[Archport] Estou curioso em saber o que dirá o Governo Português disto.....

[Alexandre <no.arame@gmail.com>]

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/heritage/story/0,,2267728,00.html



£254m battle of the Black Swan
Dispute over sunken ship involves US firm, Spain and Peru, and raises
British fears

by Sam Jones

Monday March 24, 2008
Guardian

The crew of Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes must have thought their ship
had fought its final battle on the morning of October 5 1804. A little
after 10 o'clock, their seven-month voyage from Peru, via Uruguay, to
almost within sight of the Iberian peninsula came to an end with the
British broadside that sent the treasure-laden frigate and 200 souls to
the bottom of the Atlantic and brought Spain into the Napoleonic wars.
But after lying undisturbed on the seabed off Portugal for more than two
centuries, the Mercedes is now at the centre of the biggest treasure
grab in history.

The battle for ownership of its £254m cargo of gold and silver coins,
which has already pitted a US treasure-hunting company against the
Spanish government, has been joined by a third party. An emotive
campaign is welling up from within Peru to reclaim the treasures the
conquistadores and their descendants took by force over the course of
almost three centuries.

Last May, the Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration announced that it
had recovered 500,000 gold and silver coins weighing 17 tonnes from a
wreck in international waters in the Atlantic and flown them back to the
US from Gibraltar.

The company has refused to speculate on the identity - or nationality -
of the vessel and has further ratcheted up the intrigue by referring to
the find only as the Black Swan.

Despite the secrecy and Odyssey's unwillingness to confirm anything
about its discovery, the Spanish government is convinced that the Black
Swan is Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes.

Spain is so sure of its claim to the ship's treasure that over the last
six months it has dispatched gunboats to search one of Odyssey's salvage
vessels in the Mediterranean and lawyers to Florida to fight its corner
in the courts.

After months of legal wrangling, Odyssey has agreed to reveal the
wreck's location to Spain, hand over photographs and documents, and
allow experts access to the artefacts it has recovered.

Spain's case is simple enough: if Odyssey has found the Spanish ship,
Madrid wants its cut. The treasure hunters, however, are confident that
they will profit whatever happens.

Natja Igney, Odyssey's head of corporate communications, said the
company was expecting a number of claims, but added: "It is the opinion
of our legal counsel that even if a claim is deemed to be legitimate by
the courts, Odyssey should still receive title to a significant majority
of the recovered goods."

The Mercedes was one of a squadron of four Spanish frigates returning to
Cádiz from what was then the vice royalty of Peru with a cargo of
millions of gold and silver coins.

The quartet was ambushed by a British squadron off Cape Santa María on
the Portuguese coast and the Mercedes blown to pieces after a volley of
shots ripped through the ship's magazine.

The other three Spanish ships - the Fama, the Medea and the Santa Clara
- were taken to Plymouth, relieved of their cargo and pressed into
service as Royal Navy vessels. Two months later, Spain declared war on
Great Britain.

Since news of the find emerged last year, some Spanish newspapers have
denounced treasure-hunting outfits as "the new pirates of this century"
who are hell-bent on ransacking Spain's archaeological heritage for profit.
But Madrid and Odyssey are now facing growing calls from Peru for some,
or all, of the Mercedes' cargo to be returned to the South American
country.

Peruvian campaigners say that because the gold and silver coins were
probably minted from metal taken without permission by the Spaniards,
they belong to the modern-day country, not its former colonial master.
Last year, Peru's production minister, Rafael Rey, said it was only
"logical" that his country would seek the treasure's return.

Blanca Alva Guerrero, director of the defence of cultural patrimony at
Peru's National Institute of Culture, said: "If we can establish that
some or all of the recovered artefacts came from Peru, we are ready to
reclaim them as material remnants of our past."

She added that Peru had a legal right to recover any items deemed part
of its "cultural heritage".

Mariana Mould de Pease, a Peruvian historian who has successfully
campaigned to oblige Yale University to return hundreds of artefacts
taken from the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, said that although Spain
had "acted duplicitously, and - where necessary - brutally" during the
colonial period, she hoped a deal could be reached. "Given the
historical ties between the two countries, I think Peru should join
Spain in taking part in the scientific recovery of the ship's contents."
She said that Italy's recent success in securing the return of Roman
items from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Getty Museum in the US
had "already influenced countries such as Peru when it comes to taking
legal action founded on cultural restitution".

Spain, however, has so far dismissed the Peruvian claim, saying that the
Mercedes was sailing under a Spanish flag and pointing out that Peru did
not exist as a country in 1804.

Odyssey, meanwhile, remains confident of its legal position - and a 90%
share of the proceeds from the ship.

"If Peru or any other country believes [it has] a claim," said Igney,
"it is invited to file it."

The company may be optimistic, but the international tug-of-war over the
wreck has brought the issue of profit-making firms' involvement in
historical salvage back to the surface.

"There's a world of difference between the archaeological approach and
the treasure-hunting approach," said Dr Peter Marsden, a marine
archaeologist and the founder of the Shipwreck and Coastal Heritage
Centre in Hastings. "What we don't know about Odyssey is what they are
doing, because they are keeping things very close to their chests. But
they are making their money from the sale of historical items that
really should be in museums."

Odyssey's secretive behaviour has raised concerns in the archaeological
community about the deal the British government has signed with the
company to salvage HMS Sussex, an English warship which sank in the
western Mediterranean in 1694 while carrying a large cargo of gold coins.
A spokeswoman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said it was
confident that the contract required Odyssey to "respect the relevant
international archaeological standards", adding: "We keep this under
continual review."

But as the first shots are fired in what could be a long legal battle
for the cargo of the Mercedes, Marsden cannot help wondering whether the
lustre of the treasure has blinded the world to the wreck's true value.
"You have to remember that the ship was just carrying cargo from A to
B," he says.

"What was the purpose of the journey and of that money? What is its real
story? The important thing is what it tells us about what was going on."
guardian.co.uk (c) Guardian News and Media Limited 2008