My problem with the whole story is that the English government is still asserting a 300+ year old claim to this money, and people are actually RESPECTING it!
Good Lord! This is gold that went down over three centuries ago, not in waters ruled by England. It was treasure that was to be used to pay a foreign potentate for his troubles in a war. Shouldn’t the money properly belong, if to anybody that long ago, to the Duke of Savoy? And since Savoy has been dissolved into France, shouldn’t it just as well go to the French government as the English?
1694. England was under a different government a different ruling family. Let me put this another way: if the modern descendents of the English government, or ANY government, has the right to assert a property claim over property lost that long ago, then the modern descendants of slaves have the absolute right to claim the wages, with interest, for the stolen labor of their ancestors in the much, much more recent past.
It is absurd for England to get ANY of this treasure. It does not belong to England anymore. If it’s in Spanish water, it belongs to Spain. If it’s in nobody’s water, then it belongs to whomever dredges it up.
It’s totally absurd for there to be any consideration at all to an English claim over money in a ship England lost 313 years ago.
You make an interesting legal & moral argument — one that I happen to agree with. There’s one problem though: the salvage will take place at sea & Spain & England have navies with which to assert their ‘rights’.
By treaty and custom warships belong in perpetuity to the nation that launched them or their successor state, if any.