Posted on 11/30/2015 2:11:31 PM PST by Theoria
The Spanish galleon San José was overloaded with 200 passengers and 700 tons of cargo on a summer night in 1631 when it smashed into a rock off the Pacific coast of Panama, spilling silver coins and bars into the Gulf of Panama. More than 400,000 coins and at least 1,417 bars were lost over a 40-mile trail.
Four hundred years later, that shipwreck has become one of the latest to land in a legal quagmire over who should have the rights to historic artifacts trapped under the sea. This one involves the United Nations, the United States Department of Homeland Security, the government of Panama and Americans accused of being pirates. At issue is whether private companies should be able to claim and profit from historic treasures.
Those questions are of particular interest to businesses in South Florida at a time when technology is making it easier to find and recover sunken loot. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that there are over 1,000 shipwrecks in the Florida Keys alone.
In the case of the San José booty, commercial treasure hunters, financed in part by an adventure entrepreneur who runs tours to the Titanic, spent over $2 million and 10 years recovering portions of the treasure, only to see their permits questioned and bounty confiscated.
“They called us thieves, looters, plunderers and pirates,†said Dan Porter, a Florida captain who led the expedition to find the San José. “That’s an insult. I hold this work in the highest regard.â€
But the industry is engaged in a battle with academic marine archaeologists and Unesco, the Paris-based United Nations agency that tries to protect cultural treasures around the world. Critics say buried coins and loot should be studied and preserved in a museum, not sported around an investor’s neck.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
ping
As far as I’m concerned, whoever can haul it up from the ocean floor first owns it. Finder’s keepers.
I guess there should be some waiting period though, before you can claim salvage rights, just to give the original owner a grace period in recovering their property.
Not many original owners living from 1631, I think. Not many extant corporations either.
US out of the UN. Demolish the building or set it up as the National Tea Party Headquarters.
Downsize Federal Government by at least a half, 2/3 better. . except increase military spending.
Next project. .
Hey, they are from the governments and they are there to help (themselves).
As usual, the critics wait until the treasure is found and in the process of being retrieved before swooping in for the booty. What is mine is mine, what is yours is mine even though you paid for it!
It’s bad for guns to be in the water long....
If they wish to run archeology expeditions, pay them for it. But nope, they want to profit off the labor of others, like always, and in the process toss aside one of the oldest laws of man and the sea.
I’m not sure about this one. UNESCO can pound sand, but if the sunken treasure lies within the territorial waters of a sovereign nation, shouldn’t the laws of that nation apply?
What’s going to happen if they find something on Oak Island?
Admiralty law has been sufficient for hundreds of years to determine the rights of the various claimants. But, liberals want their own rules and their own desires to overrule silly laws and precedence. Government, in their insatiable hunger for money, has jumped into the argument. Heritage and culture is worthy of respect, but mostly it’s just used as a cudgel for the various claimants against the treasure. The market can decide if these trinkets end up in museums, in private collections, or in the melting part. Very little of this shipwreck booty is really unique to either science or history.
Why should they not?
They take the initiative to look for the treasure if they find it then it is theirs to do with as they please.
The world is no worse off if they melt it down into ingots then if they left it at the bottom of the sea for the fish.
Most of them do give at least a portion to museums but that is their choice and should not be mandated by law.
“But the industry is engaged in a battle with academic marine archaeologists and UNESCO, the Paris-based United Nations agency that tries to protect cultural treasures around the world. “
Because they did such a fine job in Egypt when the Bruthas took over.
Reading the article more thoroughly, it looks like the Panamanian government is arguing with itself. There is a bit of sketchy dealing all around. The Panamanian partners likely were able to secure their salvage contract through friendships within one branch of the government. Another branch of the Panamanian government came in after the fact citing ‘cultural heritage’ as a means of stealing the treasure.
“Don’t come back here Yankee, and if I ever do, I’ll take more money, cause all she wants to do is dance.”
“...the industry is engaged in a battle with academic marine archaeologists and Unesco, the Paris-based United Nations agency that tries to protect cultural treasures around the world.”
Oh yeah, I remember them.
Weren’t they guys galvanizing the world to protect historic sites in the Middle East as Islamists destroyed antiquities millenia old and coalesced a consortium of countries to protect buildings and ruins in midst of these barbarians and their vile acts?
Or was there not enough money it for them?
Almost 400 years have passed in which the original owners could have reclaimed their property.
Looks like they will give up the ghost 1st.../S
Agreed. The museums should have first refusal for these artifacts but must pay fair market value. If they will not pay fair market value they are simply thieves. There have been hundreds of old Spanish wrecks salvaged by private enterprise. How many have been salvaged by governments? These salvagers are doing a service to history. They are bringing back the past for us to admire and see. If a government or museum is not willing to pay the fair market value these goods should be sold as the governments and museums have by their inaction determined them to be not of importance.
I assume that whoever is digging there has secured the property rights to Oak Island?
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