The Race for Riches
Under the sea, treasure hunters and scientists battle for history's bounty
The top-flight gear and solid tips have propelled salvors into a golden age. A few of the ships they find bear fabulous treasure, like La Capitana, a Spanish galleon that ran aground off Ecuador in 1654. In 1997, a team led by Herman Moro, an Arlington, Va., gardener, pulled thousands of silver coins and bars from the wreck. Most finds, however, are notable mostly for historical value, such as the Empress of Asia. A British luxury liner turned troop transport, the ship was hit by Japanese dive bombers near Singapore in 1942; 52 years later, it was salvaged by Michael Lim of Technical Diving International, who found guns, porcelain, and Army uniforms.
Grave robbers? Regardless of what is recovered, many archaeologists shudder at the thought of for-profit companies tinkering with wrecks. George Bass, INA's archaeological director, has been an outspoken critic of salvors, whom he likens to grave robbers. "One cannot tear down Mount Vernon and sell the bricks as souvenirs in the name of free enterprise," he says, "so why should we allow so-called entrepreneurs to destroy and sell the nails from, say, the flagship of John Paul Jones?" Bass, currently excavating a fifth-century B.C. shipwreck near Tektas Burnu, Turkey, believes underwater archaeological sites should be accorded the same protection as, say, American Indian burial grounds.
Stories of wrecks mauled and artifacts destroyed are legion in archaeological circles. Among the most notorious is the case of the DeBraak, a British warship that sank off Delaware in 1798. Salvors are said to have tossed nonglittering items back overboard, such as an 18th-century Royal Navy stove, one of only two in existence. When the ship was raised by cranes in 1986, an avalanche of artifacts slid out, falling back into the sea. "The majority of wrecks I've encountered have seen some heavy activity," says James Delgado, executive director of the Vancouver Maritime Museum. Recently visiting the brig Somers near Veracruz, Mexico, Delgado was aghast to discover that treasure hunters had pillaged the ship, which endured the only mutiny in United States naval history and inspired Herman Melville to write Billy Budd. They had ripped into the stern and looted guns, swords, and the ship's chronometer.
But even the slightest misstep can ruin irreplaceable data. Cheryl Ward, an archaeobotanist at INA, collects seeds, pollen, and plant residue from ancient ships. "I've studied perfumes and spices from a shipwreck from the time of King Tut," says Ward. "I go and I look at how that perfume was used, how it shows up in economic documents and religious documents, even in paintings on walls." She worries that careless salvors simply discard these important clues to the past, since they have no value on the auction block.
Of particular concern is the increasing number of Third World governments cutting deals with salvors. Cuba has recently granted two Canadian companies, Visa Gold Resources and Terrawest Industries, permission to search its waters; in return, the Cuban government is promised 50 percent of any treasure recovered. Archaeologists believe poor countries lack the resources to prevent terrible abuses and point to the Baltic as a worst-case scenario. This American cargo ship, lost off the Bahamas in 1866, was ransacked in 1992 by salvors, who blew holes in the hull and destroyed crates and crates of housewares. "Can anyone name a single country that has realized any dramatic change in its national wealth by believing such promises?" asks Bass. "Rumor has it that the only people who make money from such deals are the officials who give the permits."
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