Odyssey Marine Exploration, the US deep-ocean exploration company, has filed a Motion to Strike a brief filed by the United States government in support of Spain in the ‘Black Swan’ case.
The case is currently pending in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in the US, where Odyssey appealing a lower court’s decision to order the company to return the ‘Black Swan’ treasure to Spain.
If the US motion is not struck out, Odyssey has asked the court to direct the US government to amend its statement to accurately reflect its interest in the case.
The latest filing follows a number of revelations about the Black Swan case detailed in leaked diplomatic cables published by the whistleblower website Wikileaks last month.
Odyssey said the released cables suggest that the US State Department offered special assistance to Spanish officials in the ‘Black Swan’ case in exchange for assistance in acquiring, on behalf of a US citizen, a French painting confiscated by the Nazis during World War II and now on display in a museum in Madrid.
Researchers identify wrecks at the bottom of the sea from as far back as fifth century BC, from Europe and beyond.
Spanish archaeologists exploring the bay that curves between the southern port of Algeciras and the Rock of Gibraltar have documented the wrecks of more than 30 ships that came to grief near the Pillars of Hercules between the fifth century BC and the second world war.
Over the millennia, the bay, which sits at the north end of the strait of Gibraltar that separates Europe from Africa, has swallowed everything from Phoenician and Roman vessels to British, Spanish, Venetian and Dutch ships – as well as the odd aeroplane. A three-year project led by the University of Cádiz has now identified 151 archaeological sites in the bay, among them 134 shipwrecks. To date, the researchers and their colleagues from the University of Granada have worked to document 34 of those wrecks.
The oldest is that of a Punic era ship dating to the fifth century BC, while other finds include 23 Roman ships, two late Roman ships, four medieval ships and 24 vessels from the early modern period.
Between them, the sunken items – which include an agile and fearsome 18th-century Spanish gunboat and the engine and propeller of a plane from the 1930s – tell the story of war, trade, exploration and settlement in and around one of the most strategically important waterways in the world.
Felipe Cerezo Andreo, a professor of archaeology at the University of Cádiz who led the investigation, which is called Project Herakles, said that area has long been a watery crossroads. “It’s one of those bottlenecks through which ships have always had to pass, whether on commercial shipping routes, voyages of discovery, or due to armed conflicts,” he said.
El 5 de octubre de 1804, a 30 millas náuticas del cabo de Santa María de Portugal, en actuales aguas internacionales, la Marina Real británica hundió a cañonazos la fragata Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes.
El inesperado ataque se llevó a cabo violando el Tratado de Paz de Amiens —suscrito entre Francia, España y Reino Unido— de 1802. Murieron 275 tripulantes, mientras un enorme cargamento de oro, plata y cobre se hundía en el mar a unos 1.130 metros de profundidad.
En 2007, la compañía cazatesoros Odyssey Marine Exploration expolió 600.000 monedas de la carga, aunque España terminó recuperándolas en los tribunales estadounidenses. Sin embargo, como revelan las actas del congreso internacional Archaeology: Just Add Water, celebrado en Varsovia en 2019, ahora hechas públicas, los expoliadores solo se centraron en las monedas y abandonaron todo lo demás.
Dejaron intacto el segundo tesoro de la Mercedes. Centenares de sus piezas ya han vuelto a España, están siendo restauradas y se expondrán en noviembre. Nunca se había hecho una excavación a tal profundidad.
En 2014 el Museo Nacional de Arqueología Subacuática, ARQUA, (Cartagena), dependiente del Ministerio de Cultura, inició un proyecto para que España excavase científicamente el pecio. Se trataba de un reto nunca acometido por ningún país.
Los dos o tres casos anteriores en los que se había bajado por debajo de los 500 metros se habían limitado a filmar y fotografiar. El plan del museo planteaba que era perfectamente posible hacerlo si se aunaban esfuerzos.
Se invitó al el Instituto Español de Oceanografía (IEO) y se cursó también invitación a la Armada como institución observadora. Aceptó.
En verano de 2015, zarpó de Cartagena la primera expedición conjunta a bordo del buque oceanográfico Ángeles Alvariño, del IEO. Al llegar a la vertical del pecio, la primera inmersión del ROV (siglas en inglés de vehículo operado remotamente, un complejo equipo submarino teledirigido), localizó exactamente el corazón de la nave.
Pero las pantallas de los ordenadores señalaban que los restos estaban muy dispersos debido a la explosión de 1804 y a las técnicas destructivas de Odissey. Se tomaron miles de fotografías y vídeos. La campaña se repitió en las de los veranos de 2016 y 2017.
A esta última se sumó el Centro de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), que aportó el buque Sarmiento de Gamboa. Los minisubmarinos detectaron esta vez “un tesoro más importante: miles de objetos enterrados bajo el fondo marino que muestran, en parte, cómo era la vida a principios del siglo XIX: de cañones de bronce a vajillas de oro y plata”. “Su valor científico y museístico”, como señala el informe del director del ARQUA y del proyecto, Iván Negueruela, “es incuestionable”.
El estudio recién publicado por la Universidad de Varsovia titulado The Mercedes 2015–2017 Project: Exploration and Excavation of the Wreck Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes (1.138 m depth) (Proyecto Mercedes 2015-2017.
Exploración del pecio de Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes (1.138 metros de profundidad) señala que el objetivo de las tres campañas fue definir “la extensión del yacimiento, documentar las condiciones en que quedó este tras el saqueo, realizar un mapa arqueológico de los materiales que permanecen bajo el lecho marino y la extracción de algunos de los materiales detectados”.
In 1941, the SS Gairsoppa, a British cargo ship, was sunk by a German submarine. Only one member of the crew survived, with dozens perishing in the attack.
What was left of the vessel remained below the waters of the Atlantic off the coast of Ireland for decades. In 2013, Odyssey Marine discovered the remains of the ship — including a massive haul of silver that was on board when the Germans attacked.
That trove of silver wasn’t the only valuable thing found in the shipwreck, however. A new report from Allyson Waller at The New York Times focuses on another significant discovery made in the wreckage: a number of letters — more than 700 in total — that offer an intimate and personal glimpse into life during wartime.
As you might guess, letters that have been in an underwater space for 70-odd years aren’t in the best condition. The Times article focuses on the work conservators are doing to reconstruct the letters, so that we can learn more about who wrote and received them and properly honor those whose lives were lost.
Controversy continues to swirl around the discovery in the murky depths of the Mediterranean of a 17th century Ottoman shipwreck in the Lebanese EEZ and the subsequent confiscation of its salvaged cargo by customs officials in Limassol.
News of the recovery of the artifacts and their confiscation at the end of 2015 recently resurfaced in the wake of a press release issued by Enigma Recoveries, the London-based company that funded the underwater exploration of the site.
Enigma hailed the discovery as a “once in a generation find that tells the story of the beginning of the globalised world”.
The company claims the legal problems it has encountered in Cyprus were the result of a simple administrative mistake. The department of antiquities, which currently has custody of the 588 artifacts confiscated in Limassol port, has a decidedly different take.
It accuses the company of carrying out illicit underwater excavations. Furthermore, the department claims that the people responsible for the underseas operation are no more than professional treasure hunters, motivated solely by their pursuit of a profitable pay-off.
Tampa-based Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc.’s revenue shrunk to nearly nothing in the year’s third quarter.
The deep-sea exploration company reported just $11,854 in revenue, down from $2.9 million the same quarter last year. The company’s previous multi-million-dollar revenue came from a contract with Magellan Offshore Services, for which Odyssey conducted shipwreck expedition services.
The company recorded a net loss of $2.3 million for the third quarter, amounting to 27 cents per share. In the same quarter last year, the company reported a loss of $2.1 million, or 28 cents per share.
Just last quarter, Odyssey brought in $587,000 in revenue from marine surveys and recovery services for Magellan.
The services stem from a 2015 agreement Odyssey entered with Magellan when it sold $21 million in assets from its shipwreck business. That sale was used to wipe out Odyssey’s $11.7 million in debt.
"I’ve stated for the past nine months that although we intended to focus corporate capital on the mineral exploration side of the business, we do not intend to abandon our shipwreck roots," Odyssey CEO Mark Gordon said in a release at the time.
Per the deal, Magellan owns Odyssey’s proprietary shipwreck database and rights to shipwreck projects. Odyssey was the sole provider of shipwreck search and recovery expeditions for Magellan. It also gets just over 21 percent of proceeds from any shipwreck projects.
