Italy ratifies the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage

In some slightly belated news, on January 8th, Italy became the 30th, and most recent, ratifying State of UNESCO's Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage. Italy's cultural heritage and patrimony concerns are well documented and it comes as little surprise that a country with a long coastline and an even longer seafaring past would lend its support to the protection of its underwater cultural heritage.

The "Fano Athlete" and the importance of underwater cultural heritage

While this story does not specifically deal with the activities of commercial salvors, Jason Felch of the Los Angeles Times reports that new documents have come to light concerning a unique piece of underwater cultural heritage: the "Getty Bronze" or "Fano athlete," an ancient Greek bronze statue often attributed to Alexander the Great's court sculptor, Lysippos. It is likely that the statue was lost when a ship transporting it from Greece to Rome sank. In 1964, the statue was recovered by a fisherman working in international waters in the Adriatic Sea. It was brought to shore in Fano, Italy, but was not reported to customs officials. The statue was instead smuggled out of the country and was purchased by the Getty Trust in 1977. The Getty Bronze is an excellent example of what kinds of artifacts have come to rest on the sea floor as a result of centuries of shipwrecks, as well as an example of the wide variety of artifacts encompassed by the term "underwater cultural heritage."

At the conclusion of the article, Felch refers to the importance of the bronze to the local community of Fano, and also mentions an Italian judge's declaration that the statue is "a part of Italy's cultural patrimony, despite the short time it spent in that country." According to a recent New York Times article on the statue, Stefano Aguzzi, Fano's mayor, has stated, "The statue and its discovery has become part of our culture and folklore." Aguzzi, in addition to numerous Italian authorities, has requested the return of the statue to Italy. As a part of their enthusiasm for the sculpture, residents of Fano have named businesses, a newspaper, and a local sailing race after Lysippos. A replica of the bronze sits at the entrance to the city's port. The Getty Museum, however, insists that no real connection exists between the Greek statue and the Italian town.

While claims that the statue is an intrinsic part of Fano's cultural heritage may seem tenuous due to the fact that it is unlikely that the statue ever resided there in ancient times, the affection for the statue expressed by the residents of Fano illustrates how underwater cultural heritage can be adopted by local communities as a part of their identity. This capacity for communities to sense connections to underwater cultural heritage provides strong evidence for its ongoing protection.

Jason Felch, A twist in Getty Museum's Italian court saga, Los Angeles Times, January 14, 2010

Elisabetta Povoledo, Italy Presses Its Fight for a Statue at the Getty, New York Times, January 15, 2010

Getty Museum, Victorious Youth

Image from the Los Angeles Times

The Queen Anne's Revenge and non-salvor interpretation of shipwreck history

Last week, I visited the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort to see their exhibit on the Queen Anne's Revenge, formerly the French ship Concorde, which was later converted to a merchant ship, then to a slave ship, and finally into the flagship of the famed pirate Blackbeard. The Queen Anne's Revenge wrecked in June 1718, when it was stranded in the shallow waters of the Beaufort Inlet and was abandoned by Blackbeard and his crew, who took with them any commercially valuable items (plunder) as they evacuated.

The wreck site was found under 20 feet of water by Intersal, Inc. in 1996. Intersal subsequently turned over their rights to the wreck to the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, which, in conjunction with the North Carolina Maritime Museum, has headed the excavation of the site since 1997.

The museum's exhibit is small, encompassing one corner of the museum and another nearby section of wall. The first section of the exhibit contains wall panels interpreting the discovery of the wreck, its sinking and its identification as the Queen Anne's Revenge. Below these panels are exhibit cases containing a variety of recovered artifacts, including bullets, personal artifacts, navigational tools, and a small amount of gold. Cases to the left of this display contain more recovered artifacts, including plates, cannonballs, and a ship's bell.

To the left of these sections is the exhibit's most unique display. Below a television screen playing a video about the ship's excavation is a concretion containing a number of artifacts submerged in a saltwater tank. An x-ray image shows the visitor what artifacts are contained within the fused mass.

The aforementioned nearby section of wall contains labels about the history of Blackbeard's life and exploits aboard the Queen Anne's Revenge and beyond.

Though I had wished the exhibit was larger (it obviously had neither the space nor the budget of Odyssey Marine's SHIPWRECK! Pirates and Treasure), it was informative nonetheless. It also included information about artifact conservation and the wreck's discovery without losing focus on the wreck's history. The emphasis on technology seen in SHIPWRECK! was significantly subdued in the Queen Anne's Revenge exhibit.

Additionally, while Odyssey's labels often restricted their information to the name of the wreck from which the artifact was recovered, the depth at which it was recovered (emphasizing Odyssey's ability to reach great depths), and the type of ship on which it was found, the North Carolina Maritime Museum's labels contained more information about the nature of the artifact and some labels even included information about the artifact's context within the wreck site. For example, a label for a piece of large lead shot mentioned that large amounts of this type of shot had been "found either loose on the bottom or embedded in concretions" and had mainly been recovered from the stern area of the wreck. Tatiana Villegas Zamora has written that salvor-created exhibits "provide no mention of the relationship of the objects to the structure in which they were found, or traces of serious archaeological surveys of the ship's construction." Since anti-salvage commentators like Zamora often charge commercial salvage groups with losing the context of recovered artifacts, Odyssey's lack of this type of information in its labels seems to only reinforce this accusation.

Interestingly, the museum had agreed to allow some of the Queen Anne's Revenge artifacts to be loaned to Discovery Place to augment SHIPWRECK!, but the loan was stopped by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.

Shipwreck uncovered on Washaway Beach

As reported by the Seattle Times and other news outlets, erosion on Washaway Beach in Washington has revealed the remains of what might be the Canadian Exporter, a lumber ship wrecked in 1921. Ownership rights over the wreck site, which may be on state-owned land, are now being determined. Until the wreck's ownership is determined, neither the Washington Department of Archaeology and Historic Preservation nor the local Westport Maritime Museum will be able to perform an excavation.

The Seattle Times reports that the wreck is already being salvaged by local residents attempting to sell the remains of the ship's cargo:

Strange, the former fisherman, wasn't waiting. "I'm sure the Westport shipyard would like some of these beams," he said, adding that he'd already salvaged some of the metal rods.

"It should be saved for history," said a disgusted passer-by.

Saving it would be nice, Strange nodded. "But a guy's gotta make a paycheck somehow."

It will be interesting to see what becomes of this wreck site. If it is, in fact, the Canadian Exporter, a relatively recent wreck, will it be something legitimately interesting to archaeologists and historians? Would it serve the community better by being salvaged? Alternatively, if the site is on state land, it could be protected and serve as a tourist attraction along the lines of other Northwest Coast shipwrecks, like the Peter Iredale wreck on the Oregon Coast in Fort Stevens State Park, or the George L. Olsen, a Coos Bay, Oregon wreck whose salvage created deep ties to the cultural heritage of the local community and is now protected by it's location on federal land, or even the disappearing and reappearing Helen E., a WWII-era shipwreck also located on Oregon Coastal federal land that made its most recent appearance only a few days ago.

It seems clear that, as coastal erosion continues to occur, shipwrecks previously hidden by protective layers of sand will be exposed to both natural and human elements; a situation that may be best helped by communities thinking deeply about what benefits they might want to receive from these historic sites. Hopefully, local governmental or museological institutions can encourage effective historical stewardship with the active participation of these communities.

Image from the Seattle Times.

Odyssey Marine and Discovery Place

Earlier this week, I visited Odyssey Marine Exploration's exhibit, SHIPWRECK! Pirates and Treasure at the AAM-accredited Discovery Place in Charlotte, North Carolina. The next day, I visited the North Carolina Maritime Museum, a member of the Council of American Maritime Museums, in Beaufort to see their exhibit on the excavation of the Queen Anne's Revenge, the former flagship of the notorious pirate Blackbeard.

SHIPWRECK! is a relatively recently created exhibit and has toured museums in Oklahoma City, Tampa, and Detroit. It contains artifacts from Odyssey's excavations of the SS Republic, the "Blue China" wreck, and an unnamed wreck found near Tortugas. The exhibit opens with a number of artifacts from the above mentioned wrecks on display, followed by a series of interactive video screens on which visitors can watch short films about a variety of shipwreck excavations. In these videos, information about the shipwrecks excavated by Odyssey and other commercial salvage groups is interspersed with sites excavated by archaeological groups, like the wreck of the Uluburun wreck, which was excavated by George Bass and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology in the 1980s and now forms the basis of the Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology in Turkey. One video screen is dedicated to the HMS Sussex, and emphasizes the need to recover Sussex's cargo of "money" and the agreement between Odyssey and Great Britain.

After this section, the visitor moves into a theater in which a video about Odyssey's excavation of the Republic is played. The video describes Odyssey's process of researching, targeting, and excavating wrecks. Near the end of the video, Odyssey CEO Greg Stemm reveals that, while the most rare or valuable artifacts are kept in Odyssey's collection, the rest will be sold to the public.

The next gallery is a large space dedicated to the technology used by Odyssey on their excavations; a large model of Odyssey's ROV dominates the center of the rooms, and the walls are lined with a number of interactive games based on operating ROVs, magnetometers, side-scan sonars, and the challenges presented by weather. Commercial salvors' focus on technology was an issue raised by archaeologist Tatiana Villegas Zamora in a 2008 article in Museum International. Zamora observed that the technology required for deep-ocean exploration and excavation has developed more quickly than the public's appreciation of underwater cultural heritage and that, "as a result, the public is far more aware of technological developments than of the importance of the sites themselves." Though a part of this gallery was used to tell the story of the Republic, and the adjacent gallery was filled with artifacts recovered from the wreck site, the overwhelming emphasis was on the technological prowess of Odyssey.

Leaving this gallery, the visitor then travels into a smaller, square gallery. Along the walls of this gallery are cases containing personal artifacts from the Republic, including glass bottles and other personal artifacts. In a rather innovative approach, each of these cases is paired with an interactive video screen on which visitors can choose to listen to audio-labels for the artifacts in the cases. In the center of this gallery is an exhibit on the coins raised from the Republic. The coins are displayed in plastic coin display cases of the type used by coin collectors. The choice to display them in these cases puts them in the context of commercial collector's items, not artifacts.

The final portion of the exhibit is a gallery focused on the history of pirates and piracy. Most of the components of this exhibit are interactive activities based on learning about pirate flags, ships, and other aspect of pirate life. The walls are painted with cartoon-like renderings of swashbucklers and seems aimed toward a younger audience. On the day of my visit, it was the most popular gallery in the exhibit, possibly due to the fact that Discovery Place is a science center popular with younger audiences and family groups.

At the end of the exhibit, as with the end of many exhibits, the visitor finds themselves in the museum's gift shop. Here they are offered the opportunity to purchase artifacts raised from the Republic, including coins (in the same collector's cases as the coins on display), bottles, and jewelry crafted from recovered glass shards, all paired with certificates of authenticity.

Overall, it was not hard to see why the exhibit could be popular with visitors and museums. The interactive games were engaging and were fairly effective in demonstrating the educational points Odyssey was trying to make. The final, pirate gallery was hokey, but appeared to be well-liked. Nonetheless, the obvious focus was on technology first, with plenty of mentions of Odyssey's interest in archaeology, and on "treasure." The commercial aspect of Odyssey's operations was made especially apparent by the artifact sales in the museum store.

Look for a comparison of this exhibit to the approach taken by the North Carolina Maritime Museum soon...

Federal Court rules against Odyssey Marine

As other news outlets and cultural heritage blogs have reported, Odyssey Marine Exploration was denied salvor-in-possession rights over the wreck site of the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes by a Federal District Court in Tampa, FL. Judge Steven Merryday wrote that "ineffable truth of this case is that the Mercedes is a naval vessel of Spain and that the wreck of this naval vessel, the vessel's cargo, and any human remains are the natural and legal patrimony of Spain," but directed that the return of the recovered artifacts to Spain be stayed until the completion of the appeals process. Odyssey CEO Greg Stemm plans to take the case to the Court of Appeals, where he says the case would have gone regardless of the District Court ruling and where he believes the law will be more favorable to the salvors' interests.

As Derek Fincham of Illicit Cultural Property writes, the Mercedes' value extends beyond the commercial value of its cargo - the ship, and its destruction and sinking by the British Royal Navy in 1804, played an important role in the formation of the alliance between Napoleonic France and Spain, and in Spain's declaration of war against Great Britain. The Mercedes history suggests that, while it may technically be the "natural and legal patrimony of Spain," it is also a cultural heritage site tied to an event that carried implications not only for Spain, but for the European continent and the rest of the world. More than national patrimony, the Mercedes and any artifacts recovered from her are pieces of international cultural heritage.

This ruling against Odyssey Marine throws into relief the questionability of their "deep-ocean shipwreck exploration" operations. Whether or not museums hosting, or considering hosting, Odyssey's SHIPWRECK! Pirates & Treasure will consider this ruling while making decisions on cooperation with the company remains to be seen.

$500 Million in Sunken Treasure Returning to Spain. FOXNews.com, December 23, 2009.

Richard Mullins, Sunken treasure case headed to federal appeals court. Tampa Tribune, December 23, 2009.

James Thorner, Odyssey Marine's treasure tangle with Spain moves to appeals court. St. Petersburg Times, December 24, 2009.

Image from FOXNews.com