Profiteers on the High Seas - Another point of view

Heather Pringle - 

The big business of treasure hunting is selling off the world's maritime heritage—and it's perfectly legal.

On the afternoon of October 24, 1865, Civil War veteran William T. Nichols witnessed a scene aboard the steamship Republic more terrifying than many of the horrors he had recently witnessed in battle. While en route from New York to New Orleans, the ship, which was carrying 80 passengers and coins then worth a reported $400,000, sailed through a fierce hurricane, sustaining grave damage. As the wind howled, the vessel lurched sickeningly from side to side, rapidly taking on water.

The crew struggled heroically to save it. "I cannot describe in words the impression which [the event] made upon my mind," wrote Nichols, a former army colonel, to his wife. "It was desperation intensified." A day later, Republic sank off the coast of Georgia. At least 14 passengers perished.

Settling on the ocean floor, the wreck rested undisturbed for nearly 140 years, preserving rare details of the Reconstruction era, "a brief period of American history for which there are few known shipwrecks," says Robert Neyland, an underwater archaeologist at the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C.

In the 1990s, however, an American shipwreck-recovery firm, Odyssey Marine Exploration, Inc., began methodically searching for Republic. It sent out a research vessel loaded with remote-sensing gear, and in the summer of 2003, the company finally located wreckage from the ship in international waters at a depth of some 1,700 feet.

Under maritime law, salvage companies are permitted to keep the ships they find in international waters, provided no one else claims jurisdiction over the vessels. So Odyssey staked a claim to Republic in a U.S. federal court, obtaining legal ownership. Then, with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), the firm raised more than 51,000 gold and silver coins from the site, as well as thousands of other artifacts, including hair-remedy bottles, mustard jars, children's slates, and ink wells.

To help finance its operations, Odyssey began selling many of these finds to eager collectors, earning millions in revenues. Impressed, Fortune Small Business magazine put the firm on its cover with the headline: "Treasure Inc.: How an Entrepreneur Went Hunting for Sunken Gold—and Found a $20 Million-a-Year Business."

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