United States Waives Its Sovereignty Over Part of a Federal Wildlife Refuge
Photo and graphics by John Amrhein, Jr.
It is all about treasure, seventeen tons of it. This incredible hoard is not buried in the wildlife refuge but deposited in an undisclosed warehouse in Florida under court protection. It was brought to Florida in May 2007 by Odyssey Marine Exploration of Tampa. Over 500,000 pieces of eight had been painstakingly retrieved by robot from 3,600 feet of water off Portugal. The shipwreck, code name “Black Swan,” may have been the Spanish warship Nuestra Senora de la Mercedes which blew up and sank in 1804 during a battle with the English. Under Assateague Island, Virginia, within the bounds of the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, lies another Spanish warship called La Galga which ran ashore in 1750. There is little gold or silver to be found in her buried remains but her treasure is her history. She is the legendary galleon described in Misty of Chincoteague written by Marguerite Henry in 1947. This children’s classic has been read by millions and was made into a movie in 1961. Every year hundreds of thousands of tourists travel to Assateague just to see the wild horses. Popular legend says these horses are descended from those that swam ashore from this galleon.
The two ships, thousands of miles apart and separated by fifty-four years of history, have something in common. They are both the subject of controversy in the ongoing litigation between the Kingdom of Spain and Odyssey over a fortune some say could be worth $500 million.
In 1983, I reported to the federal government that my group of volunteers had located La Galga buried under Assateague in a former inlet, far from the present ocean front. Despite laws and regulations requiring verification and cataloging of such sites, the government did nothing. Our group offered to survey the site which the government rejected. Conversely, on news of our discovery, NOAA listed in its database the location of La Galga as within the bounds of the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge.
In 1998, a treasure hunting company called Sea Hunt, Inc. filed a claim in federal court against a wreck lying in the ocean which they believed was La Galga. This location was nearly two miles distant from the one we reported in 1983. They also claimed to have found another Spanish warship called the Juno off the southern end of Assateague. The Juno actually sank 250 miles off the coast in October of 1802. Sea Hunt had merely located two unidentified merchant ships in an area known to contain many shipwrecks. The site they believed was La Galga was thoroughly mapped in 1982 by our group and in 1983 by the Commonwealth of Virginia. We both concluded it was not La Galga.
After the Sea Hunt litigation commenced in the federal district court in Norfolk, Virginia, the federal government invited Spain to get into the controversy. The government even attempted to represent Spain at taxpayer expense. During the two years of trial the court heard a great deal of skepticism over the alleged discovery of these Spanish shipwrecks, so much so that Spain even declared on the record that Sea Hunt had not located them. In spite of the conflicting statements, both ships were ultimately awarded to Spain by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals (221 F.3d 634 4th Cir. 2000), much to the glee of Spain and the federal government. The federal government has always hated treasure hunters. This decision was hailed as a great victory in Spain. It was the first time the country had entered a dispute over treasure from one of its lost galleons and won.
When the news of Odyssey’s colossal recovery was broadcast around the world, James Goold, Spain’s U.S. attorney, fired a warning shot across Odyssey’s bow: Spain had won in the Sea Hunt case and would win again. Since then, the Sea Hunt case has been flaunted by Spain throughout its briefings filed in the Odyssey case. In 2007, I published The Hidden Galleon which documented the complete history and discovery of La Galga and exposed the jurisdictional flaws in the ill-conceived Sea Hunt litigation. Before the book was published, I met with federal officials to discuss our future plans of obtaining a permit to survey and verify the site using current technology with the ultimate goal of getting the historic shipwreck nominated to our National Register and then hopefully excavated and placed in a museum. I was advised that since this was a highly charged political issue I needed to proceed slowly, which I did. Verification of the wreck would undermine Spain’s precedent, if not legally, certainly morally and ethically. In February 2008, Gray & Pape, cultural resource managers in Richmond, Virginia, who are highly experienced with this type of work, filed for a permit to conduct a non-intrusive magnetometer survey within the wildlife refuge at the suspected wreck site. This was to be privately funded, gratis to the government. To date, after two years, the officials with the U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service have refused to approve the permit, refused to deny the permit, and refuse to discuss it. The government has confirmed, however, that the Spanish embassy has instructed them to prohibit any archaeological verification of the wreck site by myself or Gray & Pape even though it sits under federal land. It should be noted here that in 1983 when the Washington Post carried the news of our discovery Spain took no exception to federal ownership of the wreck that was recognized in the article. In order to verify Spain’s current standing to exert control over the wreck site, a request was made for the federal government to render an opinion as to who owns the shipwreck, Spain or the U. S. In 1750, the captain of La Galga declared that the owner of the land owned the wreck. Later in1763, in the Treaty of Paris, Spain ceded to Great Britain all things that were dependant on the land on the North American continent. This would have included the wreck of La Galga. In 1943, the U.S. Department of Interior took possession of the Virginia portion of Assateague in a condemnation proceeding:
“…It is further ADJUDGED, ORDERED and DECREED that the said United States of America, petitioner herein, shall have the right and power to take possession of the lands condemned, and all fixtures, buildings and improvements thereon, or any part thereof, as of this date, and all persons in possession and control of any part or any of the said lands, buildings and improvements thereon, or any part thereof, shall immediately upon said date surrender the same to the United States of America…”
Today, the government has not only refused to verify the site or respond publicly to Spain’s ownership claim, but, unbelievably, has now entered the litigation in the Odyssey case on the side of Spain. The U. S. taxpayer is footing the bill. The government sat on the sidelines for two years until there was a change in administration. The Justice Department, led by Eric Holder who came from Covington & Burling, the same firm that represented Spain in the Sea Hunt case and currently in the Odyssey case, has cited the Sea Hunt case as precedent against Odyssey. Odyssey requested that I file an affidavit in their case to expose the truth about Sea Hunt. The same government that is preventing verification of the wreck site on Assateague, evidence that would be relevant and useful to anyone who would choose to attack the jurisdictional basis of the Sea Hunt case, is the same government representing the interests of Spain in its present battle to gain return of seventeen tons of Spanish treasure. The legendary galleon in the children’s classic, Misty of Chincoteague, has been taken hostage and is now a political prisoner: the federal government has granted Spain sovereign rights to a piece of U.S. soil.
Photo courtesy of Neil Dobson/Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc.
On December 22, 2009, the federal district court in Tampa awarded the treasure to Spain. It is now under appeal.
To contact the author email author@thehiddengalleon.com or visit www.thehiddengalleon.com
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