See Post 52 and 56.
In maritime law, there is a difference between salvage rights to a ship that belonged to Acme Shipping Company and a warship that belonged to the U.S. Navy, the Royal Navy, the Spanish Navy or even the Confederate Navy.
Legally and by tradition, warship are considered an extension of the state itself under maritime law, an extensension of "sovereign soil". When the Japanese surrendered in Tokyo Bay aboard USS Missouri, they surrendered on "U.S. soil". That legal state persists even after a warship is sunk and a sunken warship is referred to as a "sovereign wreck."
Only Spain has legal rights to the "sovereign wreck" of the Spanish warship Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, the warship in question.
Likewise, only the U.S. Government has rights to a U.S. "sovereign wreck". As the succeeding sovereign to the Confederate States of America, legally, only the U.S. Government has legal rights to the wreck of the Confederate warship CSS Alabama although it currently lies within French territorial waters.
