Did the title get your attention? Me too. That's what Gonzalo Millán del Pozo, the writer and director of the Poseidon Project (a group that aims to protect Spain's underwater cultural heritage), speaks of more than 800 sunken Spanish galleons with cargoes that could be worth more than a hundred thousand million euros. Sound farfetched? Not if you consider that the recent treasure recovered by Odyssey Marine initially was stated as being worth $500Mil. 800 sunken galleons worth a paltry $125Mil each and you reach that figure. Now you know why Odyssey Marine is hot after these shipwrecks. BTW, a hundred thousand million euros is worth $134 Billion Dollars, and change.
Xavier Nieto, director of the Underwater Archaeology Centre of Cataluña, claims that the apparently unexplainable permit from the Ministry to permit Odyssey Marine's work on the HMS Sussex is the result of the neglect suffered by this area of Spain’s culture. “Spain’s underwater archaeology work has arrived late on the scene”, he explains. “Other Mediterranean countries started in the 1950s; we started in 1981 and now we are worse off than we were then. Four centres were set up but with scarce financial and human resources. There are fewer than a dozen professional archaeologists working with this huge heritage, there is no specific university training, except for the odd isolated short course, and a clear legal problem. The 1985 law, which likens underwater archaeology to archaeology on dry land, was not very realistic”.
Carmen García Rivera, coordinator of the Andalusian Underwater Archaeology Centre (CAS) based in Cadiz, clearly prefers cultural heritage over booty. “Our mission is not to recover treasure but to investigate, protect and preserve heritage where it is”. In its first decade the CAS has tried to draw up a thorough archaeological map of Andalusian waters - so far it includes 80 sites - as a step prior to investigation.
Andalusia has been a thorn in Odyssey Marine's work on the HMS Sussex and more recently the hugh recovery of treasure from the "Black Swan", a codename that many believe is the shipwreck of the Merchant Royal.
