Spain Awaits Treasure While La Galga Remains a Hostage

[1750treasure]

The world is now following the Odyssey marine case with renewed interest. Odyssey has lost every step of the way in the federal courts in their bid to keep 17 tons of treasure. In Spain, the gloating has begun before the treasure has arrived. I have seen numerous articles in the Spanish press that refer back to La Galga and the Juno and Spain’s victory in the Sea Hunt case. It is time to take another look at a case that, at least in the eyes of Spain, is the precedent that helped them beat Odyssey. Odyssey has been called a pirate and a plunderer who has no respect for Spain’s history. Spain says this is all about their cultural heritage. The Sea Hunt case documents that they have little respect for ours.

La Galga actually lies buried in the Chincoteague National Wildlife refuge. This location has been known to the federal government since 1983. Presently, the Kingdom of Spain and the federal government are blocking archaeological verification of this site because its verification would ultimately decimate the precedent in the Sea Hunt case. La Galga is a very important historic wreck. It is the galleon that legend says brought the horses that run wild on Assateague today. This legend has already been documented in the movie, Misty of Chincoteague www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX9wIU0k-nU. Hundreds of thousands of tourists travel to Assateague and Chincoteague each year just to see these beautiful animals running wild. La Galga has another place in history. On her last voyage, she was escorting the galleon Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe which became disabled at Ocracoke Inlet, North Carolina. Her treasure was stolen and buried in the Caribbean. This event would inspire, in part, Robert Louis Stevenson when he wrote Treasure Island. See my post in this forum Norman Island (BVI) is Treasure Island http://forum.treasurenet.com/index.php/topic,427927.0.html. Also you can read more at www.treasureislandtheuntoldstory.com. This shipwreck has international historical significance and Spain has taken it hostage. All of the questions you have I am sure will be answered here in my complete analysis of Sea Hunt and these two shipwrecks www.thehiddengalleon.com/the-sea-hunt-case.htm. This analysis also documents that the Juno is hundreds of miles from the site awarded to Spain.

For those of you who will argue that the court ruled that the shipwrecks belong to Spain regardless of where they are located are incorrect. This was an in rem admiralty action. The suit was about the artifacts arrested. Spain never offered any proof that these belonged to them. They couldn’t because they weren’t. To put this scenario in simpler terms it is like this:

Imagine yourself sitting at home watching the news about the murder trial of Richard Roe. He is accused of killing his wife Rhonda. You hear that Richard has exonerated himself by testifying that you killed his wife. That’s bad enough but you hear that you have already been convicted by the court based on the evidence presented before you are even arrested. You are going straight to jail without a trial. Your name is Sea Hunt.

In the last pleading filed in the Sea Hunt case, the Commonwealth of Virginia summed it up this way:

“No court has ruled that La Galga and the Juno have in fact been found or that their remains lay within the two search areas. So, what Sea Hunt and Spain seem to forget is that no one knows whether the recovered artifacts came from La Galga or Juno, nor does anyone know whether Sea Hunt has located either La Galga or Juno. Without that knowledge, at a minimum, no one knows whether any given artifact belongs to Spain or to Virginia, and no one knows the recovery spots identify wreckage that belongs to Spain or Virginia….Sea Hunt is in the untenable position of possibly having to answer to Virginia for giving away Virginia’s property.”

A formal adjudication of whether the recovered artifacts belong to Spain, and whether Sea Hunt has indeed located La Galga and Juno, is more important than ever. The ownership contest is not between Sea Hunt and Spain, but between Virginia and Spain, as Sea Hunt has no ownership interest in either the artifacts or the vessels, except as contractually provided in the permits. Adjudication is important, because both Sea Hunt and Spain have changed their positions on these issues.”

“Sea Hunt has not unequivocally asserted it has possession, actually or constructively, of La Galga or Juno…Likewise, Spain has never admitted, even now, that Sea Hunt has found La Galga and/or Juno.”

Virginia recalled the affidavit of David Beltran Catala of the Spanish Embassy that was filed on May 26, 1999: “In summary, I state that Spain objects to any salvage award concerning Juno on grounds that:… Sea Hunt has not located the Juno or otherwise achieved success that could merit a salvage award…”

“The memoranda of both Sea Hunt and Spain, particularly Spain, contain numerous allegations of contumacious conduct and ad hominem attacks.”

Virginia asked that an item by item inquiry be conducted on the artifacts. The burden of proof would lie with Spain. It never happened.

The Kingdom of Spain has abandoned La Galga and the Juno in favor of two unidentified shipwrecks that they knew were not the actual ships. The souls of four hundred and thirteen soldiers, sailors, and a handful of women and children have been waiting for their watery grave to be discovered. They have watched their homeland abandon them for the sake of political expediency and a legal precedent. They heard the statements in court that their ship had not been found. They saw the proper documentation that would have faithfully recognized their last day on earth, which could and should have been presented to the American arbiter, was not presented, thus resulting in a ruling by 4th Circuit that would torment their souls through eternity. As for La Galga, Spain has breached the stipulation that they agreed to on April 1, 1999 that La Galga was in the ocean lying within three miles of the beach. Without that stipulation, Spain would have had no standing to even be in the case. Now they are preventing archaeological investigation of a site on American soil that has great historical significance. Fortunately there are no graves associated with this shipwreck. Spain is quite happy to display the artifacts, property of the Commonwealth of Virginia improperly taken in the Sea Hunt case, and have them displayed in a National Park of the United States as souvenirs of their conquest of Sea Hunt. Spain ignored my letter of July 20, 1999 about the truth related to these vessels. They proceeded anyway to allow the 4th Circuit to make pronouncements of fact that were clearly untrue as found in the Sea Hunt record. It would be hard to make a better case for Spain’s abandonment of these two ships either constructively or expressly. This abandonment is now documented by the 4th Circuit opinion. The Sea Hunt case needs to be retried if Spain insists on using it in other legal and public forum. It is unconscionable otherwise.

 

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[mariner]

John,

You are probably right about La Galga, but it is almost irrelevant. In the SeaHunt case, the court ruled on a series of principles about ownerships of wrecks and the meaning of the 1902 Treaty, and these established some of the prescedents used in the current Odyssey case. The fact that SeaHunt was probably wrong in its identification of the wrecks it had found is neither here nor there.

Some might say that if that is the law, then the law is an ass, and they might be right ...... but it is still the law.

Personally, I thought that Odyssey had a good case, but I think they brought about their own downfall by the way they acted in simply removing all those coins without having a dialogue with Spain, in much the same way as SeaHunt did in their case.

Mariner

 

[Vox veritas]

This is the page number two and number eight of the agreement signed between the Ministry of Culture of Spain and Mr. Peter (S) Knollenberg, Chairman of SEA HUNT INC. in June 2003 to recover the remains and loads of JUNO and LA GALGA. But there was opposition from the NPS and nothing was done. Spain agreed, but in USA there were problems. I personally participated in the negotiations of the agreement. In the scam called "Operation Bahia II" where I keep charged after seven years of inquiry, was questioned the legality of this agreement, but nothing could be demonstrated. This agreement did not please many people.
This is the truth. I acknowledge them and I have enough documentation to prove it.
Cheers VV

 

[1750treasure]

Mariner, thank you for your comments. Yes, the court cited the 1902 Treaty. But the court did not have the power to interpret the 1902 Treaty because Spain was not there. I say this because the 4th Circuit clarified that this was an in rem action which means that for Spain to have legal standing the res had to be Spanish. When Spain entered the case they presented no evidence to support the identities of the two vessels that had been declared unidentified. For the Juno, Spain offered up an erroneous account of the Juno’s location three days before she sank. That error was created by a typesetter in Charleston, SC who was repeating the story of the Juno loss from the Boston paper he had in hand. The position stated to Boston paper by the captain of the American Schooner, Favorite, was for October 24, latitude 34° 44’ and longitude 67° 16’. The typesetter at the Charleston City Gazette transposed 67 to 76 degrees of longitude. That position is inland at Elizabeth City, North Carolina. On October 27, less than twenty-four hours before the Juno sank was 38 degrees latitude, 69.56 degrees longitude, nearly three hundred miles from Assateague Island. The Juno had yet to cross the northbound Gulf Stream. The Favorite was still with the Juno and was still on course to clear Cape Cod, her ultimate destination was Boston.
The information Spain gave was the Charleston paper as recounted by a Spanish official in Havana. This led Virginia and David Bederman of Sea Hunt to assume that the Juno was close to shore. On April 1, 1999, a stipulation was agreed to that La Galga and the Juno were within three miles of the coast. Without this stipulation, an evidentiary hearing would have been ordered as to the actual history of the vessels and there locations and most likely expert testimony from archaeologists. Had there been one Spain would have been given the boot. The record is clear that Bederman relied on the erroneous document. Spain also submitted archival documents that would have documented the Juno’s location on October 27 except for that presentation had a “missing page.” We know what was on that missing page thanks to the Spanish historian Caesaro Duro in his book Naufragios Espanol in 1859. That book was available to Spain but was not used. It can even be found online today.
The only other evidence that persuaded the judge that the res might be Spanish were the four Spanish coins shown to him. No one told him that Spanish coins do not prove a Spanish shipwreck. At the very end of the proceeding, Jim Goold, Spains’s attorney, told the court: “Apart from Sea Hunt’s own representations to the Court that it had located the vessels and was recovering artifacts from them, the artifacts include Spanish coins dated 1734, 1740, 1741 and 1799, all of which match the 1750 sinking of La Galga and the 1802 sinking. For all of its evasion and obfuscation, Sea Hunt has never as much as hinted that there is any other Spanish vessel in the area it examined.” The U.S. Justice department was present as they always were in each proceeding. They remained silent about the coins.
This statement was made two years after Spain was put on notice that not only did the two Spanish shipwrecks lie outside of the area claimed by Sea Hunt, but that Spanish coins do not prove Spanish shipwrecks.
Some may argue that the Sea Hunt decision applied to wherever the shipwrecks may lie. That premise not only contradicts the assumed in rem jurisdiction of the court, put further makes the case that Sea Hunt is nothing more than an advisory opinion to the Kingdom of Spain. Such opinions are prohibited by Article III Section two of the U.S. Constitution.

To be clear everyone should read http://www.thehiddengalleon.com/the-sea-hunt-case.htm There is a bit of new material here

Vox, has submitted the contract between Spain and Sea Hunt II. I believe this happened in 2002. In 2002, the National Park Service undertook their own survey, which included an attempt to locate La Galga and the Juno. NPS failed to do so. Based on these results and the historical record on these two ships, I would say that Sea Hunt II bought a “pig in a poke.” They should be glad that they were prevented from wasting any further money chasing shipwrecks that weren’t there. The last word on La Galga comes from Spain. They believe now that she lies buried in the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge. You can see the letter below. It appears that this letter was meant for public consumption because it incorrectly leaves out the fact that the permit request was not made by me but my Cultural Resource Management Company, Gray & Pape of Richmond, VA. They don’t mention any of it. You can see the application here and the follow up here which the embassy refused to answer:

Permit Application
http://www.thehiddengalleon.com/LaGalgapermit2-21.pdf

Response to Embassy
http://www.thehiddengalleon.com/Spanish Embassy Submission 6-4-09.pdf

Does anybody think that Spain cares about our cultural heritage?

 

[MORE AND BEYOND OSSY]

Gday John
"Does anybody think that Spain cares about our cultural heritage " Yes! Yours and theirs !
What would have done with the wreck if you had been allowed to excavate it ?
Ossy

 

[1750treasure]

From the very beginning I made it clear that I wanted nothing. I only wanted to see La Galga in a museum. The dedication page in The Hidden Galleon makes that clear as well as my correspondence with the Embassy and the USFWS.