ARCHIVED - Odyssey treasure will come to Cartagena

14.5 tons of gold and silver coins will be housed permanently at the ARQUA in Cartagena

November concluded with some excellent news for the Region of Murcia and Cartagena on Friday, as the Director General for Fine Arts and Patrimony, Jesús Prieto, made the announcement that Cartagena would become the permanent home of the treasure recovered from the Frigate Nuestra Señora de la Mercedes by American deep-sea salvage company, Odyssey.

574,553 pieces of coinage, with an estimated value of 500 million dollars, weighing 14.5 tons, were recovered from the sunken frigate and became the subject of a fierce custodial battle, as Odyssey fought to keep them in America, and the Spanish Government to bring them back to Spain.

The treasure was recovered from a depth of 1100 metres, and Odyssey claimed that they had not belonged to an identifiable wreck, but had been found scattered across the seabed.

The Spanish Government claim that the company deliberately set out to find the Mercedes, knowing her approximate location after she was sunk by British ships in 1804.

The vessel was laden with 17 tons of gold and silver coins, a vast treasure which was travelling to Spain from the Spanish colony of Peru, the money aboard her to pay for Spain´s wars in Europe.  She had crossed the Atlantic and was close to the Portugese coast when a  British squadron attacked her, close to Cape St Mary, Portugal.

During the ensuing battle the 34 gun frigate was sunk, shattering after an explosion in the powder magazine, all 250 men on board lost, together with her cargo of treasure.

Odyssey discovered the coins, 1100 metres down, using remote controlled deep sea robots, and soon afterwards became embroiled in a furious row as they attempted to smuggle the treasure to America without the knowledge of the Spanish authorities.

Odyssey took the haul to Gibraltar and airlifted it back to the US, and the Guardia Civil , not knowing the coins had already left the country, forced the Odyssey salvage vessel into Algeciras to search it, before a diplomatic row erupted.

Although many museums were keen to hold the coinage, Cartagena has finally been selected as it is the seat of the ARQUA Museum, which is the national Museum of Subaquatic Archaeology, and has not only specialised staff and laboratories which are capable of conserving and restoring the coinage, but also spacious installations which can be adapted to hold a permanent display.

Naturally the regional head of culture and Tourism, Pedro Cruz,and the Mayoress of Cartagena are delighted, as this treasure will give Cartagena and the Region of Murcia an important tourist attraction which will help to promote Murcia throughout Europe.

A team of specialist conservation staff have been working for some weeks already on the first batch of coinage and artefacts which arrived at the Museum in June, but it will take many, many years to clean and conserve this vast volume of metal.

Much of the coinage is fused together in lumps, although sophisticated visual detection techniques have already ascertained that there are 309.396 individual coins, 212 in gold, 309.184 in silver, and 265.157 pieces of metal plate.

Most of the coinage is Spanish minted belonging to the Bourbon Monarchs ( Carlos III and Carlos IV), issued between the end of the 18^th and beginning of the 19^th centuries, the latest being dated 1804, the year in which the frigate was sunk.

The pieces recovered were minted in the American viceroyalties at the Royal Mints of Lima, Potosi, Popayan and Santiago de Chile, but the most abundant are those of Carlos IV, minted in 1803 in the mint at Lima. Most are silver pieces of eight, whilst the gold coinage comprises pieces with a value of eight escudos.

The controversy surrounding the recovery of this coinage by Odyssey has highlighted just how many Spanish owned wrecks there are lying on the seabed.  Marine archaeologists have long called for greater protection for Spanish wrecks, there being literally thousands of vessels beneath the waters along the Spanish coastline. In one interview it was said that " there is more gold sunk in the Gulf of Cadiz than in the Bank of Spain, " estimating that there are at least 850 hulls in the bay of Cádiz alone, many known to contain vast quantities of coinage.

The public are irresistibly drawn to stories of treasure, sunken pieces of eight and caskets of gold coinage glittering alluringly beneath the waves. And Cartagena will undoubtedly seize every opportunity to promote the tourism potential of the treasure of the Mercedes to the maximum when the coinage arrives at the ARQUA, hopefully by the end of the year.

Currently the coinage is stored in plastic containers filled with water to ensure conditions remian the same as below the water, and the top priority of the Ministry of Culture is to conserve, document and study the recovered materials and protect them for future generations. Over 19 tons ( water included) of containers lie awaiting the conservationists, and the painstaking work to restore the treasure of the Mercedes to its former splendour has only just begun.

Images: Ministry of Culture.

Full report- Nuestra Señora de la Mercedes, Cartagena