Free Republic

TRAVERSE CITY - The French government says it still owns the Griffin, a 17th century ship built by legendary explorer La Salle that may have been discovered in northern Lake Michigan. France filed a claim to the vessel Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids, escalating a legal battle over who owns and has authority to retrieve artifacts from the long-lost vessel. Michigan also is seeking title, although state officials have raised doubts about whether the Griffin's gravesite actually has been found. They say federal law gives the state ownership of abandoned vessels embedded in its Great Lakes bottomlands....

A team of U.S. wreck hunters, backed by the governments of France and Michigan, has revealed plans to dive next month to a site on the bottom of Lake Michigan, where one of the most important ships in Canadian history — the 17th-century barque Griffon — is believed to be lying in a tomb of sand awaiting conclusive identification. The first sailing ship on the Great Lakes, the Griffon was built in 1679 near present-day Niagara Falls, Ont., by the famed French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, and symbolized the ambitions of New France to construct and control...

Deep down on the bottom of the Baltic Sea, Swedish treasure hunters think they have made the find of a lifetime. The problem is, they're not exactly sure what it is they've uncovered.

Nearly 200 years after it foundered near Prospect, a British naval ship could spark an international incident if treasure hunters are allowed access to it before archeologists, a Halifax documentary filmmaker says. Earlier this year Nova Scotia issued a treasure trove licence to a group seeking to recover the potential loot raided from the White House in the War of 1812 and sent to the bottom of the sea when a fleet of British ships went down in a storm before it reached the friendly port of Halifax. Arcadia Films producer John Wesley Chisholm has applied to the province for...