Odyssey Marine Exploration Seizes on National Icon: How will Britain React?

"Tampa, FL – February 2, 2009 - Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc. (NasdaqCM: OMEX), pioneers in the field of deep-ocean shipwreck exploration, has discovered the long-sought shipwreck of HMS Victory lost in 1744, solving one of the greatest mysteries in naval history. ..."
and presumably looks to make a pretty packet from raising artefacts from her and selling them since that is what they are in the business for. The trouble is that these are the remains of a warship of the British navy and went down with all hands, so its a grave.

No problem. The British like letting treasure hunters do their thing on archaeological sites on land and under water, so it is no surprise to learn that "terms of collaboration between Odyssey and the UK MOD on the project are currently being negotiated, and an agreement similar to the Sussex Partnering agreement has been proposed". That's all we need.

There is an interesting report about the site that was initially code-named "Legend" here and (unlike the Black Swan affair at the time of discovery), we learn the names of the archaeologists involved: Neil Cunningham Dobson, Dr. Sean Kingsley, the former is acceredited as employed by Odyssey. They give all the reasons why they think the site should be explored and not preserved.

The preliminary "pre-disturbance" work on the wreck will figure on a Discovery Channel “Treasure Quest” episode, airing in the United States on Thursday, February 5 at 10PM ET/PT and in the UK on Sunday, February 8 at 9:00 PM.

Illustration, The Victory (from Treasure Quest).

English Detectorists Say They Dug a Metre into Roman Site in the Dark

“It is believed the hoard was deposited on a Roman rubbish pit” says the newspaper article about another Roman coin hoard, this one dug up on a Roman site near Newport Pagnell. We don’t really know because according to the newspaper report of what was said at the Treasure inquest in Milton Keynes, the two metal detectorists Barrie Plasom and Dave Phillips rapidly hoiked it out in the dark before telling anyone about it.

They continued to dig a hole three feet deep and found more than 1,400 bronze coins and pieces of pottery. "It was about 5.30pm at this time of year so it was pitch black and we couldn't see a thing," added Mr Phillips. "We laid on our bellies and kept pulling out coins.

Three feet (nearly a metre) deep, that has to be some sort of record I guess for Britain [normally holes of this size are associated with looting of tells in Iraq and graves in Peru etc]. What is interesting is these seem to be the finders' own words.

The Treasure Code of Practice has something to say about this kind of thing (para. 33, 34, 36 etc, but above all 79[viii]), not that anyone in Britain takes any notice of that sort of thing of course.

Whatever these two may by their own account have dug through on an evening in early December 2006 to get these finds out of the ground, it does seem that this is another of those Roman settlement finds which show the lie of the claim so frequently made by collectors and dealers that “hoards are always found well away from archaeological sites”. It would seem that this one sadly slap-bang in the middle of one. Sadly though one may suspect that not very many notes on what was dug through were taken during this mad coin grabfest in the winter dusk. In fact the metal detectorists did not even seem to have had much of an idea where on the map the findspot was since the newspaper account of the inquest suggests they did not even know in what county they had been digging, they initially mistook which side of the Bedfordshire/ Buckinghamshire border they had been... but, in England, the administrative boundaries are marked on proper large scale maps (the sort responsible fieldworkers use to plot their finds).

Everything points to this being the Cold Brayfield hoard (2006/T631). Mr Plasom has already had other valuable finds from this vicinity in the past.

Laura Hannam, 'Treasure hunters set to coin it with Roman haul', Milton Keynes News 29 October 2008. Vignette from here. 

Britain should ratify Underwater Cultural heritage Convention

There are only 17 nations who so far have ratified the UNESCO convention on the protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage (2001) and its Annex.

In order for it to enter into force, twenty states parties need to ratify it.

The British take pride in the fact that for a large part of recent history Britain was one of the prime sea powers, both naval as well as in terms of commerce. There is a fair bit of British cultural heritage scattered across the bottom of the world's seas.

Despite this, Britain is one of those nations that is still resisting ratifying this document. If we are intend to protect our global cultural heritage it is essential that all nations respect the spirit of the Convention, enforce abidance by the rules of the Annex to the Convention and establish administrative and funding mechanisms to allow the effective implementation of the Convention as soon as possible.

Of course that would get in the way of escapades like the British government’s hypocritical “HMS Sussex" deal with Florida based commercial treasure hunters Odyssey (yes, the same ones mixed up in the so-called “Black Swan” affair).