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By Kimberly Munro - Popular Archaeology

Over 40 shipwrecks are located within the waters which now make up Biscayne National Park in southern Florida.

Among those wrecks, the English China Wreck is one of the best preserved. Unfortunately, looting and unintended damage caused by fishing and diving are a threat to the site's integrity and artifacts.

These threats, along with a search for conclusive proof of the ship's identity, led the National Park Service, in partnership with George Washington University, to conduct field excavations during the summer of 2011.

The English China Wreck (ECW) was discovered in 1975, and first evaluated in 1984 by National Park Service archaeologists. The ECW was identified as a middle to late eighteenth century vessel, carrying a cargo of British ceramics for export.

The wreck was named “The English China Wreck” due to the large quantity of British "chinaware" ceramics onboard.

During the 1984 evaluations, archaeologists speculated that the ECW could be the remains of either the Ledbury, a British vessel lost in 1769, or the Hubbard, a British vessel reported lost in the area in 1772.

In 2010, however, a non-invasive surface ceramic inventory was conducted which may have cast doubt on that original assessment.

The presence of Spanish-made ladrillos (bricks) on the wreck, along with British materials may indicate the ship was involved in secondary trading, and could in fact be of North American, not British origin.

Since its discovery in 1975, the ECW has been protected and monitored by law enforcement authorities and the Biscayne National Park Archaeologst. Despite this protection, the wreck has been a target by looters because of its large quantity of easily collectable artifacts.

As a result of the threat posed by looters and the new theory of a possible North American origin, further study of the wreck was proposed with an eye toward expanding on knowledge of American colonial history.

This past summer, Biscayne National Park partnered with George Washington University and their Southern African Slave Wrecks and Diaspora Heritage Project (SASWDHP) to conduct an archaeological field school.

The field school was held in June and July of 2011, and included George Washington University graduate students, as well as participants from IZIKO-Museums of South Africa, and the African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA), both of which are located in Capetown, South Africa.

The field school was overseen by Charles Lawson, Biscayne National Park Archaeologist, Dr. Stephen Lubkemann of George Washington University, and National Park Service Regional Archaeologist, Dr. David W. Morgan.

From Fox News Latino

A team of Brazilian archaeologists and divers who discovered the remains of a Spanish vessel off the southern state of Santa Catarina say the recovered fragments correspond to a shipwreck that occurred in 1583.

The recovered pieces and the documentary review indicate the wreck was a supply ship for a fleet that left Spain in 1581 on a mission to build two forts on the Strait of Magellan to stymie the advance of English pirates menacing Madrid's territories in the New World.

Historical documents make mention of the Jan. 7, 1583 shipwreck off Brazil's coast.

"On March 14, we'll begin a new round of diving to try to recover the maximum number of pieces possible," Beth Karam, spokeswoman for the Universidade do Sul de Santa Catarina, told Efe.

The shipwreck was located in an area off the Pinheira and Sonho beaches near Florianopolis, Santa Catarina's capital.

The find is attributed to divers with the Barra Sul Project, an organization that was founded in 2005 to search for underwater archaeological remains off Santa Catarina's coast and which so far has located three 16th century shipwrecks.

The first recovered fragment from this latest find was a stone with a high-relief shield of two lions and two castles with a Portuguese symbol in the center.

That shield dates back to the kingdoms of Leon and Castile and the 1580-1640 Iberian Union, when the monarchies of Spain and Portugal were unified.

By Carolina Fernandez - Broward Palm Beach New Times

Sean Fisher lives the exciting yet often uncertain life of a treasure hunter. As vice president of Mel Fisher's Treasures, Fisher knows that his career choice is not always easy.

Treasure hunters spend years scavenging the salty seas in hopes of finding hidden gems that could win them a fortune -- and most of the time, they're very hard to come by.

That's why when a group of Tampa's treasure hunters found 594,000 silver and gold coins worth $500 million in a two-century-old shipwreck, it was more than a big deal. And when they didn't get to keep it, it was an even bigger deal -- for Fisher, his family, his friends in Tampa, and treasure hunters alike.

Fisher, whose family-owned company in Key West is named after his dive-pioneer grandfather, called the situation a "travesty, unjust, and wrong at so many levels."

In May 2007, treasure hunters from Odyssey Marine Exploration of Tampa set out for European waters hoping to find buried riches.

They discovered a piece of history that traced back to 19th-century war tensions between the Spanish and British empires: a shipwreck believed to be Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes off Portugal's Atlantic Coast near the Strait of Gibraltar.

In an 1804 naval battle with the British, theMercedes exploded and sank with what Spanish officials say were 200 passengers aboard. Despite laws that prohibit treasure hunters from excavating foreign military vessels, these treasure hunters took a chance and hauled their big win -- a treasure-trove that weighed 17 tons -- back to the United States.

Spain filed suit in U.S. federal court, arguing that it was not only the country's property but a vital piece of Spanish history. A federal district court judge ruled in 2009 that U.S. courts didn't have jurisdiction and ordered the gold returned to Spain.

On Friday, after a five-year battle, the loot made its way back to Spain on a cargo jet.

Now, treasure hunters have no choice but to face their defeat, but not without a sense of outrage at the injustice they feel. Fisher believes sovereign immunity laws should not apply to a shipwreck that Spain abandoned and forgot about centuries ago.

"If Spain was out there looking for vessels and doing their best to do what we do, then that would be one thing, but they're not doing that," he said. "If it wasn't for companies like [Odyssey] and us, this history, this wealth of knowledge, would sit at the bottom of the ocean and deteriorate."

Full story...

By Cecilia Rodriguez - Forbes

I was amazed to discover recently that a Dickensian legal battle over one of the richest undersea bounties, a battle I first covered years ago in my native Colombia, is still in the courts.

I hate to date myself, but we’re talking, uh, decades.

I’m speaking of the Galleon San Jose.  

The latest chapter came when a federal district court in Washington, D.C., ruled in favor of Colombia’s government against the American company Sea Search Armada (SSA), which was claiming billions of dollars for breach of contract after a tortuous war of contracts, lawsuits and counter-suits over the right to rescue the San Jose from the seabed where it allegedly still rests full of treasures.

Current estimates set the value at more than $10 billion.

What SSA Managing Director Jack Harbeston probably wishes most is to be compensated for more than 25 years of frustration, deception, bad faith, mistrust, betrayal, internal squabbles and personal tragedy as many partners and investors lost their fortunes and others died without seeing their dream fulfilled.

The list of people involved in the treasure hunt included famous American actors, congressmen, business moguls and government officials to whom SSA had offered 40% profit in return for their investment or support.

“He died from disappointment,” the wife of Jim Banigan, one of the founders who lost his fortune in the search for the galleon, told me.

“At the end, he was convinced that if we had found the treasure we would have lost our souls.”

Full of gold, silver, gems and jewelry collected in the South American colonies to be shipped to Spain’s king to help finance his war with the British, the San Jose was sunk in flames in June, 1708 by a British warship, just outside the Port of Cartagena, Colombia.

As it supposedly lay in the dark depths, its fate has been argued over for 300 years by people whose greed, rapacity and ambition have driven them to distraction.

First, the Spanish king who anxiously awaited the bounty to help him win the war, then the British military that had planned to capture the ship, not sink it, and make off with its riches.

Full story...

By Murphy Givens - Caller

Probably every place on the Gulf of Mexico from the Florida Keys to the Yucatan Peninsula has its lost treasure legend. Certainly the Texas coast has its own legends, including some that are true and some that are romantic fantasy.

One true story started on April 9, 1554, when a fleet of Spanish galleons set sail from Veracruz for Spain loaded with the plunder of the conquistadors. It was said to be the richest treasure fleet that ever sailed.

When a storm scattered the fleet, several galleons went down, three reached Spain, and one limped back to Veracruz. Three ships — the Santa Maria de Yciar, San Estebán, and Espíritu Santo — wrecked on Padre Island.

Three hundred survivors, including soldiers, sailors, priests, women and children, were attacked and killed by Karankawa Indians as they fled down the island. Only two men survived, a Spanish friar and another man who hid at the wrecked ships.

In 1904, Alex Meuly of Corpus Christi claimed he found the remains of one of the Spanish galleons 420 feet from shore, 35 miles down the island.

He claimed it held a vast fortune in gold. He built a special trailer to transport the treasure, but for some reason he could never find the ship again.

But ancient and encrusted Spanish doubloons were found so often in one sand dune on the island that it was called Money Hill. Some of the coins were dated 1525.

One story told of a man going egg-hunting on the island and returned with his pockets filled with Spanish coins. Another man, an Englishman known as "Buttermilk" Bill, found $4,000 in gold coins near Devil's Elbow.

Many of the treasure tales along our section of the coast are connected to the pirate Jean Lafitte, who was driven from Galvez's Island in 1820 and established two bases in this area, at Cedar Bayou and at the south end of St. Joseph's Island, across the pass from today's Port Aransas.

The wife of one of his pirates, a woman known later as "Grandma" Frank, told the story that Lafitte's treasure — more than $500,000 he took away from Galveston — was buried in a mott of live oak trees at False Live Oak Point.

After the last of the treasure was buried, and Lafitte came back alone, he supposedly told Mrs. Frank, "There is enough treasure in those woods to ransom a nation."

By Owen Jarus - MSNBC

A Greek bronze helmet, covered with gold leaf and decorated with snakes, lions and a peacock's tail (or palmette), has been discovered in the waters of Haifa Bay in Israel. But how this helmet ended up at the bottom of the bay is a mystery.

The helmet dates back around 2,600 years and likely belonged to a wealthy Greek mercenary who took part in a series of wars, immortalized in the Bible, which ravaged the region at that time. Archaeologists believe that he likely fought for an Egyptian pharaoh named Necho II.

The helmet was discovered accidentally in 2007 during commercial dredging operations in the harbor. After it was discovered, conservators with the Israel Antiquities Authority went to work cleaning it and archaeologists began to analyze it.

They discovered that it is very similar to another helmet found in the 1950s near the Italian island of Giglio, about 1,500 miles (2,300 kilometers) away.

That helmet has been dated to around 2,600 years ago, something that helped the researchers arrive at a date for the Haifa Bay helmet.

"The gilding and figural ornaments make this one of the most ornate pieces of early Greek armor discovered," writes Jacob Sharvit, director of the Marine Archaeology Unit with the Israel Antiquities Authority, and John Hale, a professor at the University of Louisville, in a summary of their research which was presented at a recent meeting.

Full story...

El Confidencial Digital

Partidas de exportación, permisos aduaneros, licencias...

El Gobierno tiene constancia a través de estos documentos de que el tesoro que guardaba el pecio de la 'Mercedes' era mayor que el que ha devuelto Odyssey. Los expertos aseguran que la empresa norteamericana pudo cometer tres infracciones. Reino Unido y Gibraltar no colaboraron con España.

Fuentes oficiosas españolas, conocedoras a fondo de las actividades de la empresa de cazatesoros norteamericana, a las que ha tenido acceso El Confidencial Digital, estiman que Odyssey habría cometido al menos tres delitos, en su operativo para recuperar llevarse fuera de España el cargamento de la fragata “Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes”.

-- Falsificación documental. Odyssey Marine Exploration no ha reflejado en los documentos entregados al juzgado estadounidense la totalidad del material que se encontraba en el interior del buque hundido.

Declaró, además, que el valor de la carga era de 4,5 millones de dólares, mientras que el Gobierno español sospecha que los kilos de oro y plata que se hundieron multiplican por varias veces esa cifra (si se tiene el precio que tenía el oro y de la plata en la primavera de 2007). Hay que recordar que toda la carga pasó por la aduana de Gibraltar pero no hay constancia escrita de ello.

-- Expolio del patrimonio histórico nacional. Se han receptado, ocultado y desviado, sin permiso, objetos pertenecientes al patrimonio de los españoles, que finalmente se trasladaron a Estados Unidos.

-- Destrucción del pecio. Los arqueólogos del Gobierno español no pudieron inspeccionar el pecio ya que Odyssey no dio oportunidad para ello porque el buque ha quedado destrozado.

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Intereconomia

Como un homenaje a Pipe Sarmiento, que ha presentado pruebas sólidas de que el principal expolio cometido por Odyssey fue en aguas del Mediterráneo.

Se lo pido a la jueza del Juzgado número 3 de La Línea: retenga el tesoro y no se lo entregue al Ministerio de Cultura hasta que éste se haya tomado la molestia de mandar un robot para que explore el yacimiento que en 2001 Odyssey llamó Cambridge, suponiendo que era el Sussex.

Por esa época, los protectores de los cazatesoros montaron el caso Bahía II para perseguir a quienes les hacían sobra, Luis Valero, Claudio Bonifacio, el propio Sarmiento y hasta Luis Lafuente Batanero, entonces subdirector general de Protección del Patrimonio.

Obviamente, cada uno tiene su historia y ni actuaban juntos, ni tienen los mismos méritos. Pero todos fueron injustamente imputados, como muestra que el caso fuera sobreseído.

Para más datos sobre que el tesoro no proceda de la Mercedes, ver lo publicado ayer en La Gaceta. Añado una mentira más de Odyssey respecto al supuesto yacimiento de la Mercedes en la que caí recientemente: si está a más de 1.100 metros, ¿cómo es que lo han sacado con el robot Zeus, cuyo alcance máximo es 1.000 ?

En cambio el Cambridge o "falso Sussex" estaba a menos de 900 metros.

En todo caso, se lo pido y ruego a la jueza como homenaje a la quienes han defendido el patrimonio (agradezco lo escrito por Jesús G. Calero). Por si no queda claro, adjunto mapa del lugar, que puede verse en este mapa de las andanzas de Odyssey.

Por ser la primera entrada tras la llegada del tesoro, pongo la foto que ayer hizo Chema Barroso y que no ha sido publicada hoy en La Gaceta.

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