Treasure Hunters Face Spanish Armada
By Mike Nizza
Tags: archeology, business, history, spain
treasureAfter a tense standoff, the Odyssey Explorer was led to port by a Spanish government vessel. (Photo: Luis Roca/AFP — Getty Images)
Back in May, Odyssey Marine Exploration counted the reasons why its latest treasure — an estimated $500 million in silver in a shipwreck — was theirs for the keeping, since the coins recovered "beyond the territorial waters or legal jurisdiction of any country."
This week, we learned that Spain strongly disagrees. An incensed senior official summed it up to Agence France-Presse:
Spanish Culture Minister Antonio Molina said Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration was made up of "modern pirates" and he warned that "against pirates, there have always been navies, laws and the state of law."
"We will pursue them wherever they are. It is a question of national pride and patriotism," he told reporters, adding the Nasdaq-listed firm "will not escape unharmed for what it has done".
And those words were preceded with military muscle. On its way out of the Straits of Gibraltar, Odyssey's Explorer found itself eye-to-eye with a Spanish warship backed by other vessels. The standoff lasted 4 hours before Captain Sterling Vorus agreed to head to port under the "threat of deadly force," he told Britain's Telegraph. He was briefly detained.
The episode has left Greg Stemm, Odyssey's chief executive, expressing confusion with Spain's intentions. "We're not sure what the inspection of the Explorer is meant to accomplish," he said, according to The Tampa Tribune. "We had again invited Spanish officials to inspect the Explorer in advance of our departure and they chose not to take us up on it."
The coins themselves were brought to "a secure, undisclosed location" before the May announcement and neither side disputes that they are of Spanish origin. Indeed, Odyssey disclosed that fact "when it completed customs forms in Gibraltar on April 10 and May 16," El Pais reported.
Mr. Stemm refused to respond to reports cited by The Associated Press saying that the captain delayed the search so that "high-tech equipment" could be removed. But two keys to establishing Spain's claim remain in his grip.
The origin of the shipwreck remains a mystery, the company says, leaving open the possibility that another nation owned the coins. And no one else can investigate further, since Odyssey refuses to reveal anything about the site except that it is "code-named 'Black Swan' in an undisclosed location in the Atlantic Ocean."
And Odyssey is showing no signs of fessing up. Until then, Spanish politicians will be left howling at a secretive American company holding a treasure that has "entered into Spanish lore as the world's greatest sunken booty."
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