WOW! 4 tons of gold coins.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_shipwreck_discovery

 

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That's about 128,600 ounces. But since they are artifacts and not bullion, it probably won't affect the gold price.

 

... For the fun of searching?

I understand why they have to give back the British Gold, but the Spanish silver at the end of the article makes me mad for them. They spend their money and time to find all this treasure and take 100% of the risk and the the spanish get to steal it from them. Idk I wish Barack had a pair and would stand up for Odesy

 

Let me get this straight. The Spanish come over to the new world, plunder it, loose a ship, and it it their national treasure. Wow! Methinks it belongs to the countries it was stolen from.

 

I'm always a bit iffy about things like this. They've essentially plundered a war-grave that is the last resting place of hundreds of British sailors (some of whom may have been American Colonists incidently) looking for treasure....

 

I am sure the remains of all the brave people on this ship will remain there. They just want to recover the gold. I am quite sure they will leave the remains as well as the ship at its resting place when they are done with the recovery. I own a shipwreck coin its a Dutch silver rider from the 1700s its quite interesting holding history in your hand! I bought this coin from the man that salvaged the Spanish ship it was found on. We got it when we were on a cruise at the cayman islands. He had many coins from the wreck including gold ones although the gold coins were much too expensive. I have seen other silver riders from this wreck for sale on E Bay for between $300-$400. I paid $75.00 for mine. Spain didn't complain about salvaging this ship and the Spanish government took a good percentage of the find for their coffers!

 

It's theft by the British and Spanish governments. They did nothing to recover the treasure. They deserve none of it. It was abandoned as lost.

 

I always thought that there were salvage laws protecting those who find things like this.

 

I believe maritime laws should come into play here, shouldn't they?

 

I've enjoyed following news reports and documentaries of sunken treasures recovered from lost ships for some time so I put together some links that may be of interest to those reading this thread or looking for such stories and legal issues that arise.

For collectors, the salvage groups usually aim to sell the treasures to pay for their operations and to make a profit for their effort. It is possible to buy the recovered coins and they are usually TPG graded as well. However, their cost due to conservation, nearly pristine condition (in many instances) and operational costs, grading, limited quantities, etc. make these very pricey or prohibitive for many collectors.

Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. has had a lot of success locating wrecks over the years. They've gained a lot of experience and authority in undersea salvage operations and the legal battles that have ensued due to the success and nature of/places of contestable salvage operations. A lot of what they have done has challenged and revived old maritime law as well as defined modern maritime legal issues. Odyssey and their lead man, Greg Stemm have to maintain a regular visible PR campaign both for personal protection and public support, so they appear in the mainstream media quite often. If they were too secretive about what they are doing out at sea they'd be at the mercy of pirates (literally) or governments exploiting them (as can be seen in their documentary, linked to below, when detained by the Spanish authorities.) Special interest media such as Coin News has also featured stories on the Odyssey team's finds.

The wreck(s) disclosed off Alaska that Odyssey is investigating under the name Symphony appeared in a Goldipedia story on 11th of September 2009.

In July 2009, Odyssey's stock price dropped following the passing of a board member but since that time has returned to it's former range. [Stock: OMEX]

The Discovery Channel often airs Odyssey's documentary Treasure Quest: The Color of Money and the BBC extensively covered updates on Odyssey's discovery of the Black Swann off Gibraltar plus the cat-and-mouse game they played with the Spainish Coast Guard and Customs Officials to secure what they brought back to the surface.


Another interesting sunken treasure discovered by The Columbus-America Discovery Group was the SS Central America This ship was lost in 1834 and carried California Gold Rush gold, which at the time was enough to have an impact on the stock market. The gold coins they recovered were in amazing condition. Check out the story at the link above.


One of the richest caches of sunken Spanish galleon treasure, coins, bars, artefacts and so on ever found was the 1622 wreck of the Atocha, discovered by Mel Fisher in 1985.

 

This is the shipwreck my silver rider coin came fromhttp://www.voc-flyinghart.co.uk/LMP-VHTHome.html

 

Not when it comes to military vessels. They remain a property of the country they originated from regardless of where they sunk. We have such examples in Japan, Philippines and Great Britain.
Guy~

 

Why should they give it back? They found it. i remeber as a kid "finders keepers losers weepers"

 

On the other hand, the US and British governments have salvaged Russian military ships and kept them. Also, both countries have the technology to raise almost any ship from any depth if they have a mind to. The law is the law, but the law isn't always right.

 

i agree with that statement.

 

Perhaps no-one deserves any of it, considering that this was essentially grave-robbery.
What would you think of all the lost US ships in Guadalcanal being plundered by a foreign company for hidden treasure?

 

Well, after the pearl harbor attack was over the U.S. salvaged all the hardware from the sunken ships that was valuable to the war effort IE guns ect. even though there were many dead sailors on those ships at the time. I guess its ok to grave rob if items are needed.

 

Huge difference. They were being salvaged by the Navy that still owned them to fight an essential war.

That's different to a commercial company plundering another nation's (or their own nation's for that matter) sunken naval vessels for profit. In any case, by maritime law, all naval wrecks still belong to the respectives navies of the countries which they served.
I do wonder what the attitude would be of some of the people supporting this would feel like if a Spanish or British company started prying into US naval wrecks looking for gold. Would your attitude be 'finders keepers losers... etc' then?

 

It's hardly plundering, taking by force, as the commercial salvage company isn't at confrontational war with the nations. These wrecks have been abandoned and those nations have not claimed nor made recovery efforts to retrieve their vessels, nor placed off limits the site of the wrecks which they were not specifically able to identify the locations of, at least not until someone else showed a profitable interest and success in doing so.

Nations such as Britain and Spain, who possess the ships manifest logs, documentation of cargo and could trace current living ancestors of lost sea-goers to whom the gold, silver and other artefacts belonged to and which were lost on those ships have not used these tools which groups like Odyssey have done so in their research to locate lost ships cargoes.

In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, bodies were attempted to be recovered and may still have been located underwater in the sunken vessels in the days following the attack, but others were not found and remain entombed in the sea. However, while organic remains at Pearl Harbor may still be present as the site is a memorial and place of respected burial from events which transpired in the recent past, it is not likely there's much there. There is an issue with the warm temperature of the water at Pearl Harbor as well as the opposite effects of temperatures in the North Atlantic. The Titanic is supposedly respected as a place of burial, yet there are reportedly dives there annually, some of which do not respect the underwater site looking for more fame and publicity locating aspects of the ship. There are attempts to protect the sea bed around the Titanic and to prevent future human desecration.

Now about water temperatures, ships lost at sea long ago are very unlikely to bear any trace of human remains, especially the nearer to the surface they are and warmer the water temperatures at the site are. The only suspected wrecks of the ancient era that may yet reveal human remains (but so far have not, to my knowledge) are those laying on the bottom of the Black Sea, in the anoxic or oxygen depraved waters, so called 'poison waters' which aide in slowing the rate of decay of organic matter. For this reason ancient ships made of wood in these waters are very well preserved. Bone and flesh may be found but so far have not been found. The warmer the water and the more oxygen rich the water is and the more abundt the sea life, the less human remains linger over time.

Of course there are many ethical issues to consider in recovery of wrecks and places of tragedy where people lost their lives. The closer we get to contemporary times the nearer we come to sensitivity to a given site and the respect 'owed' to descendants and widowed/orphaned, et al. families has a huge impact. How much do we know of ancient Greek and Roman shipwreck dead or related families? Very little and underwater recovery and archaeology go on regularly. It's a different approach from the commercial of course but certain factors are not as pointed out and publicaly contested. As well the more difficult the scenario gets to sort out amongst the parties and their perspectives on recovery in contemporary sites. However, when we see nations citing international maritime law and seeking to gain back the cargo that another group recovered, it's less for reasons of cultural repatriation or for defending the rights of the families that might be traced back multiple generations. Yes 17th Century canons are valuable but they are not practical salvage for recovery and use in the 21st Century, They no longer serve a Naval defensive purpose beyond a historical role and are instead valued for history as highly as the precious metals cargoes are. Instead it appears those nations demanding the recovered items or profit taking from them are exerting their power and influence over foreign commercial enterprise. They can apply force, law and threaten imprisonment and financial ruin on recovery efforts in the name of repatriation. I think there's a lot of this sort of thing that occurs and is what the more successful groups like Odyssey have had to cope with to come as far as they have and to remain free and operable. I'm sure they have curtailed their operations and negotiate extensively the deeper they get into this business and setting precedents with various nations.

It's hard to say who is right in various finds, each one is unique, and especially difficult when perceptions are distorted in the media and international courts about who is doing what or disrespecting, profiting or intruding on/from wrecks. But it seems safe to say that when someone gets their hands on highly valuable precious metals and artefacts made from them, someone else is always going to find a reason or excuse why they should entirely have it instead of another or why they deserve to profit from anothers effort. That seems the nature of this, of greedy or selfish intentions, and as ugly as any salvage operation which intentionally would loot or desecrate a site. Of course looting happens happens and in some cases those nations and such protective laws should be applied to defend against this, but there is a limited amount of this at deep water sites due to the difficulty of reaching the wrecks. Hence the danger of pirates looting the salvage crews mentioned in an earlier post. I'd wager though in the case of precious metal cargoes that manipulation of authority and law is more susceptible and in play than is fair application of the same laws and use of authority.

 

It's really a matter of how you view things and how you choose to use the word "plunder" vs recover. Much of archeology is technically grave-robbing. I'll bet many of the surviving World War II vets [there are so few left] would flock to an exhibit of artifacts recovered from ships lost at Guadalcanal and wouldn't really care who recovered them. On the other hand, there were people who wanted to burn the US flag recovered from the World Trade Center because it was damaged, and damaged flags are to be burned. I suppose some folks would have preferred to burn the Star Spangled Banner on display in Washington too. A lot of what we know about history is based on treasure hunting and breaking the "rules." Very few expeditions would be funded if there was no prospect of a financial return.