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£250m Pirate
Treasure 'Stolen' by Americans
The treasure hunters who recovered gold and silver worth an estimated £250million from a shipwreck off Cornwall spirited their haul to the United States in an apparent attempt to stop Britain staking a claim.
In a highly secretive operation, American firm Odyssey Marine Exploration worked on the wreck of an English ship, believed to be the 17th Century Merchant Royal, less than 40 miles from Land's End, off the British coast.
Isles of Scilly
But Odyssey carefully avoided landing their treasure on UK soil.
The firm only revealed that the haul - codenamed Black Swan and containing 500,000 silver coins, hundreds of gold coins, worked gold and other artefacts - was discovered beyond any nation's territorial waters and in an area where many ships had gone down.
Odyssey, which used remote-control submarines - known as remote operation vehicles (ROVs) - to dive on the wreck, has remained silent about exactly where the treasure was found, or indeed which ship it came from.
If the 17 tons of coins, gold ornaments and tableware had been brought ashore, Odyssey would have been obliged to inform the Government's Receiver of Wreck, which would probably have impounded the haul, triggering a potentially lengthy legal row about ownership rights.
Instead, the trove was secretly moved to the tax haven of Gibraltar. Odyssey then chartered a jet to take hundreds of plastic containers brimming with coins to the United States on Thursday, where they have been analysed by Nick Bruyer, an expert in antique coinage.
He said: "The find is unprecedented. I don't know of anything equal or comparable to it."
Under salvage law, Odyssey could get up to 90 per cent of the haul's value, although this may depend on whether other claimants come forward. With the treasure now on American soil, it is highly unlikely that Britain will seek a share of it. But experts believe that, as the cargo originally belonged to Spain, its government will have a better case.
Speculation is that it came from a 17th Century Ship the Merchant Royal, and there may be individual claimants to deal with. The personal fortune of the Merchant Royal's captain, John Limbrey, which he accrued through years of trading in the Caribbean, was believed lost when the ship sank in bad weather. At least one of his descendants is already understood to be making enquiries.
Wreck expert Richard Larn, whose book Shipwrecks Of The British Isles is the definitive Lloyds of London reference manual, said he discussed the Merchant Royal with Odyssey co-founder Greg Stemm two years ago.
Determining the identity of a shipwreck is complicated. For example,
it would be possible to find a French-built ship, with English cannons,
Dutch pottery, Chinese porcelain, Turkish pipes, and Venetian trading
beads that had been captured by pirates before it sank. Proving the
shipwreck's identity in that case might prove very difficult, if not
impossible depending on the research available.
Although Odyssey Marine Exploration has insisted its loot was found in international water last night Kendall McDonald, a wreck expert, cast doubt on the claim.
He said: "I expect it could have been found elsewhere. They were careful to say she was 40 miles off Land's End, but she was meant to be about 25 miles out.
"There's a possibility it could be closer in than that but they want to put the possibility of it being in British waters out of reach."
How the Merchant set sail to disaster
The 700-ton Merchant Royal was built in Deptford, London, in 1627.
Owned by English merchants, she set sail from the Spanish colonies of San Domingo, in the West Indies, captained by John Limbrey.
In January 1637, armed with 32 bronze canons, she arrived successfully in Cadiz, southern Spain, where she rested until 1640.
But during that time she began to leak badly and underwent extensive repairs.
The following summer, a ship employed to transport Spain's colonial loot - silver coins, ingots and gold - caught fire.
The bullion had been put aside to pay for Spain's 30,000 strong army, which were stationed at the time in Flanders.
Captain Limbrey volunteered to take the gold to Antwerp, on his way back to London.
The Merchant Royal set sail in late August 1641, trailed by her sister ship, the Dover Merchant.
But during the journey she began to leak and rescuers were unable reach her in time.
Eighteen men drowned and 40 crew, including Capt Limbrey, had to be rescued by the Dover Merchant.
The loss of the treasure made headlines. Back in 1641, the ship;s hold was equivalent to one-third of the national exchequer.
Samuel Pepys refers to the event in his diary and proceedings in the House of Commons were interrupted for the news to be announced.
Several salvage teams have sought to recover her treasure over the years but all have failed until now.
There was confusion as to where she had actually gone down, with conflicting eyewitness reports.
Original papers relating to her final resting place state that witnesses on another ship calculated that it sank ten leagues (around 35 miles) from Land's End.
But experts insist they would have been too far out to actually see land.