Black Swan Project
The Black Swan Project was the name of a commercial treasure hunt project of the American (publicly traded) company Odyssey Marine Exploration , based in Florida , United States.
The aim was to find the cargo - gold and silver coins - of the British merchant ship Merchant Royal , which sank in 1641 . It sank under Captain John Limbrey on September 23, 1641 during a storm en route from Cádiz to Antwerp south of Cornwall. The current value of the cargo is estimated at $ 500 million.
According to the company, a wreck was found off the coast of Cornwall at Land's End (UK) in 2007 . The actual location, however, remained a secret. 500,000 coins could be recovered, which were brought to the company's headquarters in Florida. If the estimates are correct, this will be the greatest treasure trove in history. The 1985 discovery of coins from the wreck of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha was valued at $ 400 million.
Objections from the Spanish government
However, the Spanish government has claimed ownership and filed a lawsuit. According to the Spanish government, the treasure comes from a find off the coast of Portugal. The Spanish government assumes that it is the Spanish frigate Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes , which sank in 1804 and where the treasure came from.
In 2009 Odyssey Marine Exploration was sentenced by a US court to hand over the treasure to Spain. The company then lodged an objection, which an appeal court ruled negative in 2011. A motion by the company to freeze the judgment pending a possible decision by the Supreme Court was also denied on January 31, 2012.
On February 25, 2012, the treasure was flown to Madrid by two Spanish Air Force transport planes and is to be distributed among several museums and collections.
In 2013, a US district court sentenced the company to pay Spain a US $ 1 million fine for fraudulent intent and fraudulent trial, and the court found that the company never sought help from Spain to identify the shipwreck he searched.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Record wreck 'found off Cornwall' - BBC News , May 19, 2007 (accessed May 22, 2008)
- ↑ Stop, that's our treasure, Spain tells Britain - Times
- ^ Spain suspicious over £ 250m treasure haul ( Memento of August 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) - The Independent , May 2007
- ↑ Spain gets record gold back - Spiegel Online, February 1, 2012
- ↑ Spain brought back millions of coins from the USA - derStandard.at, February 25, 2012 (accessed on February 26, 2012)
- ↑ Ivan Penn: Odyssey Marine ordered to pay Spain $ 1 million in Black Swan case. In: Tampa Bay Times. September 30, 2013, accessed December 7, 2016 .