Thanks Theoria.
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 ...
Get a few more Lawyers with no skin in the Game and it will work out just fine.
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.
Thanks Theoria.
Most of them have over the years.
I have been asking that question since I first heard about Oak Island. Not to worry, I suspect they won’t find diddly.
It is the thieving government vote-buyers who are the looters and plunderers.
Government is the scourge of the humanity.
But who will they pay?
For instance, the Black Hills Institute paid 50K for the rights to dig dinosaur fossils and found "Sue", the most complete T Rex known. While in the midst of preserving the fossil, the Feds raided them, saying it was on Indian Land and it was a Federal matter. The dinosaur fossil was confiscated, then sold to the Field Museum in Chicago for (IIRC) 8 Million dollars.
How much did the Black Hills Institute (professional but non university affiliated scientists) who found, excavated, and were conserving the fossil at the time of confiscation get paid?
Bupkis.
If people are going to go look for treasure, they will want a better return than socialist minimum wages. Years of effort and expense are involved, and will go uncompensated if nothing is recovered. There has to be an upside to that risk.
The other result of this crap is that kids no longer dream of finding treasure or even arrowheads (cultural treasures), because they don't have a chinaman's chance in hell of keeping the stuff they find (or being able to sell it) if they do.
That means the future archaeologists, historical researchers, geologists, and paleontologists will simply not be there.
That sense of adventure is one of the things that has inspired Americans for centuries, the dream of finding their fortune over the next hill or under the water.
History Channel funds and gets a long-running TV series; the treasure hunters get screwed by Nova Scotia.
” I suspect they won’t find diddly.”
I think they will find something interesting, eventually. Too much evidence for there to be nothing, unless it’s already been plundered.
I’m guessing that while it is on land, the land is owned by the guys looking for whatever is buried on Oak Island, but who knows what laws they have up there in Canada. I know in England if you find treasure you have to tell the museum about it, and if they want it they must pay the fair price on it. Sometimes they’ll just pay for some of the loot to keep for history and you can keep the rest.
There’s a simple truth that has held for all of human history: finder’s keepers. Call it salvage law if you want, but the principle is the same.
Really? Original owners have been buried for almost 400 years. Finders keepers. Losers can kiss my @ss.
The beauty of this ‘Deal’ unlike the Mid-East antiquities is that it’s self-financing no matter which side youre on...
“Original owners have been buried for almost 400 years.”
You do know that things like nations and corporations don’t actually die, right? They’re not mortal beings...
Anyway, I was speaking in principal, as to what the laws should be, not just talking about this specific case. If your boat sinks today, nobody should be able to raid it tomorrow and claim it before you have a chance to recover it, that’s why there needs to be a grace period.
Everything belongs to the collective, this is the mantra o The New World Order”
I doubt the museums or archeologists are going to finance the hunt and provide the divers to retrieve treasures from the oceans.
Shovel, sift & sell- slowly without fanfare.
The finders were smart enough years ago to shovel, sift and sell without fanfare. They since have discovered that there's money to be made pretending to look for it!
But the industry is engaged in a battle with academic marine archaeologists and Unesco,
****”
Is anyone here a marine archaeologist?
It is just a matter of time before the riches of the Andrea Dora are recovered!
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