Reclaiming Buried Treasure in the "Black Swan" Case

James A. Goold, Covington and Burling LLP and Dr. James P. Delgado, NOAA
Mr. Goold an Dr. Delgado describe their work on the famous landmark legal case concerning more than half a million silver coins recovered from a deep water site off the coast of Portugal by a commercial salvage firm, Odyssey Marine Exploration.
Odyssey characterized the find as recovering a large amount of silver that had been dumped at sea, while Spanish authorities suspected the coins came from the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, a Spanish naval frigate lost in combat with British naval forces during the Napoleonic Wars. In a protracted international legal battle, Spain's position prevailed, as Odyssey had indeed encountered more than coins, and that "smoking gun" evidence of the lost ship and its crew were present on the sea floor and in what had been recovered. The case revolved not only around the issue of the identity of the mystery shipwreck, but also the legal status of warships, questions of public and private treasure carried aboard the ship, and intervention in the case by the government of Peru, asserting the silver had come from colonial Spanish territory that is now Peru, and descendants of Spanish merchant families who had shipped coins on the lost vessel.