantic and brought Spain into the Napoleonic wars.
> But after lying undisturbed on the seabed off Portugal for more than two
> centuries, the Mercedes is now at the centre of the biggest treasure
> grab in history.
> The battle for ownership of its £254m cargo of gold and silver coins,
> which has already pitted a US treasure-hunting company against the
> Spanish government, has been joined by a third party. An emotive
> campaign is welling up from within Peru to reclaim the treasures the
> conquistadores and their descendants took by force over the course of
> almost three centuries.
> Last May, the Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration announced that it
> had recovered 500,000 gold and silver coins weighing 17 tonnes from a
> wreck in international waters in the Atlantic and flown them back to the
> US from Gibraltar.
> The company has refused to speculate on the identity - or nationality -
> of the vessel and has further ratcheted up the intrigue by referring to
> the find only as the Black Swan.
> Despite the secrecy and Odyssey's unwillingness to confirm anything
> about its discovery, the Spanish government is convinced that the Black
> Swan is Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes.
> Spain is so sure of its claim to the ship's treasure that over the last
> six months it has dispatched gunboats to search one of Odyssey's salvage
> vessels in the Mediterranean and lawyers to Florida to fight its corner
> in the courts.
> After months of legal wrangling, Odyssey has agreed to reveal the
> wreck's location to Spain, hand over photographs and documents, and
> allow experts access to the artefacts it has recovered.
> Spain's case is simple enough: if Odyssey has found the Spanish ship,
> Madrid wants its cut. The treasure hunters, however, are confident that
> they will profit whatever happens.
> Natja Igney, Odyssey's head of corporate communications, said the
> company was expecting a number of claims, but added: "It is the opinion
> of our legal counsel that even if a claim is deemed to be legitimate by
> the courts, Odyssey should still receive title to a significant majority
> of the recovered goods."
> The Mercedes was one of a squadron of four Spanish frigates returning to
> Cádiz from what was then the vice royalty of Peru with a cargo of
> millions of gold and silver coins.
> The quartet was ambushed by a British squadron off Cape Santa María on
> the Portuguese coast and the Mercedes blown to pieces after a volley of
> shots ripped through the ship's magazine.
> The other three Spanish ships - the Fama, the Medea and the Santa Clara
> - were taken to Plymouth, relieved of their cargo and pressed into
> service as Royal Navy vessels. Two months later, Spain declared war on
> Great Britain.
> Since news of the find emerged last year, some Spanish newspapers have
> denounced treasure-hunting outfits as "the new pirates of this century"
> who are hell-bent on ransacking Spain's archaeological heritage for profit.
> But Madrid and Odyssey are now facing growing calls from Peru for some,
> or all, of the Mercedes' cargo to be returned to the South American
> country.
> Peruvian campaigners say that because the gold and silver coins were
> probably minted from metal taken without permission by the Spaniards,
> they belong to the modern-day country, not its former colonial master.
> Last year, Peru's production minister, Rafael Rey, said it was only
> "logical" that his country would seek the treasure's return.
> Blanca Alva Guerrero, director of the defence of cultural patrimony at
> Peru's National Institute of Culture, said: "If we can establish that
> some or all of the recovered artefacts came from Peru, we are ready to
> reclaim them as material remnants of our past."
> She added that Peru had a legal right to recover any items deemed part
> of its "cultural heritage".
> Mariana Mould de Pease, a Peruvian historian who has successfully
> campaigned to oblige Yale University to return hundreds of artefacts
> taken from the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, said that although Spain
> had "acted duplicitously, and - where necessary - brutally" during the
> colonial period, she hoped a deal could be reached. "Given the
> historical ties between the two countries, I think Peru should join
> Spain in taking part in the scientific recovery of the ship's contents."
> She said that Italy's recent success in securing the return of Roman
> items from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty Museum in the US
> had "already influenced countries such as Peru when it comes to taking
> legal action founded on cultural restitution".
> Spain, however, has so far dismissed the Peruvian claim, saying that the
> Mercedes was sailing under a Spanish flag and pointing out that Peru did
> not exist as a country in 1804.
> Odyssey, meanwhile, remains confident of its legal position - and a 90%
> share of the proceeds from the ship.
> "If Peru or any other country believes [it has] a claim," said Igney,
> "it is invited to file it."
> The company may be optimistic, but the international tug-of-war over the
> wreck has brought the issue of profit-making firms' involvement in
> historical salvage back to the surface.
> "There's a world of difference between the archaeological approach and
> the treasure-hunting approach," said Dr Peter Marsden, a marine
> archaeologist and the founder of the Shipwreck and Coastal Heritage
> Centre in Hastings. "What we don't know about Odyssey is what they are
> doing, because they are keeping things very close to their chests. But
> they are making their money from the sale of historical items that
> really should be in museums."
> Odyssey's secretive behaviour has raised concerns in the archaeological
> community about the deal the British government has signed with the
> company to salvage HMS Sussex, an English warship which sank in the
> western Mediterranean in 1694 while carrying a large cargo of gold coins.
> A spokeswoman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it was
> confident that the contract required Odyssey to "respect the relevant
> international archaeological standards", adding: "We keep this under
> continual review."
> But as the first shots are fired in what could be a long legal battle
> for the cargo of the Mercedes, Marsden cannot help wondering whether the
> lustre of the treasure has blinded the world to the wreck's true value.
> "You have to remember that the ship was just carrying cargo from A to
> B," he says.
> "What was the purpose of the journey and of that money? What is its real
> story? The important thing is what it tells us about what was going on."
> guardian.co.uk (c) Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
Where will all this end?
Pirate Diver
> Dispute over sunken ship involves US firm, Spain and Peru, and raises
> British fears
> Sam Jones
> Monday March 24, 2008
> Guardian
> The crew of Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes must have thought their ship
> had fought its final battle on the morning of October 5 1804. A little
> after 10 o'clock, their seven-month voyage from Peru, via Uruguay, to
> almost within sight of the Iberian peninsula came to an end with the
> British broadside that sent the treasure-laden frigate and 200 souls to
> the bottom of the Atlantic and brought Spain into the Napoleonic wars.
> But after lying undisturbed on the seabed off Portugal for more than two
> centuries, the Mercedes is now at the centre of the biggest treasure
> grab in history.
> The battle for ownership of its £254m cargo of gold and silver coins,
> which has already pitted a US treasure-hunting company against the
> Spanish government, has been joined by a third party. An emotive
> campaign is welling up from within Peru to reclaim the treasures the
> conquistadores and their descendants took by force over the course of
> almost three centuries.
> Last May, the Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration announced that it
> had recovered 500,000 gold and silver coins weighing 17 tonnes from a
> wreck in international waters in the Atlantic and flown them back to the
> US from Gibraltar.
> The company has refused to speculate on the identity - or nationality -
> of the vessel and has further ratcheted up the intrigue by referring to
> the find only as the Black Swan.
> Despite the secrecy and Odyssey's unwillingness to confirm anything
> about its discovery, the Spanish government is convinced that the Black
> Swan is Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes.
> Spain is so sure of its claim to the ship's treasure that over the last
> six months it has dispatched gunboats to search one of Odyssey's salvage
> vessels in the Mediterranean and lawyers to Florida to fight its corner
> in the courts.
> After months of legal wrangling, Odyssey has agreed to reveal the
> wreck's location to Spain, hand over photographs and documents, and
> allow experts access to the artefacts it has recovered.
> Spain's case is simple enough: if Odyssey has found the Spanish ship,
> Madrid wants its cut. The treasure hunters, however, are confident that
> they will profit whatever happens.
> Natja Igney, Odyssey's head of corporate communications, said the
> company was expecting a number of claims, but added: "It is the opinion
> of our legal counsel that even if a claim is deemed to be legitimate by
> the courts, Odyssey should still receive title to a significant majority
> of the recovered goods."
> The Mercedes was one of a squadron of four Spanish frigates returning to
> Cádiz from what was then the vice royalty of Peru with a cargo of
> millions of gold and silver coins.
> The quartet was ambushed by a British squadron off Cape Santa María on
> the Portuguese coast and the Mercedes blown to pieces after a volley of
> shots ripped through the ship's magazine.
> The other three Spanish ships - the Fama, the Medea and the Santa Clara
> - were taken to Plymouth, relieved of their cargo and pressed into
> service as Royal Navy vessels. Two months later, Spain declared war on
> Great Britain.
> Since news of the find emerged last year, some Spanish newspapers have
> denounced treasure-hunting outfits as "the new pirates of this century"
> who are hell-bent on ransacking Spain's archaeological heritage for profit.
> But Madrid and Odyssey are now facing growing calls from Peru for some,
> or all, of the Mercedes' cargo to be returned to the South American
> country.
> Peruvian campaigners say that because the gold and silver coins were
> probably minted from metal taken without permission by the Spaniards,
> they belong to the modern-day country, not its former colonial master.
> Last year, Peru's production minister, Rafael Rey, said it was only
> "logical" that his country would seek the treasure's return.
> Blanca Alva Guerrero, director of the defence of cultural patrimony at
> Peru's National Institute of Culture, said: "If we can establish that
> some or all of the recovered artefacts came from Peru, we are ready to
> reclaim them as material remnants of our past."
> She added that Peru had a legal right to recover any items deemed part
> of its "cultural heritage".
> Mariana Mould de Pease, a Peruvian historian who has successfully
> campaigned to oblige Yale University to return hundreds of artefacts
> taken from the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, said that although Spain
> had "acted duplicitously, and - where necessary - brutally" during the
> colonial period, she hoped a deal could be reached. "Given the
> historical ties between the two countries, I think Peru should join
> Spain in taking part in the scientific recovery of the ship's contents."
> She said that Italy's recent success in securing the return of Roman
> items from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty Museum in the US
> had "already influenced countries such as Peru when it comes to taking
> legal action founded on cultural restitution".
> Spain, however, has so far dismissed the Peruvian claim, saying that the
> Mercedes was sailing under a Spanish flag and pointing out that Peru did
> not exist as a country in 1804.
> Odyssey, meanwhile, remains confident of its legal position - and a 90%
> share of the proceeds from the ship.
> "If Peru or any other country believes [it has] a claim," said Igney,
> "it is invited to file it."
> The company may be optimistic, but the international tug-of-war over the
> wreck has brought the issue of profit-making firms' involvement in
> historical salvage back to the surface.
> "There's a world of difference between the archaeological approach and
> the treasure-hunting approach," said Dr Peter Marsden, a marine
> archaeologist and the founder of the Shipwreck and Coastal Heritage
> Centre in Hastings. "What we don't know about Odyssey is what they are
> doing, because they are keeping things very close to their chests. But
> they are making their money from the sale of historical items that
> really should be in museums."
> Odyssey's secretive behaviour has raised concerns in the archaeological
> community about the deal the British government has signed with the
> company to salvage HMS Sussex, an English warship which sank in the
> western Mediterranean in 1694 while carrying a large cargo of gold coins.
> A spokeswoman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it was
> confident that the contract required Odyssey to "respect the relevant
> international archaeological standards", adding: "We keep this under
> continual review."
> But as the first shots are fired in what could be a long legal battle
> for the cargo of the Mercedes, Marsden cannot help wondering whether the
> lustre of the treasure has blinded the world to the wreck's true value.
> "You have to remember that the ship was just carrying cargo from A to
> B," he says.
> "What was the purpose of the journey and of that money? What is its real
> story? The important thing is what it tells us about what was going on."
> guardian.co.uk (c) Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
Where will all this end?
Pirate Diver
