Mar 04 2009
Mexico Says “Nope” to Odyssey Marine Wanting to Explore a Shipwreck
The AP is reporting that Mexico has denied a US sea salvage company’s request to explore and recover artifacts from a sunken 17th century Spanish galleon in the Gulf of Mexico.
The ship was named “Our Lady of Juncal” and part of a fleet hit by a powerful storm in 1631. Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. of Tampa, FL has said “the proposal presented to Mexico for archaeological services is in compliance with the UNESCO Convention and would keep all cultural artifacts together in a collection.”
According to Odyssey Marine Exploration, treasure hunters have always had their eyes on the wreck site and the want to preserve the items before treasure hunters actually get to it.
So what the heck is “UNESCO?” Well it’s the “United Nation’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization” that apparently aims “to preserve in situ all remains of human existence submerged for at least one hundred years.” huh. The more ya know, I guess?
Anyway back to the ship: Our Lady of Juncal set sail from the Gulf coast port of Veracruz on October 14, 1631 bearing “a valuable shipment of the goods obtained by the king’s ministers to feed the Spanish empire.” It was part of a 19 ship fleet - most of which never made it.
Galleons returning to Spain in that era commonly carried large amounts of silver and lesser amounts of gold from mines in Mexico, Peru and elsewhere. In fact, Odyssey Marine is currently in a legal dispute with Peru and Spain over what could be the most valuable shipwreck ever — $500 million in silver coins salvaged from a Spanish galleon that sank in 1804 off Portugal.
Odyssey Marine’s Web site describes it as “the world leader in deep-ocean shipwreck exploration” and says its teams have found nearly 300 wrecks, including the recently discovered remains of the HMS Victory, a British man-of-war that sank in the English Channel in October 1744.
