With little news coming from Odyssey Marine about the recent "Black Swan" treasure recovery, I thought it would be a good time to investigate the current maritime laws as they relate to shipwrecks and territorial water claims. Odyssey Marine announced that they recovered 500,000 silver and gold coins from the "Black Swan" on May 18, 2007.
Alison Kentuck, Britain's deputy receiver of wrecks said, referring to the Merchant Royal: "It certainly sounds likely that that is what they have recovered," she said. "It is a well-known wreck, which is known to have sunk in that area."
The Merchant Royal is the holy grail of shipwrecks. "The ship — owned by a group of London merchants — reportedly had "£300,000 in silver, £100,000 in gold and as much again in jewels" lying in its hold."
In positioning itself for a possible legal claim to the treasure, Spain and the Spanish press has issued many statements; many have turned out to be false. In trying to make sense of this complicated matter I ran across the following two items:
Gibraltars Territorial Waters - The first is the legal basis regarding Gibraltar territorial waters. After looking at the map it's surprising to see that Odyssey's ships cannot leave the Mediterranean without traveling through Spanish territorial waters. Spain has issued a warrant to seize and search Odyssey's Ships once they are in Spanish waters. In essence, they are trapped in Mediterranean.
http://www.gibnet.com/fish/waters.htm
Maritime Law and Underwater Archaeology - The second is a website that was designed as a source of information, ideas, and course materials for college and university professors in the United States who teach undergraduate archaeology. It has very good reference material concerning such items as Territorial Sea, Contiguous Zone, Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), High Seas as well as Admiralty Law / Law of Salvage, The Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987 and so on.
Treasure Books:
America's Lost Treasure
Treasure Lost at Sea: Diving to the World's Great Shipwrecks
Lost Gold and Silver Mines of the Southwest
