FOUND MONEY:

US battle for £2bn undersea treasure: The most valuable shipwreck ever has been found off Florida, but Spain claims it owns the 250-year old galleon (Giles Tremlett, January 7, 2003, The Guardian)

For nearly 250 years the caskets of gold, silver and emeralds lay undisturbed alongside the fish-cleaned bones of the sailors who went to the bottom of the sea with them. But now the glittering cargo of a Spanish treasure-ship is the centre of a bitter international row.

A Florida court recently awarded a group of American treasure hunters limited rights over what may be the world's most valuable undersea find - an estimated £2bn worth of treasure on board a wreck that they claim is the long-lost Notre Dame de Deliverance galleon.

But the treasure hunters were yesterday facing fierce opposition from Spain and France as they fought for absolute ownership of the cargo that the Spanish king Charles 3rd was sending home from his vast New World empire.

The Deliverance was caught by a fierce hurricane as it passed near the Florida Keys on November 1 1755, a day after setting sail from Havana with treasures extracted from mines in Mexico, Peru and Colombia. Many of its crew of 500 Frenchmen and Spaniards who survived the wreck were reportedly eaten by Florida's cannibalistic Calusa tribe.

Now, nearly 250 years later, the Portland-based Sub Sea Research company claims to have located the Deliverance, lying 200ft under water on a flat, silty seabed, some 40 miles off Key West.

What ever happened to finders keepers? Actually, if you've not read it, we highly recommend Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea, both a sea and a legal adventure. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 10, 2003 2:37 PM