"I just stumbled by chance across an Arab silver coin that was around 1,100 years old," Edvin Svanborg told news agency TT. Svanborg says he is studying history, and recognized the coin as one that is commonly found on Gotland. He said he had seen pictures of similar coins in the past.

The brothers started looking for more coins, and quickly realised that they had found something very valuable. In quite a small space they found around 1,100 coins and a few bracelets. Most of the treasure was in good condition, although rabbits had left their mark on some of the coins.

This was the first time that the Svanborg brothers had found treasure, although Edvin said he hoped to find more in the future. "I'm planning to study to become an archaeologist," he said. The brothers are now likely to get a reward, after handing over the treasure to the authorities. It is so far unclear how much they will receive. "But that's not the most important thing. The point is finding a treasure trove," Edvin said.

Majvor Östergren at Gotland county administrative board praised the brothers for handing in the treasure. "They acted in an examplary fashion."

Gotland is an archaeologist's paradise, where there have been discoveries of a large number of Viking treasures. Farmer Björn Engström found the world's largest ever haul of Viking treasure on the north-eastern part of the island a few years ago. The loot included coins, necklaces and other jewelry, which altogether contained 65 kilos of silver and 20 kilos of bronze. He was given 2.1 million kronor as a reward.

Palm Beach resident Peter Knollenberg will watch the Today segment with great interest, as he is chairman of Sovereign Exploration Associates International, a company with a license to the shipwreck site — code named Fantome Cove — off the rocky coast of Cape Prospect near Halifax, Nova Scotia.

In those shoals on Nov. 24, 1814, HMS Fantome foundered in rough seas, laden with U.S. coins and silverware snatched three months earlier from the dinner table of first lady Dolley Madison during the sacking of Washington.

Today producers are interested in the efforts of Philadelphia-based Sovereign Exploration Associates "because governments are fighting. It was a British ship, and they want to get hold of it. But they had looted the White House," said Pieternel Knollenberg, the chairman's wife.

The company bought the rights to the Fantome site three years ago and completed its first dive in 2005. Nova Scotia has first dibs on any finds under Canada's Maritimes' Treasure Trove Act. The provincial government is entitled to 10 percent of the artifacts or treasure for its museums, said Robert Baca, president of Sovereign.

"They want us to bring it up," he said. "It's big for their tourism, to invite people to come see 'the White House' there." But Britain has asked Canada to intervene and withhold further exploration permits, citing the "sovereign immunity as Royal Navy warships," a right which the Fantome retains after sinking, said Steve Atkins, a British Embassy spokesman in Washington, D.C.

"It is not a matter of rehashing arguments of war that took place many years ago between two nations that have subsequently become the closest of allies. It is also not a question of what this ship may or may not hold as cargo. Royal Navy warships and their cargos remain the property of the British government," Atkins said.

Another wrinkle is the HMS Tilbury, wrecked nearby on a voyage from Halifax during a hurricane in 1758. About 280 people died, and the payship's cargo included wages for a British admiral's forces. Although Fantome wrecked more than a half- century after Tilbury — and did not involve loss of life — British objections apply to both ships.

Regarding the Tilbury, authorities want to protect the site as a burial ground, Atkins said. But based on the court martial of the captain, it was known that "no one died in (the Fantome) wreck," Baca said. "The Brits can't say the loot is theirs, because it was stolen from us. So it's a ploy about disturbing sailors' remains."

"We're focused on how these wrecks can help with history, especially of the War of 1812, when we were really on our own," Knollenberg said. "Kids' interest in the adventure side of these discoveries will help them learn the history side as well."

He's also concerned about rescuing history before these ancient ships deteriorate, from natural elements and advanced drag-net fishing gear. In many instances, "People don't have the financial wherewithal to explore these wrecks. We do. We can get (artifacts) out of the water and conserved."

In keeping with the treasure hunter’s tradition of guarding its finds, Odyssey’s court filings provided no details on the ship’s likely name, country of origin or wreck date. The company merely identified a point on the globe, said the wreck site was within a 5-mile radius of it, and handed the U.S. Marshals Office as evidence of the find a bottle it recovered from the site. Co-founder Greg Stemm declined to comment Friday when asked about the ship. "When we’re ready," he said, "we’ll be announcing a bunch more information."

It’s a welcome turn of events for Odyssey shareholders, particularly those who withstood years of failure before its 2003 discovery of the SS Republic, a sidewheel steamer that sank 100 miles off the coast of Georgia in 1865. Odyssey eventually sold the gold and silver coins it found on board for tens of millions of dollars, thus replenishing its coffers, credibility and stock price.

Since then, however, the company has had another round of setbacks. Though lucrative, the Republic ultimately yielded just one-quarter of the coins the company’s research suggested would be found. Last year, Odyssey’s inaugural shipwreck museum closed just 90 minutes after its grand opening in New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. Co-founder, chairman and CEO John Morris took temporary leave from his executive posts after being diagnosed with cancer. And Odyssey’s imminent plans to excavate a ship believed to be the HMS Sussex -- which sank in 1694, the company says, with millions or possibly billions of dollars in coins aboard -- was postponed after years of complex international negotiations when a Spanish regional authority jumped in with a last-minute claim.

Such is life at what may be the country’s only publicly traded company of its kind. Odyssey’s hope of achieving a consistent cash flow by having several projects in the pipeline at once has not yet materialized. Still, the company has made the best of its situation, such as performing sonar scans of the ocean floor in high-traffic areas when weather or legal conflicts interrupt. Odyssey wrote the Securities and Exchanges Commission in 2005 that it hoped to locate and salvage five separate wrecks it identified in the English Channel.

James Delgado, executive director of the Institute for Nautical Technology at Texas A&M University, said a large number of ships wreck in the busy corridor north of the Bay of Biscay. "You are at a crossroads of maritime trade that has been so for centuries," he said. "These are not easy waters."

Odyssey’s request for exclusive access to and control of the wreck site will be discussed at a court hearing Tuesday. Under international maritime law, salvors typically request such permission from their own court system or that of the jurisdiction nearest the wreckage.

Even if the federal court approves, it could be months or even years before the company is permitted to send remote-operated vehicles down to begin sifting the wreckage. Odyssey could face legal claims or challenges from parties such as the ship’s country of origin, the descendants of its insurers or owners and archaeologists who consider for-profit salvage an abomination. And though Odyssey says the ship lies 100 meters beyond any country’s territorial boundaries, and thus, presumably, in international waters, history suggests the nearest government will make a claim anyway.

"The workmen saw all these coins come pouring out of the digger bucket," said Maidstone Museum's Laura McLean. They will be transferred to the British Museum for cleaning and recording. It is then hoped the hoard of coins can be put on display in Kent. The county council's Andrew Richardson said: "In four years of dealing with all the treasure in Kent I have never dealt with anything on this scale.

"The remarkable thing is that someone has gathered these coins together and stashed them because they were no longer legal tender." Dr Richardson said the coins featured the head of Roman Emperor Constantine and other powerful figures from the time.

Huffsmith, a member of HRD's board of directors, filed an application for a water-quality waiver in early September with the state Department of Environmental Protection in Tallahassee. Divers would use their boats' underwater blowers, which channel water from the propellers, to remove sand from any wreck site, but Huffsmith wrote he doesn't expect that to hurt the nearby reefs built by Sabellariid worms, a protected species.

"The bottom (of the exploration site) consists primarily of coarse shell material deposited in the heavy surf zone," Huffsmith wrote. This material, he added, tends to drop out of the water, back to the bottom, within 5 to 10 minutes of being kicked up, rather than being suspended for great lengths of time and coating the worm reefs. If sand kicked up by the treasure hunt does approach any worm rock colonies, however, he said, HRD will stop work and contact state officials.

DEP spokeswoman Sarah Williams said Friday her agency is looking over HRD's application to see if it is complete. If so, she said, DEP could grant a waiver after a 60-day period for public comments. If not, the state will ask the company for more information. Huffsmith's application includes a 2005 research plan by project archeologist Robert Westrick, who pointed to new artifacts found in recent years in HRD's exploration area.

"Spanish Colonial coins and related artifacts have been found on the beach and beyond the dune line in the immediate vicinity," Westrick wrote. And since 1992, he added, his company has found the same such material scattered in the area off Indian River Shores it leases from the state.

Now HRD leaders want to find the ship they believe may have held the coins in its hold back in the 18th century. If they do, he indicated, it could be a new find among the other six wrecks already identified, documented and salvaged along the Treasure Coast. The company wants to identify several "magnetic anomalies" its divers detected in 1996 and 2001, Westrick wrote. These could indicate metal parts of a sailing ship, such as cannon or ballast, and thus point to an undiscovered wreck, he added.

All this is entirely possible, said Taffi Fisher-Abt, daughter of the late treasure salvor Mel Fisher and director of Sabastian's Mel Fisher Museum. "This is a large ocean," Fisher-Abt said Friday. "Dad once told me there's a shipwreck every 100 yards from Havana, Cuba, to North Carolina. Some are not valuable, some are, some are historical." She said HRD's site lies between two sites the Fisher organization has been exploring and salvaging for years off the Riomar and Wabasso Beach areas. The Fishers have leases to 10 wrecks of the 1715 fleet, from Cape Canaveral south to the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant. The Fishers and HRD, in fact, are two of nine separate companies seeking to salvage treasure from the Treasure Coast.

Huffsmith said HRD won't even be exploring until early next summer, when the waters offer better visibility, so there is time to work for the state waiver. For much of the year, in fact, offshore visibility is too poor for the casual diver or snorkeler to spot Spanish treasure. So some arm themselves with metal detectors and "poach" on leased sites, Westrick wrote. "HRD's presence, while conducting legal activity on the site, should deter at least some of this 'illegal' diving," he added.

But the discovery, the strongest sign yet that Philadelphia-based Sovereign Exploration Associates may have discovered the remains of the legendary British frigate HMS Fantome or other ships from its fleet, sets the stage for a possible international legal showdown involving the salvage company, the British government and heritage officials in Canada and the U.S. over the future of the wreck site.

CanWest News Service has learned the British government has asked Canada to halt exploration at the possible Fantome site and insisted that nothing should be taken from the area without permission from London.

Wendy Barnable, a spokesperson with the Nova Scotia government's Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Heritage, said Wednesday the province has received a letter, via federal officials in Ottawa, in which Britain argues that the Fantome -- along with a sunken 18th-century British treasure ship, HMS Tilbury, also being sought by Sovereign off the Cape Breton coast -- "remain the property of the British government and can't be disturbed without their consent."

Describing the British intervention as unprecedented, Barnable said provincial heritage officials are studying the "very complex" issue and have, in the meantime, advised the U.S. salvager to seek British approval to continue its explorations.

In a statement announcing its latest finds, Sovereign said: "Our divers observed flatware, artifacts, ship fittings and thousands of coins. While our science team has not positively identified the vessels on the site, the new data combined with last year's recoveries clearly establish the site as one of significant historical importance."

The search for the Fantome has been controversial and jurisdictionally complex because the British wreck lies in Canadian waters but is believed to hold gold and other treasures looted during a famous 1814 raid on the White House, treasury headquarters and other buildings in the U.S. capital. The same naval operation also inspired the "bombs bursting in air" imagery of The Star-Spangled Banner, the U.S. national anthem.

"The Malacca Strait is full of rocks, reefs and small islands. Nobody knows exactly how many shipwrecks are there, but we would find out," the 49-year-old former engineer told Reuters in a recent interview. He is working with investors on a $50 million plan to salvage wrecks in Indonesia and Vietnam under national licenses akin to production-sharing contacts for oil. The plan also calls for the construction of museums and archeological conservation centers in Vietnam and Bali. The potential of more discoveries in the Strait of Malacca has lured many treasure hunters. Walterfang is one of them, and perhaps the most successful, so far.

His latest find, in 1998, was a blockbuster. It was the wreck of an Arab ship laden with more than 60,000 ceramic pieces and gold and silver artifacts from China's Tang dynasty (618-907), possibly bound for a grand wedding in Arabia. Besides Walterfang's finds, other notable discoveries include a Dutch warship that sank off Malaysia over 400 years ago and salvaged in 1995. Experts recovered a bronze cannon from the Nassau, which sank after a battle with Portuguese warships.

The British merchant ship Diana, which sank off Malacca in 1817, was discovered in 1993, yielding Chinese plates, bowls, candlesticks and other artifacts that fetched 2.2 million pounds ($4.1 million) at an Amsterdam auction two years later. John Miksic, Southeast Asian history expert at the National University of Singapore, said there could be more breathtaking finds ahead after the Tang Treasure.

A ship of Admiral Zheng He's "Treasure" fleet in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) would make a sensational find. Zheng led seven armadas through Southeast Asia and beyond to spread Chinese influence from 1405 to 1433. Red-and-white porcelains from the period would be extremely precious, Miksic said. A red-and-white jar from the early Ming era was recently sold at auction for $10 million, Miksic added.

Walterfang said Indonesian fishermen had been a key source of information and would continue to be. He says he keeps good relations with them through an Indonesian in-law. He was bitten by the treasure bug after fishermen showed him samples from shipwrecks on one of his diving trips in the 1990s, spurring him to quit his job at a German cement company.

Fishermen in parts of Indonesia, such as East Sulawesi, dive in shallow waters without oxygen tanks in search of seafood and occasionally stumble on the odd treasure, he said. Their ceramic samples led to his finds in 1997 of a 10th-century vessel, known as the Intan Wreck, in the Java Sea and a 15th-century ship, the Maranei/Bakau Wreck, near Belitung island, off southeastern Sumatra, the next year. Soon after, he found the Tang treasure near Buton island off southeast Sulawesi. Intan yielded thousands of Chinese ceramics, Indonesian gold jewelry, bronze artifacts and Arabian glassware, while Maranei/Bakau held a mixed cargo from the Ming dynasty.

"All the ships found in Indonesian waters were representing actually the time capsules of those periods," said Walterfang, who is married with five children in New Zealand. Walterfang's slides of the Tang Treasure showed glittering gold cups and plates, a Chinese-inscripted bronze mirror, white glazed stoneware and a tall green vase with a dragon lid.

Some initially questioned the value of the finds as many were corroded and covered by limestone or coral, he said. "The scientific and academic community just didn't know how to handle it because it was just too good to be true that there was such a cargo from the Tang dynasty."

Walterfang shrugged off advice that the artifacts be auctioned immediately, choosing to ship all the cargo to New Zealand for conservation, in a costly, six-year process. "I decided to go to New Zealand, far away from the media, far away from the world and tourists, to conserve it first." Specialists restored artifacts with chemicals injected millimeter-by-millimeter under microscopes, he said. They spent four years and $350,000 to conserve one silver flask alone.

The Maranei/Bakau Wreck is still under conservation in New Zealand and will end up in a future Bali maritime museum, he said. The Intan Wreck has been handed back to Indonesia as part of compensation for the Tang Treasure, which will be exhibited soon at the Hua Song Museum in Singapore. Walterfang said he also gave Jakarta $2.5 million plus a deal to help conserve some of the existing finds and cover the costs of sending four Indonesians for conservation training abroad.

Underwater archaeologists found an object, perhaps 100 feet long, buried under sand in water near South Island, off Georgetown County. The discovery was announced by Jim Spirek, of the S.C. Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology. It was reported in today's editions of the Myrtle Beach Sun-News.

According to the Sun-News, the object was discovered about noon Wednesday. Divers plan to return to the site in September, to look for additional items. Spirek told the Sun-News that the object could be part of the wreckage from the Chorruca, a Spanish galleon that sank in 1526 in Winyah Bay. The Chorruca was a lead vessel in the expedition headed by Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon, a conquistador born in 1475 in Toledo, Spain.

De Ayllon had settled on the island of Hispaniola (the island where today's Dominican Republic and Haiti are located) and was a successful business owner there. In 1523, he was asked by King Charles I of Spain to look for a route from the Atlantic Ocean through the newly discovered American continent to the Pacific Ocean.

De Ayllon tried to find such a passage along the Carolinas coast and is thought to have landed in the Cape Fear area. He also is credited as being the first European to discover Chesapeake Bay. In 1526, he headed an expedition of 600 colonists hoping to begin life on the South Carolina coast.

During that expedition, the Chorruca sank. The colony did not last long. There was a fight over leadership, during which African slaves reportedly escaped and joined nearby Native American tribes. A fever epidemic broke out, killing de Ayllon and many others. About 150 survivors gave up the effort in late 1526 and returned to Hispaniola.

Abt is the daughter of the late and renowned treasure hunter Mel Fisher, and the director of Sebastian's Mel Fisher Treasure Museum, where the gold bar went on display Friday. "We're very excited," Abt said about the recent discovery. "It's got beautiful markings on it. I would say it's worth at least $25,000." Roman numeral markings on the bar indicate it is 19 1/4 karats, she said.

Abt said Milne's crew found the bar in less than 20 feet of water near John's Island, south of the Sebastian Inlet. At the same site, the crew also found a copper "maravidi," a coin used by Spaniards in the 1700s, and a bronze cross.

The site is part of the ocean bottom that contains remains of ships from a 1715 Spanish fleet that sank during a hurricane while sailing back to Europe, loaded with treasure from Central and South America. The Mel Fisher Center holds state salvage contracts on the shipwrecks and has recovered treasure from them for the past 40 years, Abt said.

She said Milne's crew will continue to work the trail that revealed the recently-found gold bar in hopes of finding more treasure before stormier fall weather sets in. "We've been working that site (near John's Island) pretty diligently this summer," she said. "It's one of the top three sites as far as production of treasure."

The site is one Mel Fisher began exploring in the early 1960s before he began looking for the wreck of the Atocha, a 1622 galleon laden with 40 tons of silver, gold and copper off the coast of Key West. He found the Atocha in 1985 after a 16-year search, Abt said.

The place where the gold bar was found Aug. 11 is named the Corrigan site, after a local ranching family who once owned one of only two cabins on the beach between Sebastian and Vero Beach, Abt said. She said the other cabin belonged to the late treasure hunter Kip Wagner. In 1961, Wagner discovered a ship believed to be the Nuestra Senora de la Regla — the lead vessel in the Spanish flotilla — and helped salvage about $1.6 million in silver coins.

Salvagers haven't identified the ship where the recently-discovered gold bar came from, but it might be the Regla, Abt said. Under state law, The Mel Fisher Center gives 20 percent of the value of artifacts it finds to the state at the end of each year.

"The discovery of a Columbus shipwreck, let alone the finding of the flagship Mariagalante, would be a tremendous contribution to maritime archaeology," said Charles Beeker, director of Academic Diving and Underwater Science Programs in IU Bloomington's School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation. "Perhaps more important would be the cargo. Were the ships laden with native Taino Indian artifacts heading to Spain? Such a find would shed new light on the nature of the contact period between the Old and the New Worlds."

Earlier this summer, Beeker and Geoffrey Conrad, director of IUB's Mathers Museum of World Cultures, took a team of faculty and graduate students to the Dominican Republic to explore intriguing magnetometer anomalies the IU researchers had discovered 10 years ago. The readings suggest large objects buried under silt and mud, and within coral colonies. The readings indicate also that the objects are scattered -- similar to how a shipwreck, or several for that matter, would appear -- in a 75-square-meter area.

In the years since the anomalies were discovered and mapped, Beeker, Conrad and their graduate students have returned yearly to the Dominican Republic to complete a variety of projects related to tourism, conservation and the archaeological exploration of village sites and ceremonial wells related to the Taino Indians.

La Isabela Bay was the site of the first permanent Spanish settlement established by Columbus, and the Taino were the first indigenous people to interact with Europeans. Beeker said much of the history of this period is based on speculation, something he and Conrad are trying to change.

Their research teams are multinational and multidisciplinary, tapping such resources as the Anglo~Danish Maritime Archaeological Team (ADMAT) -- a nonprofit educational organization -- and the Genetic Anthropology Laboratory in IUB's Department of Anthropology. The latest research team included ADMAT as well as four professors and 10 graduate students from HPER, the School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the IU departments of anthropology, biology and mathematics.

Among their latest efforts, they retrieved a 300-pound kedge anchor that could be from the Columbus era. The anchor, which is being conserved at the laboratory of the Oficina Nacional De Patrimonio Cultural Subacuàtico (ONPCS), was encrusted with dead as well as live coral within the area of interesting magnetometer anomalies. The live coral was removed from the anchor and cemented onto nearby coral colonies. "We're strong advocates that you need to respect the biology when you excavate," Beeker said.

Beeker and Conrad's team used a water dredge to dig down to the most prominent magnetometer anomaly pinpointed. The pump, which acted like a vacuum cleaner, was able to dig an 8-foot hole through the silt and mud, with the magnetometer reading getting stronger as they went deeper. The team ran out of time, however, and had to postpone the search until later this summer. They are optimistic. When they return, they plan to determine which shipwreck they found, not whether one actually is buried in the bay.

Beeker said that several ships sank in La Isabela Bay during a hurricane in 1495. Researchers estimate that eight or nine vessels were lost in the bay, including smaller caravels and one or two larger store ships, or naos. One of the lost naos is believed to be the Mariagalante, Columbus' flagship on his second voyage to the New World. Documents indicate some of the ships carried cargo when they left for Spain, but Beeker said the contents are unknown.

Conrad and Beeker described the La Isabela Bay research project as a long-term investment by IU, which has funded much of the research. They also believe it is a project for which the land excavations and exploration of Taino village sites are as important as the underwater explorations.

"Everyone knows the name 'Columbus,'" Beeker said. "We want people to know Taino, too."

Bidders crowded the room to see history made in the auction world as the estimate was doubled then tripled and continued to climb in price. Towards the end two bidders were left in the fight for the coin, one in the room and one on the phone. At £390,000 a new bidder appeared and the coin received open applause from the room when he purchased the Double Leopard for a hammer price of £400,000.

"We knew that there would be huge interest," said Jeremy Cheek of Spink Auctions, "but this surpassed all our expectations." Spink is the leading auction house for record prices of coins. It is in the privileged situation to have sold seven of the top ten coins auctioned over the years, including the top two.

This coin is the third known specimen of its kind. The two other examples, found in the bed of the river Tyne in 1857, are now both in the British Museum. No other specimens were known until this coin was discovered and dug up earlier this year by a metal detectorist in the south of England. This is therefore the only example in private hands. It is a slightly different variety to either of those in the British Museum.

The finder was working with the permission of the landowner who has a joint interest in the coin - the proceeds of the sale will be divided between them. In order to protect the site the find spot is not being disclosed.

The Gold Double Florin, authorized on 14 December 1343, was to circulate at a value of six-shillings. The first coins were struck in early 1344, but the coinage was not a success. The Double Florin was replaced by the Gold Noble, authorised on 9 July 1344, and therefore this magnificent coin was only legal tender for a brief seven months.

The obverse shows a full length portrait of Edward III enthroned beneath a Gothic portico. The King is crowned and holds an orb and sceptre. Two crowned Leopards sit at either side, and the surrounding fields are decorated with fleur de lis. The reverse is filled by a floriate cross with crowns at the four points, within a quadrilobe with four Leopards in the angles.

The Double Florin was the first large gold coin of England. It was intended primarily for foreign trade. The denomination was based on the gold Florin of Florence, and the design was derived from a French gold coin ("masse d'or") of Philip IV of France (1285-1314).

Edward's issue of large gold coins was emblematic of the might of England during his reign (1327-77). Edward ruled not only England but also much of France which he claimed through his mother Isabella, daughter of Philip IV. It was Edward's brilliant son, the Black Prince, who secured English interests on the continent with his stunning victories at Poitiers and Crecy.

The ring, which is beautifully worked, engraved with mysterious lettering and surmounted by a diamond that had almost certainly travelled along the Silk Route from India to Europe, was found on a rainy morning in 2002 by John Wood, a retired tool engineer from Manchester. Armed with his metal detector, he had been given permission to explore ploughed fields at Manley Old Hall on the edge of the Delamere Forest in Cheshire.

A farm worker had told Mr. Wood that he wasn't likely to find anything as the fields had been scoured by treasure hunters on numerous occasions. But within two minutes his detector gave a signal and Mr. Wood dug up what a friend described as "looking like one of those gifts from a fairground."

On cleaning the ring Mr. Wood found the inscription loyaute sans fin (loyalty without end), the letter E engraved three times, each time followed by three stars, and, either side of the diamond, the two initials V and A. The engravings suggested at first that the ring was a love token but puzzled experts that Mr. Wood showed it to.

He was also disappointed that when he registered it for treasure trove, the Government's treasure valuation committee, which concluded that the ring was 14th century, valued it at just £3,000. He appealed and the valuation went up to £60,000. But it was research by Helen Molesworth, a specialist in Christie's jewellery department, that cracked the engraved code.

Delamere Forest was one of the favourite hunting grounds of Edward III, then pursuing England's claim on vast swathes of France in the Hundred Years War. One of Edward's closest allies on the Continent was a wealthy Flemish textile manufacturer, Jacob Van Artevelde. Jacob, a strong supporter of English claims in France, and the English king were close. They were each a godfather to one of the other's children.

The three Es, Miss Molesworth concluded, signified Edward and the V and A his Flemish friend. The ring was probably a gift by the king thanking his loyal friend. Miss Molesworth said yesterday: "It is only a theory but it is a very viable possibility." She went on: "I can't tell you how rare this ring is. It is the most exciting piece I have handled in my career. Diamonds were very rare for the time. The goldwork is exquisite and, historically, we are potentially dealing with a royal ring." Setting a diamond, a great rarity in 14th century Britain, in the ring, indicated that the piece could only have been made for someone from "the very upper echelons of society then," said Miss Molesworth.

Under the terms of Mr. Wood's registration of his find under the Treasure Act, it is believed that he has agreed to share the proceeds of the sale 50-50 with the landowner. The ring was sold to an anonymous British collector and fetched double its estimate.

Mr. Wood took up metal-detecting six years ago "as something to do while fishing." He thought that he might search the land beside the river banks while waiting for bites on his line. The ring was the find of his short career. On previous trips he has found a George III half-guinea which he sold for £55 and a Henry VIII coin worth £145. He estimates that he has found at least 2,000 modern pound coins that have been dropped. "We always make sure the farmer gets half the proceeds of anything we find, and a bottle of Scotch."

The vessel could date to the mid-1500s, when the first Spanish settlement in what is now the United States was founded here, the archaeologists said. But the exposed portion looks more like ships from a later period because of its iron bolts, said Elizabeth Benchley, director of the Archaeology Institute at the University of West Florida.

"There are Spanish shipwrecks in Pensacola Bay," Benchley said. "We have worked on two — one from 1559 and another from 1705. But no one has found one buried on land. This was quite a surprise to everybody."

Construction crews came upon the ship this month while rebuilding the base's swim rescue school, destroyed during Hurricane Ivan in 2004. The exposed keel of the ship juts upward from the sandy bottom of the pit and gives some guess of the vessel's form. Archaeologists estimated the rest of the ship is buried by about 75 feet of sand.

During initial work to determine the ship's origin, archaeologists found ceramic tiles, ropes and pieces of olive jars. The settlement was founded in 1559; its exact location is a mystery. The Spanish did not return until more than a century later in 1698 at Presidio Santa Maria de Galve, now the naval station. The French captured and burned the settlement in 1719 but handed Pensacola back to Spain three years later. Hurricanes forced the Spanish to repeatedly rebuild.

The Navy plans to enclose the uncovered portion of the ship, mark the site and move construction over to accommodate archaeological work, officials said. "We don't have plans to excavate the entire ship," Benchley said. "It's going to be very expensive because it's so deeply buried and we would have to have grant money," she said.

John Newman, from Suffolk County Council's Archaeological Service, said the treasure, which would originally have been adorned with a silver wash, was of the usurper emperors Carausius (287-293 AD) and Allectus (293-296 AD).

"This appears to be the largest hoard of legitimately minted coins of the two usurpers from Britain to date," he said. "The coins are made up of 258 of Carausius, and 347 of Allectus, minted at London and possibly Southhampton or Colchester, which was the first time official mints were set up in Roman Britain."

During a treasure trove inquest in Bury St Edmunds yesterday, coroner for Greater Suffolk Peter Dean heard how metal detectorist Paul Flack contacted Suffolk County Council after discovering 30 of the coins, which he correctly identified as being of Roman origin.

"We were able to mobilise a small team of archaeologists - funded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme - who excavated the area and found the remaining coins," said Mr. Newman. "We ascertained the coins had originally been placed in a pottery jar and then buried on the edge of a Roman period ditch, close to an area of known settlement - probably a moderate farm - but had been scattered by the plough lines running through the field. "A pile of flints was also discovered which may have been used to mark the spot where the coins were."

The coins, which are currently being kept at the British Museum where they will be cleaned and conserved ready for valuation by the Treasure Valuation Committee, were probably worth around four or five months wages for a labourer at the time they were buried.

Dr Dean commended Mr. Flack for helping to save the "great historical value" of the coins by reporting his find to the council immediately. "This is a find that should be considered treasure under the Treasure Act," he said. Local museums have now expressed interest in buying the coins. Peter Merrick, chairman of Friends of Mildenhall Museum, said he would be making enquiries to determine exactly where the coins were discovered.

Experts described the coin as "the find of the last 100 years." But the museum is angry at the size of its outlay, claiming that it should have been able to acquire it for two thirds of the price, and has called for reforms to art export laws.

Made from more than 85 per cent gold, weighing 4.33g and showing almost no sign of wear, the coin was struck in 805-810 during the reign of Coenwulf, the King of Mercia, East Anglia and Kent, the most powerful ruler in Britain at the time and a significant figure in the gradual unification of England.

The coin carries his name, title and an image of him and, on the reverse, the intriguing inscription DE VICO LVNDONIAE (From the trading place of London). Besides being in almost perfect condition, it's significance, says the museum, is that it is the earliest gold coin in the name of an English ruler intended as part of a circulating currency.

Many dozen Anglo-Saxon silver pennies have been unearthed but the Coenwulf mancus is only the eighth British gold coin - the museum now owns seven of them - cast between 670 and 1257 to be found. Earlier gold examples, including one from the reign of Offa, Coenwulf's predecessor as ruler of Mercia, were ceremonial coins.

Little is known about Anglo-Saxon coinage - and less still about Coenwulf who ruled Mercia from 796 to 821. But despite the enormous value of the coin, Gareth Williams, the museum's Anglo-Saxon coin curator, said yesterday that he was convinced that it was used as currency because of the unexpected inscription.

Coenwulf was, like rulers before and after him, in thrall to the language and culture of the Romans who had left Britain three centuries earlier. His decision to use the word vicus, meaning a trading centre, on the coin rather than civitas, the city seat of authority, is a strong indication that the coin was for trading.

The mancus was found several inches below a footpath on the bank of the Ivel near Biggleswade in 2001 by a metal detector enthusiast out walking with his dog. But how the coin came to be there is anybody's guess. "It would have been a grievous loss," said Mr. Williams. A recent dig near the river - not yet written up by archaeologists - has unearthed the remains of an Anglo-Saxon market place which may have been the destination of whoever lost the coin.

The image of Coenwulf, a bloodthirsty figure who stole the throne from Offa's son and then invaded East Anglia and Kent to create an empire stretching from the South Coast to the Welsh borders and the Humber, is not likely to be a good likeness, said Mr. Williams. "The rulers of the time chose to make themselves look like Roman emperors."

He went on: "It may be very expensive but it is an absolutely top discovery. It is beautifully preserved. It has no wear or tear and must have been freshly struck when it was lost. It's condition is so exceptional that we were suspicious at first. We had to test it quite thoroughly before we were convinced."

The mancus first came to public attention when the anonymous finder and the owner of the river bank, put it into auction at Spink in London in October 2004 with an estimate of £150,000. The British Museum bid but dropped out below £200,000 and it sold to an American dealer, Allan Davisson, for £230,000.

Mr. Davisson applied to take it to America but the Government issued a temporary export stop. This gave the museum six months to match the selling price. If it failed to do so, the export could go ahead. But in the meantime, Mr. Davisson disclosed that he had had an offer of £357,000 from a private collector in the United States and this was the price he wanted "matching."

The museum said yesterday: "This jump in price was very unfortunate and we think that this is a loophole that should be closed. We have always understood that the 'matching price' was the initial sale. We have started talks with Government because we feel this needs to be addressed in future."

Fred Leighton's gems make him giddy and they should, they're a far cry from the Mexican crafts he sold in the village in the 60s. Now he sells a far fancier selection on Madison Avenue.

Fred Leighton: "I bought what I liked. I learned through trial and error what value is." Fred designs some pieces, like the bracelet and earrings worn by Mariah Carey, but most are vintage, like the antique bracelet worn as a headband by Natalie Portman.

But Fred has a recent acquisition that he thinks were made for a queen, literally: a set of emeralds, two rings, a pendant, a necklace and earrings, which are thought to be from a shipwreck off the coast of Florida.

Legend has it they had been en route to the queen of Spain in 1715 when the fleet of ships sank in a storm. A diver found them in the 1970s and they only recently made it to Fred's store, and the earrings are his favorite.

Fred Leighton: "I've seen a lot of 18th and 19th century Spanish jewelry and I've never seen anything of the quality of these earrings."

The entire set has 309 emeralds, totaling a tad more than 232 carats. He estimates the value of this set at somewhere in the ball park of $2 million. But for Fred, selling this treasure will be such sweet sorrow.

Fred Leighton: "When you get something really beautiful, it's hard to give it up."

Part of the reason the emeralds are in such good condition is because they were found inside a silver box. The box was corroded, but the gems were unscathed.

The explorers will work with Dave Jordan, the Palm City native who spotted the cannons. Popin said the state Department of Environmental Protection has approved a permit needed to investigate 48 possible targets on the ocean floor. Those targets were identified with work completed in 2004 using technology called side-scan sonar and a magnetometer, which find buried objects and those on the sand surface.

This spring, Popin said they planned to be back in the area to check out the targets using a small boat with divers and a water dredge, which will allow the explorers to sift through the sand in search of small pottery bits, wood from a ship hull or possibly a pistol or, even better, gold.

"We can sift through it and see if there's anything of importance," Popin said. "We're not supposed to bring anything up except for identification. If we uncover something, we're supposed to put it back on the bottom."

If they do find interesting artifacts, the archaeologists will apply for a salvage permit to bring their 70-foot lift boat named the Polly L to excavate. Popin said the work this spring should take up to two weeks, depending on the weather. "Visibility is a big part of it," he said. "The pistol is exactly the kind of thing we'll be looking for."

The finders will now be rewarded for handing over the items at 'market value', which has yet to be decided. The Viking cast gold ingot, found in Wembury, was said to be particularly rare. The artefacts are certain to be sent to museums across the South West, including possibly Plymouth City Museum. All were found by metal detector enthusiasts, including three members of the South Hams Metal Detecting Club.

Plymouth coroner Nigel Meadows held a formal hearing to rule that the items were treasure trove and hand them over to the State. He read statements from the four finders, the landowners and experts from the British Museum in London who gave an expert opinion on their worth.

Mr. Meadows said after the hearings: "They're nice objects. They're not worth thousands and thousands, but they tell us a lot about our history." In each case a special committee will decide on the market value of the items and the cash will be split 50-50 between the finders and the owners.

The items are: A cast gold Viking ingot found with a metal detector by Michael Holland four inches under the surface of a ploughed field in Wembury on March 27. The bar would have been stored and used to make another object, such as a piece of jewellery.

A medieval gold finger-ring set with a sapphire and dating to the 13th century, found about five inches beneath the surface of a field near a church in Dunterton, between Tavistock and Launceston. It was found on April 17 by Clive A'Lee, a member of the South Hams club.

A post-medieval silver huntsman's whistle found in a field at West Charleton, near Kingsbridge, by Michael Long, also from the club, in 2003. It was reported only this year.

A silver gilt dress hook, part of a fastening for clothing, found on a farm near Ugborough on December 28, 2004, by Graham Fisher, again from the club. The report from the British Museum said the item was difficult to date.

All the items were handed over to Danielle Wootton, who is the finds officer for Devon and works in Exeter for the British Museum. Under the law, anyone who does not hand over an item they suspect to be valuable within 14 days can be prosecuted and be fined or even jailed.

Mr. A'Lee, a 43-year-old gardener from St Budeaux, has been metal-detecting for 15 years, and the ring is his most valuable find. He said: "The ring was very clean. It looked like it was put in the ground yesterday. I was gobsmacked. I was shaking when I dug it up." Mr. A'Lee was awarded two trophies by the club for the most important find of the year and has a framed photograph of the ring on his wall.

Despite the disappearance of the ship, the Rooswijk, the lost vessel and its treasure remained the property of the Dutch East India Co. When the company was taken over by the Dutch government in 1798, the Netherlands became the legal owners of the vanished bullion.

Last year a British sports diver, Cambridgeshire carpenter Ken Welling, found the wreckage. The Dutch Government was contacted, and the discovery was kept secret until this week, when Holland's Finance Minister, Joop Wijn, took possession of original wooden chests full of bullion. The silver was handed over at a ceremony in Plymouth Harbour aboard a frigate of the Royal Dutch Navy, the De Ruyter.

The loss of the Rooswijk in December 1739 was a financial disaster for the Dutch East India Co. and for Holland as a whole, as well as being a catastrophe in human terms. There were no survivors, and the world learned of the disaster because English fishermen, looking for potentially valuable storm debris found a wooden chest full of letters that identified the ship as the Rooswijk. It had sank just a day after sailing from the Dutch coastal island of Texel.

Underwater excavations have recovered all the silver bullion, and more than a thousand artefacts. Other cargo seem to have included substantial quantities of sheet copper, sabre blades and masonry, presumably for some construction project in the Dutch East Indies. Evidence of life on board was found in layers that reflected the vessel's social and architectural stratification.

When some time after the disaster the floor timbers had collapsed, the contents of each deck had simply fallen on top of one another.All the silver had been stored near the officer's dining area. The archaeologists knew how much they were looking for because the Dutch Government still has precise records of what was lost.

The silver, mainly in 1.9-kilogram bars, had all been mined in Spanish-ruled Mexico. Originally it had been carried by Spanish vessels from Mexico to Cadiz. It had then been sold to the Dutch and shipped to Holland, where it had been melted down and converted into silver bars bearing the imprint of the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Co. The "re-branded" treasure was then loaded onto the Rooswijk, bound for Batavia, modern Jakarta.

There, some of it would have been converted into Javanese currency, while much would have been shipped to Siam (modern Thailand) or Bengal to be converted into local coinage. Before yesterday's handover to the Dutch, a full archaeological study has been carried out into the hundreds of bars recovered. Most were still in their original wooden chests. The discovery of so many silver bars complete with "packaging" is unique, and is helping archaeologists understand the scale and nature of the 18th-century international bullion trade, which financially underpinned most of the European colonial ventures of that time.

"This discovery is unique," said marine archaeologist Alex Hildredas. "It has provided a near complete assemblage of silver ingots cast for a single voyage, and would have been melted down to produce coinage if the vessel had not sunk."

In the colorful age of pirates, Blackbeard was flashiest of all. In a stroke of 16th-century marketing genius, the buccaneer wore bands of pistols, daggers and a cutlass during battle and tucked burning ropes under his hat to surround himself with smoke. "He created an image that is still remembered 300 years later -- beard, ribbons aglow, a face that looked almost like Satan itself," said Ben Cherry, who has studied Blackbeard and interprets the pirate at schools and festivals around the world. "He made everyone think he was a nasty guy, which is (his) success."

History records Blackbeard's flagship, the 40-gun Queen Anne's Revenge, ran aground near Beaufort Inlet in 1718. Archaeologists believe a treasure of information about the notorious pirate lies in a jumble of cannon and timber on the ocean floor there. But the sea still holds the secret of whether the wreckage was really the Queen Anne's Revenge and the site might be destroyed before the truth is known.

"We've only done 5 percent of the wreck, which means the rest is sitting out there in potentially great hazard from storms," said Phil Masters, the underwater salvage expert who found the wreckage nine years ago.

The ship sank in about 24 feet of water and was buried under 15 feet of sand for almost 300 years, archaeologists said. But through the years, the ship also sank in the sand and now sits on bedrock, and storm after storm has gradually stripped away the protective sands. Only 3 feet of sand now cover the wreckage, and the next violent storm to hit Bogue Banks could destroy the site, archaeologists said.

"We're seeing material we haven't seen before because now it's uncovered," said David Moore, of the North Carolina Maritime Museum. "But we also must ask, ‘What are we missing? What has the storm taken away that we didn't even know was there?'"

Hundreds of artifacts recovered so far point to Blackbeard, such as a 2,500-pound cannon that was recovered in May. Archaeologists at East Carolina University found valuable clues through X-rays. "All of her guns were loaded and ready to fire. One even had a wad, some cannon shot, another wad and three bolts in the bore," said Wendy Walsh, a lab manager at ECU. Gold Dust, a ship's bell and a pewter plate also date to when Blackbeard terrorized the Caribbean. But the definitive answer as to whether the wreck is the Queen Anne' Revenge is still missing, and the answer might be lost forever if not recovered soon.

"The treasure is in the history. That's what is important to realize is that there is so much history under the sand out there," Masters said. "It is so frustrating to see it sitting out there and we can't get at it because of a lack of funding." A major expedition to recover and preserve the wreck would cost at least $6 million over 20 years. Archaeologists are scrambling to find it, and state historians have asked the Army Corps of Engineers for money to help fund a salvage operation.

"You have to accept the fact that (pirates are) glamorized, and it's our job to bring a little bit of truth and life to that story to see who these people were and why they were doing what they were doing," said Mark Wilde Ramsing, an underwater archaeologist with the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources and project director for the wreckage recovery effort.

County museums officer Dr Mike Bishop said his budget was empty and unless new funding was found, the service could not afford the many thousands of pounds at which the haul would inevitably be valued by the British Museum.

The coins were originally buried in a primitive clay pot and then scattered over the site by successive years of ploughing. Frank Basford, IW Council finds liaison officer, said 940 pieces made of a silver and copper alloy had been unearthed.

"It is an important, significant find. Iron Age coins themselves are common but it is very unusual to find them in this quantity," he said. "This is certainly the largest hoard of its kind ever found on the IW. It is impossible to say how the coins came to be buried. They could have been some sort of community savings and Iron Age people would sometimes bury their wealth in times of stress or trouble."

IW Metal Detecting Club founder and chairman Dave Clark said the first of the coins was discovered by Shanklin member Albert Snell. More were subsequently uncovered by other members in what became a team effort. A quarter of the coins were found scattered over a large area of agricultural land away from the main hoard, he said. It was recovered over the course of a week by 16 of our members. They were all given an opportunity to dig.

"It was such a wonderful occasion seeing these coins popping up everywhere," said Mr. Clark. He said he did not want to speculate on the value of the find. "We are not in this for the money. Our club motto is 'pleasure not profit'. We just get a thrill from playing our part in helping discover the IW heritage." He said the location of the find was being kept a closely guarded secret to respect the wishes of the landowner, who did not want unauthorised or unscrupulous treasure hunters on his land.

Funk and his partners hope the wreck is from the famed 1715 Spanish Silver Plate Fleet. The fleet of 11 galleons set sail from Havana in 1715 laden with jewels, gold and silver, but ran into a hurricane along Florida's east coast. "Ten of the 11 ships were destroyed," said Funk, an archaeologist who teaches history at Satellite High School, in Satellite Beach. "Seven have more or less been found."

The shipwreck sites include spots near Fort Pierce and Sebastian, and the ships' high-value cargo gave the Treasure Coast its name. For the past decade, Funk and his partners have been surveying, exploring and researching what might be another of the treasure ships, in 43 feet of water off Melbourne Beach.

While exploring the wreck in late August, they found several artifacts that boosted their hopes. "Our artifact collection is pretty interesting," Funk said. "We have enough artifacts, I think, to show what period they belong to." There's the intact, silver-handled pistol and what appears to be a boarding sword, which has a curved blade and was known to be used by fighting mariners. The collection also includes some cannon balls, pewter plates and a stack of silver platters, which Funk said are beautifully embossed. "They look like a big turkey platter," he said. "We're sending (the collection) to a conservation lab for more study."

In the meantime, Funk and his partners will work on renewing the salvaging permits they need from various state agencies, such as the state Division of Historical Resources. Permitted salvagers can end up owning items they find, but 20 percent of the value of found treasure goes to the state.

The dive site worked by Funk's team stretches diagonally for perhaps a mile. The team includes members of Heartland Treasure Quest, from Georgia and Florida; Amelia Research Co., of Amelia Island; and Florida Research and Recovery, a group of investors primarily from Georgia.

A principle of Heartland Treasure Quest is Sebastian resident Rex Stocker, who was a member of the Real Eight Co. The Real Eight Co. worked with the famed Mel Fisher's Treasure Salvors Inc. in the 1960s to recover millions of dollars worth of treasure from the 1715 Fleet shipwrecks.

Taffi Fisher Abt, Fisher's daughter and the director of Mel Fisher's Treasure Museum in Sebastian, said she's interested to hear more about the items found by Funk and his partners. "It's quite possible this wreck is one of the 1715 Fleet," she said. "I have not seen any of these artifacts, and I haven't seen their log sheets, so I don't know for sure."

On a small mould is written the word "Allah" in beautiful Arabic script, on top of a lid sits a delicately chiseled doe. Tiny perfume flasks accompany jars made of baked clay, while slender-necked vases fill the shelves of the hangar along with brightly colored glassware from the Fatimides dynasty that once ruled ancient Egypt.

A team of divers, among them three Australians, two Britons, three French, three Belgians and two Germans, excavated the vessel laden with rare ceramics which sank more than 1,000 years ago some 130 nautical miles from Jakarta. Their finds, including artefacts from China's Five Dynasties period from 907 to 960 AD and ancient Egypt, are already causing a stir among archaeologists who say the cargo sheds new light on how ancient merchant routes were forged.

"It is a completely exceptional cargo," says Heymans, the Belgian chief of the excavation team. "There is very little information about the Five Dynasties era and very few things in the museums. This wreck fills a hole," he tells AFP. Close to 14,000 pearls and a profusion of precious stones were found in the wreck, including some 4,000 rubies, 400 dark red sapphires, and more than 2,200 garnets.

"On the second last day of diving, I spotted some broken ceramics. Under 30 centimeters of vase, I uncovered the handle of a golden sabre," says Daniel Visnikar, the leading French diver. It took more than 24,000 dives to recover all the treasure from the boat which rests 54 metres below the surface. Material recovered from the site has whetted the appetite of overseas experts.

"A 10th century wreck is very rare, there are only a few," says Jean-Paul Desroches, a curator at the Guimet Museum in Paris, after seeing photographs of the early hauls. He says the wreck and its cargo offers clues to how traders using the Silk Road linking China to Europe and the Middle East, used alternative sea routes as China's merchants moved south because of invasions from the north.

The variety of loot pulled from the depths is hard to imagine: dishes adorned with dragons, parakeets and other birds; porcelain with finely-carved edges; teapots decorated with lotus flowers; and celadon plates with their glaze intact. "These porcelains come from a very special kiln, an imperial kiln, perhaps from the province of Hebei in the north of China," suggests Peter Schwarz, a German ceramics specialist.

Heymans insisted the treasure -- the subject of controversy when the divers were chased from their barge in the open-sea by the Indonesian navy last November -- was stored in a comprehensive and transparent manner. "Every piece is indexed and we know which part of the boat it comes from. Every week we sent (the Indonesian authorities) a DVD with digital photographs of all the pieces," he says.

As well being chased by the Indonesian navy, an incident that began a long dispute over the booty, Heymans says another group of treasure hunters also tried to move in on the swag. Cosmix, Heymans' Dubai-based corporation, was the force behind the five-million-euro operation, which was funded by unnamed private investors in Europe.

The divers say the treasures might be bought by a foreign museum or are expected to be shown between 2006 and 2007 in an auction, as the cargo is valued at several million dollars. Indonesia will receive 50 percent of proceeds from the sale of the treasures.

So far, 422,000 artefacts have been recovered from the wreckage 54 metres below the surface in what could be the largest cargo of ceramics ever found. Christie's, which is expected to auction the items in 2006 and 2007, says it's worth millions of dollars.

Most of the goods are fine white or green wares from northern and southern China dating to the early 10th century. But the vessel also contains Egyptian artefacts and Lebanese glassware, and experts say the rarity and variety of the items could shed new light on inter-Asian trade.

Agung, who started the PT Paradigma Putra Sejahtera salvage company four years ago, explored 30 already looted wrecks before receiving word that fisherman had found pieces of ceramics while trawling for snails about 220 km northwest of Jakarta.

"It was unbelievable, amazing," said the 37-year-old Agung, among the first divers to take a look at the wreckage in mid-2003. "There was no coral at all, just a mound of ceramics" 100 metres long, 45 metres wide and 30 metres high.

Thirty per cent of the pieces were in pristine condition, many of them green ceramic dishes from China's Five Dynasties period (907-960 A.D.). Among the most prized possessions are a white vase with a long slender neck and sloping shoulders believed to be from the Liao dynasty (907-1125 AD) and a flask made of a brilliant emerald green translucent glass tentatively attributed to 10th century Egypt. There are also thousands of rubies, bronze coins, silver mirrors, ceremonial tools and shipping equipment.

"Discoveries like this show how important the sea floor is," said Thijs Maarleveld, a founding member of the International Committee on the Underwater Cultural Heritage and a lecturer on maritime archaeology at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

Inside are hands-on, museum-style exhibits of the high-tech equipment that shipwreck salvage companies use to meticulously pluck treasures from the sea bottom. One-of-a-kind computer games outline the science behind archaeology, and how artifacts are used to reassemble history. The story is set against the backdrop of real treasures from the deep told in incredibly sharp high-definition video of the recovery of the SS Republic, which sank 140 years ago.

Odyssey Marine Expeditions Inc., which finds and salvages historic treasure-laden ships, sees the experience as a vehicle to turn most of the artifacts, effects and rare coins it exhumes from the ocean bottom into cash.

The company is negotiating deals to open a second of its Odyssey's Shipwreck and Treasure Adventures within a year. Its hometown Tampa Bay area is high on the list of the 10 markets in the running. If the initial $3.7-million development cost in New Orleans provides the return, company officials envision up to 50 of them in major markets around the world.

"This has been part of our plan since the beginning," said Greg Stemm, a director and co-founder of Odyssey. "The attraction answers all the questions people ask us about how we do this work and gives them a taste of what it's like to be on one of our expeditions. We are using it to build a community of shipwreck artifact fans around the Odyssey brand."

In a shopping complex shared by Ripley's Believe It Or Not, Virgin Megastore and Hooters, the museum comes equipped with gift shops front and rear. Patrons can buy effects as pricey as Civil War-period gold coins for $1,100 and up or resin replicas of delicate ceramics they've just seen exhumed from the ocean floor for as little as $12. Of course, there is a full load of themed T-shirts featuring a beaming cartoon logo of Zeus, Odyssey's 8-ton underwater robot that's the workhorse of the company's deep-sea recovery effort.

If it all sounds like theme park tactics, the resemblance is intentional. Odyssey's entertainment wing is steered by a cadre of former Sea World, Busch Entertainment Corp. and Walt Disney World executives. The exhibits are modular, so they can be moved to other locations easily. The computerized videos and flat screen displays can be reprogrammed within days to tell the story of other vessels Odyssey recovers in the future.

"We've packaged the story to educate and energize people of all ages," said George Becker, chief operating officer of Odyssey and a former general manager of Sea Worlds in San Diego and San Antonio. "We designed it for the whole family. This is all about bringing history to life. New Orleans is all about history."

As a Confederate and Union ship, the Republic's home port was New Orleans. It went down in a hurricane off the coast of Georgia, loaded down with cash and other goods intended to resupply the Louisiana city at the beginning of post-Civil War Reconstruction. The location in the French Quarter provides the historical atmosphere while the city, which drew about 10-million tourists in 2004, provides the traffic.

The exhibit got a warm welcome from city tourist industry leaders who have begun marketing New Orleans as a family destination rather than one known mostly for its adult diversions and overindulgences. In recent years, the city has dramatically bolstered its collection of art and children's museums and sees the success of the 5-year-old D-Day Museum as a catalyst for more.

The common perception of shipwreck salvagers is one of entrepreneurs living out an adventure that's somewhere between Jacques Cousteau, Steve Zissou and grave robbers. It's an image Odyssey hopes to redefine with a focused marketing push that explains the company's role in researching archaeology, charting history and unraveling the mysteries of the sea. It also is taking some of the sting out of the idea of selling artifacts to pay for the high-tech research tools that make the work possible, but offends many purists in the academic world.

The attraction is hardly a first. Key West treasure hunter Mel Fischer for years has sold shipwreck artifacts from a museum. But he found the format doesn't travel well after closing a venture in Orlando. In Charleston, S.C., a new museum displays the wreck of a recovered Confederate submarine. Attractions marketers, however, have been reinvigorated by the popularity of several exhibitions from the wreckage of the Titanic.

Odyssey's marketing effort goes far beyond a state-of-the-art Shipwreck Adventure. Odyssey self-published a book about the Republic and the recovery that debuts Sept. 6. That follows a National Geographic spread last fall, an MSNBC/National Geographic documentary and a guest tour of the network talk show circuit.

Odyssey, which sold about $25-million in artifacts in 2004 mostly through wholesalers, has recovered about a quarter of the artifacts from the Republic that one hired expert estimates could fetch $75-million if sold at retail prices. In addition to being a revenue generator, the exhibition is supposed to be part of Odyssey's answer to generating more sales.

The company recently sold Republic coins on the NBC Shop at Home channel and is filming infomercials. Each Shipwreck Adventure patron is offered a free DVD of the retrieval work (the company has 3,500 hours of raw high-definition film). If they are interested in direct sales offers online, in the mail or from the company, a sales force of two dozen people at its call center in Tampa will spring into action.

The finder, Keith Stuart, 62, was taking part in the club event in a field on the Isle of Wight and is now waiting to be told the whistle's value after having it declared treasure by a coroner's court.

Archaeologists have dated it to the 16th Century and have told Mr. Stuart that it will fetch many thousands of pounds. The whistle, 2½" long, is engraved with roses and pomegranates, the latter being the emblem of Catherine of Aragon, Henry is believed to have hunted on the Isle of Wight and the whistle may have been dropped during a visit.

Mr. Stuart, a former milkman, said the whistle was only a few inches below the soil at Shalfleet. He thought it resembled a toy gun or cannon and may even have been from a Christmas cracker, and he thought it of no significance. However, he later showed it to Frank Bashford, the coroner's officer, who identified the metal as silver and indicated that it was a huntsman's whistle of some antiquity.

When Mr. Stuart researched the emblem the link with Henry VIII was suggested. Records indicate that the king visited the island in 1540, at which time he was married to Anne of Cleves. However, it is unlikely that anyone else would have dared use a whistle bearing the former queen's insignia.

Once the whistle has been valued, museums will be offered the chance to buy it at a price set by experts. If there is no buyer, it will be returned to Mr. Stuart who may offer it for sale privately. He must share the proceeds with the owner of the field where it was found.

The golden ornaments, estimated to be between 4,100 and 4,200 years old, have been unearthed gradually during the past year from an ancient tomb near the central village of Dabene, about 75 miles east of the capital, Sofia, said Vasil Nikolov, an academic consultant on the excavations.

"This treasure is a bit older than Schliemann's finds in Troy, and contains much more golden ornaments," Nikolov said. Heinrich Schliemann, an amateur German archaeologist, discovered the site of ancient Troy in 1868 and directed ambitious excavations that proved he was right.

The treasure consists of miniature golden rings, some so finely crafted that the point where the ring is welded is invisible with an ordinary microscope. "We don't know who these people were, but we call them proto-Thracians," Nikolov said.

They likely were ancestors of the Thracians, who lived in what is now Bulgaria and parts of modern Greece, Romania, Macedonia and Turkey until the 8th century A.D., when they were assimilated by invading Slavs. "The buried man was cremated, and then an earth mound was piled over his ashes and his riches, suggesting that he was part of these people's social elite," Nikolov said.

Bozhidar Dimitrov, director of the National History Museum of Bulgaria, said the site consisted of a settlement and three mounds, and excavations would continue. "This is the oldest golden treasure ever found in Bulgaria after the Varna necropolis," Dimitrov said.

The golden artifacts from a vast burial complex discovered in the 1970s near the Black Sea port of Varna date back to the end of the fifth millennium B.C. and are internationally renowned as the world's oldest golden treasure.

Greg Brooks and John Hardy of the Sub Sea Research states "It was one of the richest ships ever lost," they estimate the value of the Deliverance’s trove could be between $2 billion and $3 billion. The Deliverance departed Havana on Halloween with an armed escort of seven or eight smaller, schooner-like vessels according to Brooks’ research in Cuba and elsewhere. The ship soon met a fate that Brooks now believes was remarkably similar to what befell the Atocha and its hapless crew in surrounding waters 133 years earlier.

The hurricane struck the night after the ship left Havana, its eye passing over Havana to the southwest. The escorting ships reportedly were able to survive the storm and sailed across the outer reefs to eventually anchor on the northwest side of the Marquesas Keys to ride out the storm until the following morning, according to a research report prepared by Brooks and Sub Sea researcher Edward Michaud.

An incomplete manifest of the Deliverance cargo that was on board at the time of sinking declares those riches to include 17 chests packed with nearly 1,200 pounds of gold bullion, 15,000 gold doubloons, six chests of gems, and more than a million silver pieces. That doesn’t count contraband or any valuable belongings of passengers.

Before he hunted sunken treasure, Brooks built swimming pools for a living. Over a decade ago, after 19 years in that business, he cashed out to find his fortune. Brooks’ principal partner and fellow investor is John Hardy, a former National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineer who currently runs a La-Z-Boy Furniture Gallery in South Portland.

Brooks says he’s personally spent a million dollars so far in the hunt for treasure that he believes has led him to the Deliverance. He’s helped make ends meet doing salvage work for insurance companies. Brooks, who is married and has an 18-year-old daughter, has plans to create a shipwreck museum and aquarium in Portland.

Sub Sea Research’s primary recovery vessel is the 105-foot M/V Diamond, a converted U.S. Navy torpedo retriever that’s currently docked on Stock Island near Key West.

The day was great for beach hunting, windless with a calm ocean. He always liked to get an early start in the morning, and that day he had a feeling it was "his" day. On recent visits to this beach he had begun to recover a few silver coins and silver plate parts, mixed in with an assortment of iron spikes. His wife Jennifer had said that morning, "Put your metal detector in the car, and I’ll sit on the beach with the kids while you detect." It was a family decision that had a good omen. Gary was using a Minelab "Excalibur" metal detector and got his "hit" in a pile of shells several yards up from the water’s edge. It was a different kind of hit, louder and with a different tone. He dug down about 18 inches, and when he first saw the artifact he believed it to be a champagne bottle top twist. As he picked it up and turned it over, his knees became weak. The gold was as bright and shiny as the day it was made, and the emeralds were unbelievably deep green. He was thunderstruck. He walked down to the water’s edge, then back up to the dune line. He was seized by the urgency to show the ring to his wife, and running in sand took his breath away.

And so it went, a family outing that produced a treasure fit for a king. The Drayton family will be spending many more trips to the beach, and if luck will have it there will be more jumping up and down as treasure is recovered.

The Lincs coroner has now declared the find treasure trove. The British Museum is expected to keep pieces and pay Mr. Baker up to £100,000 in compensation. The six pieces will be valued by the British Museum, which is expected to decide to keep them and pay compensation to Mr. Baker.

Unemployed, Mr. Baker, 36, who has been metal-detecting since he was aged 10, will split the proceeds with Kevin Walker, the owner of the land. Mr. Baker, of Queen Mary Road, Ermine West, Lincoln, who made the find in October 2002, first took the pieces to Scunthorpe Museum. They were passed on to the British Museum, which identified them and indicated it would be interested in purchasing them after a treasure trove inquest.

Angela Care-Evans, a curator at the British Museum, described some aspects of the find as "unique" in the context of Anglo-Saxon discoveries. The parts of the hilt are up to 86% gold and decorated with garnet gemstones, indicating the sword was made for someone of high status. Experts think it may have belonged to a warrior from the Kingdom of Lindsey.

The British Museum has yet to put a final valuation on the find, but experts have suggested it could be worth anything up to six figures. The exact location of the find is being kept secret to protect the site, which was recently featured on the BBC programme Hidden Treasures.

The Spanish region's government, despite prior central government approval of the project, last month sent its Guardia Civil patrols to board Odyssey's research vessel and now demands a say-so in one of the most anticipated – and controversial – deep-water excavations ever planned.

Odyssey, eager to stay on good terms with anyone claiming maritime interests in the shipwreck-rich Mediterranean, announced last week that it would concentrate on five other "high-value targets" until things are ironed out with Andalusia's department of culture. "We'd all like to see the Sussex project move ahead, but we have other projects that could prove as valuable," says Odyssey co-founder Greg Stemm. He says the company plans to return to the Sussex later in the year.

The ease with which the firm has shifted operations to other sites is a testimonial to how many potentially lucrative shipwrecks litter the floor of the Mediterranean, and how successful the firm's advanced deep-water search technology has been in locating them. The sudden snag in the Sussex project, after years of preparation, also provides a glimpse of the political and emotional gulf that divides those who seek treasure in the deep ocean floor and those who see it as a repository of maritime history.

Odyssey, which last year recovered 51,000 gold and silver coins and thousands of other artifacts from the Civil War-era wreck of the SS Republic off the Georgia coast, claims that it serves both goals: raising saleable artifacts that it says have little value to archaeology and items of unique cultural importance for preservation and exhibit. The total value of the Republic operation has yet to be determined, but with two ships in its fleet and a third under lease, Odyssey has set out to become the leading for-profit shipwreck exploration company in the world.

Archaeologists fear such ambitions are no idle boast. Although there are an estimated 3 million undiscovered shipwrecks worldwide, archaeologists say advanced deep-water technology such as Odyssey's side-scan sonar and deep-diving robots will expose these cultural "time capsules" to commercial exploitation. "The problem is that salvage operations are driven by time and money, not by what can be learned from the wreck" says Robert Neyland, the chief archaeologist for the U.S. Navy, who headed recovery of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley. "Commercial salvage and archaeology are not compatible."

Although the "finders keepers" principle applies to most shipwrecks in international waters, archaeologists have taken some consolation in the fact that the rights to "sovereign" vessels like the Sussex are retained by the country under whose flag they sailed, wherever they sank. But to the horror of British archaeologists, Odyssey has struck a first-of-a-kind deal with the British defense ministry that provides a sliding scale for the division of treasure, the conservation of artifacts, and the sale of media rights.

Because the Sussex, the flagship of a 13-ship fleet, sank while it was carrying a vast sum of money and six tons of gold intended to assure the loyalty of the Duke of Savoy to England in the war with France, both parties to the agreement could wind up with billions. George Lambrick, director of the Council for British Archaeology, calls the deal "a blatant piece of heritage asset stripping" that will "legitimize commercial treasure hunting for financial rewards on a grand scale."

The British government would get 60 percent of any take over $500 million. "This deal would not have been struck if millions – perhaps billions – of dollars were not at stake," Limbrick says. "With its eye firmly on booty not culture, it looks as if the government is reneging on the basic principles of archaeological management that it has championed elsewhere," he says.

At least on the surface, the deal is at odds with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage, a 2001 international agreement that has yet to be ratified. It states that "underwater cultural heritage shall not be commercially exploited." Lambrick says he's concerned that the Sussex agreement will set "a dangerous precedent for the exploitation of wrecks in other waters" from 2,000-year-old Roman galleys in the Mediterranean to treasure-laden Spanish galleons in the Gulf of Mexico.

When it comes to sunken treasure, the glimmer of gold — like the will of a rich uncle — has a way of bringing potential heirs out of the woodwork. Odyssey, for instance, last year paid $1.6 million to Atlantic Mutual Insurance Co. , which had insured a portion of the SS Republic's cargo a century and a half ago – to resolve its claim to the wreck.

With a formal agreement from Great Britain in hand and the approval of the project by the Spanish government, the only remaining obstacles to the Sussex project appeared to be technical ones. Then the mouse roared. Andalusian authorities contend that it's possible a British flagship sailing through the straits of Gibraltar on its way to France in 1694 just might have had something that belonged to Spain on board.

Or perhaps because of the wreck's proximity to Spain, it's not the Sussex at all, but a Spanish vessel. And even though the wreck lies outside territorial waters in what Spain has designated "an adjacent area," Andalusia insists that it, too, must approve the project – perhaps in return for a small share of the take.

But the trail stopped when the depth of the water and the sand outpaced the mechanics of sand dispersement, leaving the two business partners in Jupiter Wreck, Dominic Addario and Peter Leo, to wonder where the main hull of this ship — possibly the San Miguel de Archangel — and its potential mother lode of treasure might be.

This month, Addario and his wife Yvonne, who own Jupiter Coins, hope they find out. If the weather holds, during the third week of May, he and his team will take his $2 million, 62-foot double-hulled catamaran – the Motor Research Vessel Enterprise – a few hundred yards from the Jupiter Inlet and pump more than 40 feet of sand out of the area to try and reach the hull of the San Miguel.

"We've dug more than 20,000 holes and mapped the shipwreck," said Dominic Addario. "We think the ship hit a sand bar off Jupiter Island, and the upper deck flipped over at her cannon ports, which is why we've found several cannons and the lighter items, such as the coins. The rest of the ship sank. That's the part of the ship we're going after. "If we find this wreck," he added, "it could have as much impact on this area as Mel Fisher's discovery of the Atocha off the Florida Keys."

The lure of a possible fortune in silver and gold is spurred on by several finds already, particularly a 77-pound silver ingot that bears the Roman numerals DCCXX, or number 820 indicating it is the 820th bar cast in 1652 in Lima, Peru. "We're hoping to find the other 819 ingots in the hull," said Addario, who said the treasure in the sunken ship could be worth several million dollars.

Addario and Leo didn't get to keep this original ingot. In a decision by a federal judge in 1990, Jupiter Wreck has the right to salvage the items, but the State of Florida gets the unique pieces, and the first of multiples. Jupiter Wreck gets the rest.

"The state has the finest selection of every type of coin we found and the one-of-a-kind artifacts," said Leo, who originally found the cannons and anchor in 1987 and joined with Addario to bring up the treasure, but is no longer actively involved in the search. "Jupiter Wreck has the title to the shipwreck." Two of the original cannons and an anchor were donated, and are now part of Lighthouse Park.

One of the things they have not salvaged is the ship's bell or any items that definitively identify the ship as the San Miguel. Mike Daniel is the director of the Burt Reynolds & Friends Museum who also heads a major archeological expedition in North Carolina to excavate Blackbeard's ship. He said it's possible the ship near the Jupiter Inlet isn't the San Miguel, but a salvage ship sent from the Bahamas where it was salvaging the Nuestra Senora de la Maravilla.

"They've only found a piece of the ship," said Daniels, "and nothing that specifically points to the San Miguel except records that indicate it could be that ship that foundered at Jupiter Inlet. The only dating they have right now is from the coins they've found that are from the mid-1650s."

But the search for the San Miguel is only part of the "treasure" that Addario may find. He says his ship is capable of moving hundreds of cubic yards of sand from the area under the water, and by using a barge with a hundred feet of pipe, he will be able to take this sand and renourish the beaches south of the inlet, using the natural wave action.

"If we can do this successfully," Addario said, "then the sand becomes the treasure, since the beaches are in dire need of sand, and we can create a 'borrow pit' of sand that we can disperse periodically. Our boat becomes a portable way to move sand to the beaches that need it."

Addario estimates that the cost of the search will be about $50,000 a month. Originally, he had planned the expedition for September, but the hurricanes changed that schedule, and also ran his boat aground near the Indiantown Road Bridge and the Riverwalk seawall. With the help of the town, he was to able extricate the boat and move it north along the Intracoastal to where he could continue to outfit the interior and fine tune the equipment.

"I joke that I've gone broke trying to find treasure," he said. "I want to end the equation and answer the question of where is the rest of this ship. Then I can move on."

The vessel in question was HMS Sussex, the 80-gun pride of the Royal Navy which had set sail from Portsmouth on 27 December 1693, for the Mediterranean with a huge political bribe on board. Locked in a series of iron-clad chests stowed in the cavernous hold was £1m in gold coins, worth at least £600m in today's terms, destined for the ruler of Savoy in north-western Italy.

Its purpose was to persuade the duke to attack the French monarch on his poorly defended southern border at the height of the Nine Years War, which was being pursued by an English-led coalition desperate to end Louis's expansionist ambitions. But in the early hours of 19 February 1694, the warship, completed only eight months earlier, foundered during a fierce storm off Gibraltar and sank in 3,000ft of water - taking its precious cargo to the ocean floor.

The ship's captain, Admiral Sir Francis Wheeler, whose body was washed up on Gibraltar, reputedly in his nightshirt, had been given secret orders by King William III detailing how the bribe was to be paid.

The loss of the bullion persuaded the English monarch to sue for peace and imperilled the nation's finances to such an extent that the Bank of England was founded to prevent a repeat of the debacle. Now, as the 311th anniversary of the sinking approaches, King William's bribe is once more provoking political rancour and division over its on-board treasure and the fate of its lost souls.

The case of HMS Sussex has far-reaching implications for every one of the estimated three million wrecks in the world's oceans and the opposing forces of poorly funded marine archaeologists and rich commercial salvagers. It is also a debate about a treasure hunt which, if it succeeds, will net the Treasury anything up to £360m.

When news of Sussex's loss reached the Italian port of Livorno in 1694, the unnamed French spy hurried his message to his paymasters in Versailles. After the initial jubilation, the parchment was filed and forgotten for the next three centuries. Then in 1994 it was rediscovered by an Italian researcher, sparking one of the most fevered treasure hunts in history.

Within the next six months, a state-of-the-art salvage vessel owned by a private American corporation, Odyssey Marine Exploration, will arrive at the site off Gibraltar. Armed with the most advanced robotic submarine on the planet, the salvagers will begin the process of examining the 17th-century wreck that they believe is HMS Sussex and attempting to bring its golden piastres and any other artefacts to the surface after three centuries on the seabed. It will be the deepest salvage operation ever undertaken for a ship of that age.

The project, which will cost an estimated £24m, has been made possible by a ground-breaking agreement with the Ministry of Defence in London to share the proceeds. But while the scheme could prove massively lucrative - up to £1bn according to some estimates - it is causing concern among British archaeologists. They fear it could signal the start of the looting the world's underwater heritage. While plans for the dive are being finalised, The Independent has learnt that a coalition of eminent academics has challenged the obscure MoD agency co-ordinating the salvage, claiming that the project amounts to sub-aquatic asset stripping.

In a letter sent by the Council for British Archaeology (CBA) to the Disposal Services Agency, concern is expressed that insufficient guidelines have been laid down for such areas as recording the items found, the funding of future conservation work and preserving the dignity of the wreck as a grave. Mike Heyworth, director of the CBA, said: "To be honest, we would prefer that this wreck had never been found. But now it has, it is our role to try to ensure the archaeological integrity of the site is preserved. This must be an archaeological operation, rather than some sort of smash and grab with a robotic bucket on the sea floor. For example, we don't know what they plan to do if and when human remains are found or how exactly everything will be catalogued."

From such artefacts, archaeologists hope to piece together a picture of life on board HMS Sussex, a ship from a period where virtually no first-hand documentary evidence survives on the life of an ordinary seaman. As Admiral Wheeler struggled to steady his vessel in the Mediterranean storm, he would have been helped by a crew of sailors who, far from the image of press-ganged amateurs, would have been seasoned professionals. Brian Lavery, curator of the National Maritime Museum, said: "Sailors in this era of the navy were not military men - there was no uniform for seamen or their officers. Instead, they prided themselves on their professionalism and their fearlessness. You only survived on board by gaining the respect of your peers."

In the letter, sent with the support of five archaeological bodies, including the UK arm of the International Council on Monuments and Sites, the CBA calls for the "project plan" - the hitherto undisclosed blueprint for the dive - to be made public before work starts on site.

The letter expresses particular concern that commercial pressures to realise a profit by selling the bullion will leave insufficient time to study all objects from the warship, the once proud flagship of a 200-strong fleet, before they are dispersed. It adds: "We would argue that all artefacts, including coins, should be treated in the same way and any disposal would not be appropriate until the full assemblage has been studied." Both Odyssey and the MoD reject the archaeologists' concerns and insisted this week that the Sussex salvage would be carried out to the "highest archaeological standards," pointing out that two independent monitors would be present and a respected firm of British marine archaeologists was overseeing the operation.

A MoD spokesman said: "We are certainly aware that there have been concerns and we are working very closely with Odyssey to resolve them. The priority is to minimise disturbance to what is considered as a very valuable heritage site."

Sceptics point out, however, that were it not for the iron crates holding the gold in an undisclosed part of the 1,200-ton vessel, neither Odyssey nor the Government would have shown any interest in the pile of muddy wreckage at the bottom of the Mediterranean. Indeed, the potential rewards for both parties are massive. The value by weight of the nine tons of coins from the reign of William III is relatively small at about £80m. The true value of any treasure haul is in its attraction to collectors, increasing the so-called melt value by up to thirtyfold.

A leading London antiquarian dealer said: "There is an extra cachet to an object that has been lost to humanity in the depths of the sea. Just look at the stuff from the Titanic. This applies particularly to gold coinage. It is redolent of a swashbuckling age where monarchs bought favours and armies to pique their rivals. You are buying into the glamour and myth of that age."

Under the deal between the MoD and Odyssey, the British Government will receive an increasing share of the proceeds of the exploration according to the value of what is found - 20 per cent of the first $45m (£25m), half of what is found between $45m and £500m (£278m) and 60 per cent of anything above $500m.

Odyssey, based in Tampa, Florida, announced last month that it made $9.6m (£5.3m) from the sale of bullion recovered from the SS Republic - an American vessel carrying gold during the civil war - in just six months and expects to make up to $15m by the end of the year.

But while archaeologists recognise Odyssey and the MoD are making significant efforts meet their concerns, there is anxiety that the Sussex dive could open the door to more unscrupulous treasure-seekers. There are some 250,000 wrecks in British waters and, according to the United Nations, up to three million worldwide. These include eight ships lost during the explorations of Christopher Columbus, and the San Jose - a Spanish galleon which sank off Colombia in 1708 and is perhaps the most valuable wreck of all, with two tons of platinum in its hold.

The CBA points out that the exploration of a wreck to produce artefacts for sale contradicts international attempts to bring in a law which forbids the trade in such antiquities. Despite lauding the aims of the Unesco convention on underwater heritage, the British Government has so far failed to ratify the conservation agreement laid out six years ago.

Critics say that is perhaps unsurprising when rule 2 of the treaty is considered: "The commercial exploitation of underwater cultural heritage for trade ... or its irretrievable dispersal is fundamentally incompatible with the protection and proper management of underwater cultural heritage. Underwater cultural heritage shall not be traded, sold, bought or bartered as commercial goods."

Archaeologists believe that with the wider use of the ultra-sophisticated sonar used by Odyssey to discover the potential site of HMS Sussex, time is running out for governments to conclude an agreement to protect rather than exploit their underwater heritage.

Dr Heyworth of the CBA said: "If someone came along and asked to dig up a historic site on land in Britain for profit, the authorities would be horrified. So why is it any different under the sea? Better technology is improving detection of sites that until now have been protected by their inaccessibility. Now these sites are rapidly becoming accessible and something needs to be done before their treasures are grabbed by looters."

Pinpointing a resting place of sunken bullion is still far from an exact science, however. Original documents relating to the sinking of the Merchant Royal, a trading vessel carrying £65m in bullion, state that witnesses on board an accompanying vessel calculated the sinking took place "ten leagues from Land's End." The reality is that the witnesses were too far out to sea to have seen the Cornish coast, and the Merchant Royal could be anywhere within an area of 600 square miles.

According to one wreck expert, there is no guarantee that the 17th-century ship lying off Gibraltar is HMS Sussex. He said: "There is a potentially delicious irony here. Matching a specific site with old documents is a real hunt for a needle in a haystack. After all this money and effort, the closest Odyssey and the MoD might come to a pile of gold is some rusty cannon balls and a bit of 17th-century anchor chain."

A vintage $20 gold piece is among items plucked from the 1865 wreck of the SS Republic off the Georgia coast. Even old bottles are valued artifacts. Coin World has reported that a collection of two dozen Coronet "double eagle" $20 gold pieces from the wreck fetched "in excess of $2.5 million" from a West Coast coin broker.

Not all the gold and silver coins salvaged from the steamer are expected to command such lofty prices. But in an effort to capitalize on public interest spurred by a recent National Geographic Society television special on the SS Republic, Odyssey has launched an online marketing effort to sell some of the wreck's more mundane items:

Empty Lea & Perrin's Worcestershire sauce bottles (complete with glass and cork stopper) for $600 apiece.

Flasks that once held Henry T. Hembold's Buchu Extract (used to treat "Loss of Power, Fatuity, and Epileptic Fits, Insanity and Consumption") for $900 each.

Or, for the economy-minded, there's an elegantly framed lump of coal from the ship's well-stocked coal bins for a mere $99.

At least for the coal, there's probably no need to hurry. "There's a lot of coal down there," says Odyssey spokeswoman Laura Barton. "The Republic was known for using a lot of coal, and it was only halfway through its run when it sank, so there's as much as you want." The market in coal from famous shipwrecks is hard to gauge. Lumps of coal from the HMS Titanic, which sank in 1912, have sold for as little as $25, but Barton says the Republic's coal is after all, older — and more attractively packaged in a polished wood shadow box.

Novelty of another kind, however, has already resulted in some lofty prices for some of the Civil War-era coins. Officials of Monaco Financial LLC of Newport Beach, Calif. — acting on behalf of undisclosed private collectors — snapped up a handful of the rarest $20 gold pieces, minted between 1849 and 1865.

Company Vice President Adam Crum says the coins are "among the finest specimens known." He says the value to coin collectors is due to the their excellent, mint-like condition and the fact that they come with a "pedigree" from a known shipwreck.

In addition to 51,000 gold and silver coins, Odyssey officials say they have retrieved nearly 13,000 artifacts from the ship's watery grave, which lies in 1,700 feet of water more than 100 miles off the Georgia coast. So far, the company has reported the sale of $10 million worth of coins, but it also has more than 200 different kinds of bottles and other artifacts.

The company says it will retain some of the more distinctive items from the Republic — including the ship's bell — for use in traveling and permanent exhibits, which it plans to announce in 2005.

The bulk of the Republic's cargo, however, still lies somewhere on the ocean bottom. The ship was reportedly carrying $400,000 in gold and silver coins from New York to New Orleans to aid in postwar reconstruction. "Based on our research, we believe we've only recovered about 25 percent of what's down there," says Odyssey co-founder Greg Stemm. "Since we have not found the purser's safe, or any safe for that matter, it leads us to theorize that it may have fallen off when the main deck cabins were detached from the main deck," he says.

Sometime early this the year, the company's research and recovery vessel, the Odyssey Explorer, now being re-outfitted in Tampa, will return to the wreck site in an effort to locate the rest of the cargo. Stemm says if the top deck of the steamer broke away as it was sinking and left a trail of debris across the ocean floor, the trail should lead to the rest of the cargo "like a trail of bread crumbs."

The research ship may not be on station off the Georgia coast for long, however. It is scheduled to be moved soon to the western Mediterranean, where the firm has its eyes fixed on an even bigger prize. Odyssey and the British government have signed an agreement that permits the company to salvage what is believed to be the HMS Sussex, a large 80-gun English warship that sank in a storm near Gibraltar in 1694.

The Sussex was carrying a large quantity of gold and silver to the Duke of Savoy, an ally of Britain against France in the War of the Grand Alliance. The payment reportedly included millions in cash and six tons of gold — a cargo that Odyssey claims could range in value from "several hundred million to a billion dollars or more."

Spink auction house had expected the 0.15-ounce gold coin to fetch between $214,000 and $267,000.

American collector Allan Davisson purchased the coin, which was found by an amateur searcher using a metal detector near the River Ivel in Bedfordshire, north of London, in 2001.

The coin weighs just 4.33 grams and was discovered on a public footpath beside the River Ivel in Bedfordshire, England. It is the first new Anglo-Saxon gold penny to come to light in nearly a century and the only known gold coin with the name of Coenwulf -- a king who ruled over the central English region of Mercia.

Experts at Spinks had been fascinated by its reference to the "wic" of London, an Anglo-Saxon settlement outside the city walls.

The previous auction record for a British coin was a gold piece bearing an image of George III's crown, which sold for $303,000 in 1999, Spink said.

But it could just as easily have buried the loot even deeper. Either way, treasure hunters both professional and amateur are keen to see what storm-tossed riches await along a stretch appropriately dubbed the Treasure Coast.

"We're anxious," said Taffi Fisher-Abt, daughter of renowned treasure hunter Mel Fisher and overseer of 25 professional salvagers. "I think there will be a few that just won't be able to be held back."

The object of their decades-long search is booty lost after a 1715 hurricane destroyed a Spanish fleet just offshore between Fort Pierce and Sebastian. All but one of the fleet's 11 vessels sank, depositing New World riches over miles of beaches and sea bottom.

"There is quite a bit of jewelry that was going back to the crown in Spain that still needs to be recovered," said Pat Clyne, spokesman for the Fisher organization. "Something like this always raises a flag and treasure hunters say, `Hey, now's the time. Let's go.'"

Through battering waves, powerful winds and dune-leveling storm surges, hurricanes change the topography of beach and sea floor. That can be good or bad for the treasure hunter. "It could have uncovered a huge pile of treasure, or it could have added 20 feet of sand on top of it," Fisher-Abt said from the treasure museum she operates in Sebastian.

"You can't tell until you get out there," said part-time treasure hunter Kim Glaner of Orlando. But it may not be until spring that the salvagers actually get to sea. The storms have churned the waters, rainfall runoff has reduced visibility and many of the hunters suffered damage to their boats or the marinas that serve them.

"All the treasure divers I've spoken to have pretty much hung it up for the season," Glaner said. But while ocean-borne treasure seekers are high and dry for now, metal-detector-wielding beachcombers may experience a real windfall. When hurricanes carve away several feet of beach, riches can be found -- coin by precious coin.

"They're picking gold and silver coins up right now," said Bob "Frogfoot" Weller, 79, a mostly retired treasure hunter and author of eight books on the subject. The Lake Worth man tells how after a nor'easter roared through on Thanksgiving 1984, beachcombers harvested approximately 3,000 gold coins from treasure ships left exposed on a shore north of Vero Beach.

"It was probably the most famous beach treasure hunt of all time," said Weller, who gained his nickname as a frogman during the Korean War, when he received a letter addressed to "Frogfoot."

Objects taken from a beach are free and clear for the finder. But to hunt for sunken treasure offshore, a salvager must have a contract with the state for exploration and, should a site be discovered, a second contract to salvage. If treasure is found, 20 percent goes to the state, which displays those pieces it wants at facilities across Florida.

James Levy, a historian with the state Bureau of Archaeological Research, said besides coins, beachcombers have retrieved such artifacts as a gold snuffbox, gold whistle and silver sword hilt. Those finds can pay off; a gold coin can go for $9,000, said Weller, who over four decades has brought to the surface about 2,000 silver coins, an 11-foot golden chain and a six-foot golden rosary -- not to mention jewelry.

While it will most likely be next year before treasure hunters see whether Frances and Jeanne have uncovered similar booty, "they're always optimistic, they're perennially optimistic," Levy said. "That's what keeps them going."

Walterfang's Batu Hitam wreck, with a US$40 million price tag, was part of an 8th-century porcelain cargo that China's Tang Dynasty traders had shipped aboard an Arab dhow for export to what is now Malaysia, India and that part of Arabia now comprising the United Arab Emirates.

The seven-year-old find, which is still making news, was the first indicator, experts said, of China being a maritime trading nation 200 years before European colonial powers emerged. Walterfang's historically significant finding serves as a rare success among a struggling breed of maritime exploration companies, shipwreck salvors and treasure hunters in Asia.

"The business is tending to get less viable," Dr Michael Flecker, managing director of the Singapore-based Maritime Explorations, told Asia Times Online. "There is more competition, often from illegal looting."

Maritime Explorations, working in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea, struck its most recent discovery off Vietnam, surveying two 15th-century Thai shipwrecks off Phu Quoc Island. Both, according to Maritime Explorations, were heavily looted of their Thai Sukhothai and Sawankhalok ceramics cargo.

Flecker, who holds a doctorate from the National University of Singapore on the excavation of a 10th-century shipwreck off Indonesia, said historical cargoes in Asia usually consist of ceramics, an indicator of the demand for Asian ceramics driving medieval trade routes to the West.

Searching for sunken treasures involve other problems, such as governments demanding tall up-front license fees and high percentages of findings. Some agreements, though, have been successful. Maritime Explorations, for instance, excavated the Binh Thuan shipwreck off the coast of southern Vietnam working with the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture. The unearthed artifacts were sold at Christie's in Melbourne for $1.39 million this March.

On August 14, the Terengganu state government in Malaysia offered to help any exploration effort to retrieve ancient sunken treasures, a move earning applause from many professionals. "The policy of the Malaysian government is a very good one - pragmatic and archeologically responsible," said Flecker. "Malaysia insists on far more archeological work than many other government in the region."

More than 3 million shipwrecks rest beneath the world's waters, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). But not everyone is impressed with that figure. A maritime explorer estimated that annually, about six shipwrecks are found in deep waters. Hard to determine too is the financial health of maritime companies, with those that Asia Times Online contacted coy about revealing their annual turnover.

Flecker said the costs of salvaging shipwrecks are depth- and weather-dependent. He estimates that these costs vary from a few thousand dollars a day up to $25,000, "bearing in mind that the higher day rates often result in much shorter project times." Added bills come with the follow-up costs of transport, conservation, warehousing, cataloguing, analyzing, research and marketing. "They can sometimes cost as much as the offshore work," Flecker said.

Greg Stemm, co-founder and director of the Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration, estimates the money spent in two days of excavating a 500-meter-deep shipwreck can pay a maritime archeologist for a year. Stemm, credited to have discovered hundreds of shipwrecks, dislikes the word "treasure" and prefers "intrinsically valuable trade goods." In the summer of 2003, he located and recovered gold worth $140 million from the SS Republic, an American Civil War steamer lost in 1865.

Such finds are few and far between, as when Singapore-based Hallstrom Holdings salvaged the 17th-century Vung Tau cargo of Chinese porcelain that was auctioned in 1992 at Christie's in Amsterdam for $7.3 million. Many valuable wrecks are still waiting to be salvaged in Asia, including the Manila Galleons - the approximately 40 16th-century Spanish trading ships lost when heading back to Mexico from the Philippines with some of the richest cargoes ever.

In trying to raise funds to salvage them, investor-seeking companies flaunt high-technology remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), robotics, cameras and specialized computer hardware and software. "If a company has a good track record and is known to be archeologically responsible, it's not too difficult to find investors," said Flecker. "However, unscrupulous salvors have frightened many potential investors away."

They frighten some maritime archeologists too, a breed that salvaging companies now enlist to reassure investors and governments. The Professional Shipwreck Explorers Association, for instance, has an 11-point code of ethics that includes asking members to have a qualified project archeologist on important explorations. Denise Lakey, an American scholar specializing in medieval Spanish maritime commerce, told Asia Times Online that salvors and treasure hunters have occasionally approached her. "My experience with them was, without exception, that they had big plans and promised a lot of things that never came through," she said.

Lakey said she would not have worked with any of them because, "as a professional archeologist, I see salvage and treasure hunting as extremely harmful to the archeological record." But not all maritime explorers deserve that view, as Forbes magazine, in a report, mentioned how Seabed Exploration, Tilman Walterfang's company, paid "meticulous attention to historical, archeological and conservation procedures throughout its operations." The Intan find, an 11th-century shipwreck with Song Dynasty artifacts, was said to have had "not a single object ruined or a site irresponsibly excavated."

Besides, maritime archeologists might have no other choice apart from forgetting shipwrecks. As Stemm wrote in "Key to Davy Jones's Locker," a January 1996 article, "Deep ocean work is very expensive, and there are no financial shortcuts. You can't use volunteers to operate delicate multimillion-dollar deep-ocean equipment." He said the only way archeologists will have access to the sunken knowledge is by working with the ventures that fund these projects.

Maritime explorers themselves have a tough battle staying afloat. "Far more is spent on survey and salvage than is ever earned, when viewed overall," said Flecker. His primary motivation in the business, he explained, lies in the excitement of discovering a new wreck, finding new and unexpected artifacts - the long-lost messages from the past that the ocean whispers. "Running successful projects with large numbers of local divers and crew is also immensely satisfying."

The only problem, Flecker said, is that "in a good year I may spend only two or three months diving and the rest of the time chasing paper." The oceans can drown mighty ships, it seems, but not red tape.

Brandon, a 35-year veteran of historical shipwreck salvage missions, has had plenty of luck. He's found a $43,000 gold bar, $6,000 gold coins, gold cufflinks and a 14.5 carat emerald ring in his searches.

Fellow divers Ryan Iacona of Port St. Lucie and Tim McGuire of Fort Pierce helped Brandon find the $100,000 treasure Aug. 4. They came upon what is known as the "Douglass Beach Wreck" — the remains of a 1715 Spanish galleon that sank near Frederick Douglass Memorial Beach.

Among the loot they found were 300-year-old gold and silver coins and a 22-Karat gold ring worth almost $15,000. On Aug. 6, the findings were brought to the Mel Fisher Center in Sebastian, where it will go through various inspections and archaeological research.

The historical value of the findings will be assessed at the Fisher Center. "In about a year, Florida will take 20 percent, then we get 80 percent," Brandon said.

The Queen Anne's Revenge Project is seeking $244,000 from the nonprofit organization to retrieve more artifacts from the shipwreck site next year. "It's time to do some more major recovery," said QAR Project Director Mark Wilde-Ramsing.

The project for the past two years has focused on preserving cannons and other items already brought up from the site off Carteret County. In the absence of designated state appropriations, the project has survived on a $350,000 Save America's Treasures grant from the National Park Service. "It will not last beyond the first of the year," Wilde-Ramsing said.

Also, the QAR project has nearly finished the lab work on items already retrieved, including six cannons. "All of them are scheduled to be finished up this spring and come on exhibit," Wilde-Ramsing said.

The Golden Leaf Foundation receives money from a court settlement against tobacco companies and issues grants for economic development projects, giving priority to those counties formerly dependent on tobacco. Wilde-Ramsing said the application argues that the recovery of artifacts from the shipwreck site will, once again, peak interest in the pirate and draw more tourism to the area.

The project, part of the Underwater Archaeology Branch in the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, applied to the Golden Leaf Foundation around the first of August, but will not know if it will receive money until sometime in November, Wilde-Ramsing said. In the meantime, the QAR project plans to move forward with Dive Down, a program that will allow limited recreational diver access to the shipwreck site.

Authorities are still working through specifics but are looking at offering a two-day diving certificate program consisting of on-site dives and lectures. "It's not just focusing on the archaeological remains, but also looking at the geology of why it's exposed and the biology of what's growing on it," Wilde-Ramsing said.

Tentative plans call for the program to start this fall with some of the state's dive business operators, then to open up next year to the general public, charging around a $500 fee, he said. The program will also have to be run by a non-profit organization, such as the Friends of the North Carolina Maritime Museum, because the state agency cannot legally charge for site visits, Wilde-Ramsing said. The project received $2,250 last year from the Carteret County Tourism Development Authority for a feasibility study on the idea. This year the TDA awarded $4,000 for promotional materials.

But John Halsey, archeologist for the State of Michigan, says Libert believes he may have found the Griffin, the first European decked ship to sail the upper Great Lakes and the "Holy Grail" of Great Lake shipwreck hunters. Halsey, however, doubts Libert found the Griffin, which was built by French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, and lost in 1679 during its maiden voyage. "I don't think it's the Griffin, he thinks it's the Griffin," Halsey said of Libert. "There's not enough information at this point to say one way or another even if it's a ship." Halsey said Michigan claims ownership of historic shipwrecks under the Abandoned Shipwreck Act, but if the Griffin was found, the French government would most likely assert its ownership.

Libert's attorney, Richard Robel, of Columbus, Ohio, called talk of the Griffin's discovery "rank speculation." "The Plaintiff Great Lakes Exploration LLC is not sure of the exact nature of the anomaly and is currently trying to identify it," Robel wrote in an e-mail to the Record-Eagle. "At this stage, attempts at identification are highly speculative."

The lawsuit is titled Great Lakes Exploration Group LLC v. The Unidentified, Wrecked and (For Salvage-Right Purposes), Abandoned Sailing Vessel. Suing a shipwreck in federal court is a legal means to take ownership of a sunken ship, Traverse City attorney Merritt Green said. "If they've located the vessel and they've pinpointed the area, clearly what they're trying to do is establish their right to salvage it," said Green, an attorney who specializes in maritime law and is not involved in the case.

The wreck is identified by a latitude and longitude that places it in a circle with a radius of 3.5 miles just west of Poverty Island and Summer Island near Wisconsin, about 55 miles northwest of Leelanau County. The suit contains little information about the vessel's identity - it's called a "sailing ship which sank scores of years ago" and is described as possibly having been involved in a "foreign research expedition."

Uncertainty has stalled the federal case over shipwreck ownership. Judge Robert Holmes Bell rejected a motion from Great Lakes Exploration to be appointed custodian of the shipwreck, saying the plaintiff failed to provide enough information about what he believes lies on the bottom of Lake Michigan. The suit also asks for $35 million in damages, although Robel wouldn't say who should be responsible for that amount or whether they believe that's the shipwreck's worth. Robel said damages are often required in such lawsuits and that the $35 million figure "has little meaning at the initial stage of the proceedings."

Robel is an attorney whose work in maritime salvage law is well-known. In the 1980s, Robel helped a treasure hunter win legal right to a fortune of gold recovered from the shipwreck of the SS Central America in the Atlantic Ocean. Robel's work in that case is described in the best-selling book Ship of Gold on the Deep Blue Sea.

Libert is also no stranger to lengthy court battles over shipwrecks. A case filed by Libert in 1994 over another shipwreck in the same region of Lake Michigan led to a court battle between Libert's company and the State of Michigan. In that case, Libert's lawyers sought ownership of a shipwreck called the Captain Lawrence. The State of Michigan intervened in the federal suit and maintained that it owned the shipwreck under the Abandoned Shipwreck Act, which grants states ownership of vessels lost in the Great Lakes. The courts sided with Michigan and the case ended in 2001.

Libert wanted the Captain Lawrence, a ship lost in 1933, because he believed its crew had discovered a gold treasure dumped into Lake Michigan during the Civil War. "This case arises from two men's 'obsession' with a 'mystery legend' of gold lost in northern Lake Michigan during the Civil War," federal appellate Judge Danny Boggs wrote in a decision in the case, referring to Libert and the captain of the Captain Lawrence.

Great Lakes shipwreck researchers believe it's unlikely Libert found the Griffin. "How big it was, what happened to it, what it looked like - those are all mysteries," said shipwreck researcher David Swayze, who said it's possible the Griffin would be unidentifiable even if found. "It's kind of the Holy Grail just because it's the earliest European-style ship."

Brendon Baillod, who runs a website called Great Lakes Shipwreck Research, said Libert's search for the Poverty Island gold also was a long shot. That legend holds that a Canadian ship was carrying $20 million in gold from England to the Confederacy in 1862 or 1863 when the vessel was stopped by a State of Michigan cutter near Poverty Island. Rather than be boarded and have the gold seized, the crew threw the treasure overboard and left a marker so they could return for it. But when the crew returned, according to the legend, they could not locate the gold. A big problem with the legend is that the Great Lakes were considered too perilous for any captain to carry large treasures aboard a ship, Baillod said. "Bottom line, nobody shipped gold on ships on the Great Lakes because the rate of catastrophe was so high," he said.

Jack Spencer, owner of Scuba North in Traverse City, said he's heard many stories from people hoping to make their fortune finding treasure in Lake Michigan, but he's not holding his breath. "Let me tell you, everything's hyped up," Spencer said.

In a ruling 10 days ago, a Spanish criminal court rejected Portugal's claim that the rusty, broken bell - found in 1994 by a diver inside a Spanish galleon in shallow waters just off that country's coast - had in effect been stolen from Portugal.

The bell, seized by Spanish police in February 2003 at the request of Portugal three days before its planned auction in Madrid, was returned June 11 to the Barcelona-based auction house Gestion de Activos y Subastas, its spokesman David del Val Catala told The Associated Press from Barcelona. It is sitting inside a safe at a Madrid bank. "We have won the first round," del Val Catala said.

The 31-pound bell is about 10 inches high, and 10 inches wide at its bottom rim. It is covered with a turquoise-colored residue and has a gaping hole with jagged edges in its upper part. Encrusted in the bottom part is a flat, white seashell the size of a fingernail. The national news agency Efe said Sunday the bell has been appraised to be worth between $30 million to $60 million. Del Val Catala said that range sounds about right. "It is a piece like no other," he said.

Now, a Spanish civil court judge has scheduled a July 11 hearing on whether Portugal can still claim the bell. But even if the judge rules in favor of Portugal, its government will have to pay for the artifact. It would be up to the judge to set the price.

Claudio Bonifacio, a Spanish historian specializing in shipwrecks and sunken treasures, says it is the oldest ship's bell ever recovered and the only known relic from Columbus' first journey across the Atlantic. It also symbolizes the moment when European settlers first glimpsed the New World.

Del Val Catala said that if and when his company gains full rights to the bell, the auction might be rescheduled for later this year. The Spanish government has the right to match the winning bid and take possession of the bell as part of the country's historical heritage. Bidding had been scheduled to start at $1 million at the auction that was thwarted in 2003.

Portugal claims the bell because it was found in Portuguese waters. The auctioneers, acting on behalf of Italian diver Roberto Mazzara, who found it, say the bell is Spanish because it was found inside a Spanish vessel, the San Salvador. The criminal court judge agreed.

"The Santa Maria was and is part of Spain's historical heritage," Mazzara said Sunday from his home in Algeciras in southern Spain. "It is absolutely none of Portugal's business."

Mazzara, a professional diver, did years of detective work to prove the bell is the one that rang out when Columbus and his three-ship flotilla arrived in America after their historic voyage in 1492.

Mazzara found it amid the wreckage of the gold-laden Spanish galleon San Salvador, which sank off Portugal in 1555 while returning to Spain from the island of Hispanolia. He and academics argue that Columbus had used the bell at a fortress he ordered built on Hispaniola, until it was decided the artifact was so valuable it should be shipped back to Spain.

Mazzara and the auction house say they cannot prove beyond doubt that the bell is the real thing, but insist it is. "Every available scientific study has been carried out on the bell and on historical documents surrounding the shipwreck, and they all point to the bell being authentic," del Val Catala said.

The treasure was discovered in 2001 at a depth of just a few metres near Fort San Sebastian on the "Ilha de Mocambique", an island just off Mozambique, once the centre for trade during Portugal's Golden Age.

"The Netherlands has a tradition in shipping and ships' cargo. We know how to handle these objects and we have a market for them here," said Yvonne Ploegsma, a spokeswoman for Christie's in Amsterdam.

The porcelain was excavated carefully from the wreck and was in remarkably good condition with very few chips, cracks or missing pieces. Venezuelan diver Alejandro Selmi was the first to find the wreck when he spotted a pile of ballast stones. Aware that thousands of shipwrecks litter the sea-bed with ballast, Selmi was not initially very enthusiastic.

The Portuguese carrack, an armed merchant ship, was laden with exotic goods from the East when it sank, leaving unstamped lumps of gold and porcelain just three metres below the surface for centuries.

Crabs, ferns, dragons, lotus flowers and petals decorated the white and blue Ming bowls, as did chrysanthemums, cranes, people riding buffalo, mythical beasts, butterflies, lions, trees and dragonflies.

Those objects with the greatest archaeological, artistic and historical value went to Mozambique, named after the tiny island, giving its national museum a unique collection of export porcelain, Christie's said. Some plates carried the year of production, 1553, also the likely year of the shipwreck. They were popular with kings and emperors, such as China's Wanli (1573-1619).

Two bronze cannons, a swivel gun and spices were also found in the wreckage, but these items were not included in Wednesday's auction.

In March, Ming porcelain salvaged from a 400-year-old shipwreck off southern Vietnam raised US$1.6 million ($2.71 million) for a new museum in Vietnam when Christie's auctioned nearly 17,000 pieces in Melbourne.

Coins from the SS Republic have been divided into two categories. The "numismatic collection" contains coins that are indistinguishable from coins that have never been underwater. These will be priced to relate to their numismatic value and will not be offered for sale until Odyssey has completed sufficient coin recovery on the shipwreck site to provide information regarding the total population of coins in the collection.

The second category includes handpicked ungraded shipwreck coins that have been conserved and encased in a certified tamper-resistant holder by Numismatic Conservation Services (NCS) and Numismatic Guaranty Corporation (NGC). These coins will be the first available for sale and will be packaged in an impressive hardwood display case with an engraved SS Republic plate affixed to the cover. There will also be a vividly illustrated booklet describing the shipwreck's history; a DVD video of the National Geographic Ultimate Explorer one hour program and a certificate of authenticity in each case.

The archaeological excavation of the SS Republic shipwreck site and the recovery of coins are continuing. Among the coins already recovered are numerous gold eagles, gold double eagles, silver half dollars and even a few quarters, nearly all dating between the 1840's and 1865. Unlike other recent shipwreck finds, a wide variety of dates and mints have been noted in this find. Based on the pieces recovered thus far that have been professionally conserved by NCS and graded and encapsulated by NGC, this collection already includes over a dozen of the finest-known examples of United States gold coins from the period.

51,212 coins have been recovered to date, including 2,620 $20 Double Eagles, 1,496 $10 Eagles, 47,094 Half Dollars and 2 quarters. A detailed report on the coins recovered to date will be released shortly. According to John Albanese, Numismatic Marketing Strategist for Odyssey, the retail value of coins recovered to date should exceed $75 million dollars.

The Odyssey team has excavated about one third of the SS Republic shipwreck site. The face value of recovered coins represents 22.7% of the "$400,000 in specie" (face value in 1865) that historical research indicates was on board the Republic when she sank. Odyssey is now searching for additional deposits of coins as the excavation continues.

"The first cache of coins was lying in a tiny area that was laid open to us with no pieces of hull or decks obstructing the excavation. We have recovered all the visible coins in that location and are now expanding the excavation into the surrounding areas. We are finding some amazing artifacts, but have not located the rest of the coins yet." reported Greg Stemm, Odyssey co-founder.

The SS Republic was a sidewheel steamer that sank in 1865 while en route from New York to New Orleans after battling a hurricane for two days. Odyssey discovered the shipwreck 1,700 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean approximately 100 miles off the Georgia coast.

The Mote Marine archaeologist exuded a contagious enthusiasm for his subject; our submerged past. He ticked through hundreds of years of history, as he explained his methods of retrieving lost history from underwater ruins with a magnetometer and a side scan sonar. A magnetometer detects the presence of iron, and a side scan sonar finds objects that jut up from the bottom.

His treasure trove of slides included historical photos of John Ringling's dredge hard at work creating St. Armand's Key back in the boom days, as well as its present resting place on Otter Key. The Ringling family had several wonderful watercraft. John Ringling lost one yacht off Lido Key and one exploded in a fueling mishap in Tampa Bay; a workman was killed in the blast. Mabel Ringling had a real Venetian gondola imported from her beloved Italy -- only to lose it without a trace in the hurricane of 1926.

Cozzi will begin exploring Charlotte Harbor, "possibly in September," he said. The expedition should be funded in part by a grant from the Florida Legislature when the new fiscal year starts July 1. Charlotte Harbor, according to local historian Lindsay Williams, has been variously explored by Ponce De Leon in 1513 and 1521, Hernando De Soto in 1539 and Menendez D' Aviles in 1566. Florida natives including the Calusa and Timuaca groups preceded the Spaniards in Charlotte Harbor. Native canoes, rum runners, Cuban smacks, Civil War smugglers, phosphate barges and the whole range of submerged history abound in what some consider the birthplace of North American history.

In 1528, Spanish explorer Panfilo De Narvaez came to Florida's west coast from Cuba with a fleet of five ships. He left Trinidad bound for Havana with 400 men, a few women and 80 horses. A storm blew them off course on April 15, 1528, and they landed somewhere on the coast of southwest Florida. One of his five ships foundered and sank at a place he called 'Santa Cruz' or 'Holy Cross,' described in historic accounts as 'a small bay that led to a larger bay.' That bay just might prove to be Charlotte Harbor, and with the careful analysis of a nautical archaeologist, an undocumented chapter of North American history could come to light.

The initial study will only be a survey of area shipwrecks; any excavation would come in a subsequent phase. Spaniards from Cuba operated what were called, 'fish ranches' in the rich waters of Charlotte Harbor. They would sail up from Cuba for fishing expeditions, taking the catch back for trade. Cozzi's search will take all that into consideration. Area cattlemen Jacob Summerlin and Joel Knight drove their cattle to a point on the harbor near Bayshore where they subsequently shipped them to Cuba and the northern states. Those same steamers ran the Union blockade in the harbor during the Civil War so the Confederacy could be fed.

Cozzi spoke with the archaeologist's fervor as he said, "I would also like to survey Tampa Bay. I'm hoping for a DeSoto shipwreck." He and his wife, Hera Konstantinou had just returned from Tallahassee, where the Legislature is planning funding part of the research through Mote Marine Laboratory. The fascination with the sea seems to run in this family; Hera's mother is Dr. Eugenie Clark, the pioneering marine biologist.

Greg Brooks, a partner in Sub Sea Research LLC, and a crew took the company's 105-foot vessel, Diamond, to Haiti's southern coast in January after Brooks signed a contract with Haitian officials allowing his company to excavate shipwrecks.

The crew discovered three shipwrecks, including one that Brooks said could be a Spanish galleon carrying a billion-dollar treasure. Despite the political uncertainties in Haiti, Brooks said he intends to return to Haiti this week to conduct more surveys of the wreck.

"No one's told me no," Brooks said recently in his Portland office. "Until they send out their Navy, which they don't have, or their Air Force, which they don't have . . . I'm just going to do it." Brooks' attorney, Sandy Burnett of Tallahassee, Fla., said he doesn't anticipate problems with Brooks' contract, even though the Haitian government has changed with the rebel uprising that forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of power and out of the country on Feb. 29.

Brooks said the contract calls for his company to keep 65 percent of the recovered treasure, and to give 35 percent to the Haitian government. There are "obvious concerns" about working off the Haitian coast, Burnett said, but he doesn't think the crew will be in danger. "Haiti's dealing with its own issues, and those issues don't reach out to somebody like Greg," he said.

Brooks, 52, went on his first treasure hunt 11 years ago when he bought a used Canadian Coast Guard cutter, recruited crew members and set out for waters off South Carolina in search of loot from a sunken pirate ship. He's been at it ever since, making enough money to earn a living. The Canadian cutter is gone and his latest ship, the Diamond, is a former Navy torpedo retrieval vessel. The Diamond and two smaller boats are kept in Key West, Fla., when they aren't in use. Brooks stays at his home in Gorham when he isn't at sea. In time, he hopes to build a nonprofit shipwreck museum and aquarium on the Portland waterfront.

Despite the project in Haiti, Brooks' primary focus these days is a wreck off the Florida Keys that he believes is the remains of the 18th-century French merchant ship Notre Dame de Deliverance, which was loaded with gold, silver and other riches when it sank in a hurricane.

But he's also had a longtime fascination with Haiti, whose waters are rich with shipwrecks because they were regularly traversed by ships centuries ago, and because the Haitian government hasn't allowed them to be excavated, he said.

Brooks thinks the most valuable of the wrecks that his crews found off Haiti is a 78-cannon ship of nearly 200 feet that sank in the 1700s. "We know it's a very rich wreck because of some of the gold bars we've seen," he said.

When the Diamond arrived at its survey site in January, children who lived in a village on shore floated out to the boat using empty plastic jugs and Clorox bottles, said Donnie Freedman of Brunswick, who has worked with Brooks for 2 1/2 years. A group of 20 or so of the kids sat on the stern to watch the crew at work. Fishermen paddled their canoes to the boat to talk to the boat's pilot, a Haitian hired by Brooks who spoke the native Creole. At one point, a group of men who identified themselves as police came out to the vessel.

"It opened my eyes as to how they work there," Freedman said. "I'm not used to police toting around shotguns and Uzis." The police visit didn't amount to anything, and Brooks is confident there won't be any trouble when they return. But he has concerns. "Lately what they're starting to do is take potshots at people from a distance," he said about violence in other parts of Haiti. "That's what we're worried about."

Odyssey Marine Exploration discovered the wreck of the S.S. Republic last summer and has already plucked 52,000 gold and silver coins from the site in the Atlantic Ocean 100 miles southeast of Savannah, Ga.

Early estimates put the collectors' value of the coins at $120 million to $180 million. The discovery of more coins than expected could push that figure even higher.

The company petitioned the court for title to the wreck after reaching a settlement with Atlantic Mutual Insurance Co., which had insured the paddlewheel steamer and its cargo and paid claims after it sank in a hurricane on Oct. 25, 1865.

Odyssey agreed in January to pay the insurance company $1.6 million, which cleared the way for it to ask the court for exclusive ownership. The settlement was significant, company president John Morris said, because claims on other shipwrecks have tied up ownership rights in court for years.

Salvage rights were granted to the Tampa company after the wreck was discovered last year, but it remained under the federal court's protection until the ruling Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Susan C. Bucklew.

"We are now the 100 percent owners of everything, so we now have the right to do with it what we see fit," Morris said.

In addition to the coins, the S.S. Republic was carrying 59 passengers, thousands of bottles of everything from pickled fruit to stomach bitters, and various other cargo. The 210-foot ship, once part of the Union fleet, was taking the money and supplies from New York to New Orleans for post-Civil War reconstruction of the South.

All passengers got off alive, but the ship and its cargo settled on the sand at the bottom of the Atlantic, lost until Odyssey explorers detected it last summer after searching 1,500 square miles of ocean.

The wreck is scattered across a 40-by-120-foot area in 1,700 feet of water. The company is using a remote-controlled robotic apparatus to excavate the site and remove the coins and other items.

Now their company, Auguste Expedition LLC, is uncovering history. Already, hundreds of gold and silver coins, jewelry, silverware and other artifacts lost at sea 242 years ago rest safely in a vault in Syracuse. Many more remain to be found. More importantly, Miles said, the history of a dramatic episode in North American history is being fleshed out.

The sinking of the Auguste de Bordeaux during a vicious November storm in 1761 was the starting point for one survivor's remarkable journey. St. Luc de la Corne, a French military hero and one of the wealthiest men in Canada, was one of only seven to survive the wreck; 114 people died. He then walked hundreds of miles during the worst of winter back to Quebec City.

La Corne's story, and the story of Auguste Expedition LLC's efforts to recover artifacts from the shipwreck, will be told in a documentary airing this week on National Geographic Channel. Miles, who is managing partner of Auguste Expedition, arranged the deal with National Geographic. He said getting the story out is as important as finding the treasure. The group also is negotiating book and movie deals, and hopes to set up a traveling museum.

"Our duty is to teach the world what happened there, the history," he said. "And as we teach the world, this collection will grow in value, because it will become sought after by those that have an interest in this time and place in history."

The Auguste de Bordeaux, a wooden sailing ship built in 1747 and 1748 in France, was nearing the end of its life by the time 121 passengers boarded in Quebec for the journey to France. The passengers, many of whom were rich, were being deported after France lost the Seven Years' War to Britain. The passengers had been allowed to liquidate their holdings in Canada before the trip, and many carried trunks or barrels full of coins, silverware and other valuables. Among them was la Corne, a wealthy fur trader and military hero. His two sons, his brother and two nephews perished when the ship sank in a storm. But La Corne managed to get to shore. His journal, which recounts the wreck and his trek through the wilderness afterward, survives to tell his story.

From Aspy Bay, where the Auguste sank, divers are adding artifacts to the story. Among other treasures, they have found silverware bearing La Corne's ornate coat of arms.

Auguste Expedition LLC got its start in late 2000, when Joseph Amaral, a commercial diver and licensed captain from Parksburg, Pa., learned of the wreck from a Canadian businessman, Steven Farrell. Farrell, who is part of a joint venture with Auguste Expedition, had obtained a permit from Nova Scotia to dive the wreck. At the time, Amaral was working for The Armada Group, of Pulaski, recovering valuable old logs from the St. Lawrence River. Owner Jim Walker had worked before with Strategic Financial Planning, and he introduced Amaral. When Amaral approached the group about the Auguste opportunity, it helped that Miles was a diver and a history buff.

"With the economy the way it was, it was very hard to find people who would get as excited about it as I was," Amaral said. "Norm being a fellow diver, and interested in history and shipwrecks, just got on the bandwagon."

Miles said he hopes to dive the site this summer. Two colleagues from Strategic Financial - Ron Sirota, president, and Tom Walsh, accountant - signed on with Miles as partners in Auguste Expedition. Syracuse lawyer Lynn Smith joined the group and provided legal advice. Auguste Expedition has raised about $1.6 million, most of which came from Syracuse-area investors, Miles said. The group has hired experts, including archeologist John Anthony de Bry of Melbourne Beach, Fla., to help.

Although the Auguste sank in just 25 feet of water, the recovery is made difficult by the shifting sands of Aspy Bay, which have covered the treasure with three to five feet of sand and stones, Amaral said. Not only that, but the ship broke up in the storm, and the treasure is scattered in an area roughly three-quarters of a mile long and 700 to 800 feet wide, he said. Crews expect to dive the site this summer and next before all the artifacts are recovered.

The government of Nova Scotia is entitled to some of the treasure, but most will remain the property of the expedition. The group hopes to sell the collection to a museum, he said. How much is it all worth? "Priceless," said Miles.

Here was a precious cargo of porcelain - and Ming porcelain at that. Stacks of beautifully crafted plates, bowls, dishes, jars and cups, along with cast iron pans and a silver winepot. In all, 60,000 items lying largely undisturbed 39 metres below the surface.

In 1608 a Chinese junk had left Guangdong province heavily laden with silk, pans and ceramics for the markets of South-East Asia. But the ship never reached its first port of call, Johore on the southern Malay Peninsula.

Australian marine archaeologist Michael Flecker believes it struck a reef off the Vietnamese coast and was pushed 15 kilometres beyond it by huge waves. The tightly packed cargo prevented repairs inside the vessel and the rough seas stopped anything being done outside. The crew must have desperately battled the in-rushing water but eventually, as the ship settled lower, waves washed over the deck and flooded the hold until the junk sank - not to be seen for another 400 years.

"In early 2001, Vietnamese fishermen from the Binh Thuan province snagged their net on the wreck while trawling," Dr Flecker says. "They sent a diver down to release the net and he surfaced with a glistening dish and a broad smile. It was late Ming blue-and-white porcelain."

When the Vietnamese authorities learned of the discovery they asked Dr Flecker's company, Maritime Explorations, to help with the recovery. In September 2002 Dr Flecker headed a team of 20 divers and archaeologists to begin mapping the wreck site.

Despite the centuries under water and some damage caused by trawlers' nets, the cargo of ceramics was largely intact. This was one of the few Chinese junks ever discovered and the first full shipment to be found of a special type of chinaware.

Months of research confirmed Dr Flecker's opinion that the ceramics were produced at the Zhangzhou kilns in southern China. They are generally known as Swatow ware and about half the 40,000 intact pieces were decorated in underglaze blue-and-white, as unblemished as the day they left the kiln. "This project is a model for commercial and archaeological co-operation," Dr Flecker says.

"All the archaeological objectives were met, including the detailed in situ recording of the hull remains and cargo." Dr Flecker says the most impressive items are large, blue-and-white dishes with a diameter of up to 42 centimetres.

All the unique artefacts and ceramics, and four full sets of every piece, were kept by the Vietnamese Government for study and display. The remaining porcelain, about 17,000 objects, will be auctioned by Christie's at its South Yarra saleroom on March 1 and 2. Dr Flecker expects keen bidding from collectors in Indonesia, Japan, Europe and Australia.

As many important wrecks are plundered, collectors seldom get a chance to buy legiti-mate shipwreck treasure. Most of the sale proceeds will go to building a museum in Phan Thiet to house the finds kept by the Vietnamese.

Update: The auction earned $1,200,000.

"There are hundreds of Viking ships out there, hundreds of old trading ships, hundreds of warships," muses the captain turned researcher, called the Baltic's Sherlock Holmes in his native Estonia for locating so many sunken ships. "The Baltic's an archaeological paradise."

Standing on the bridge of his research boat, docked in the capital, Tallinn, the blue-eyed 63-year-old seafarer speaks excitedly about the next mystery he hopes to solve: the whereabouts of the passenger ship Vironia, torpedoed near Estonia by Nazis during World War II.

War and weather have claimed seafarers since early sailors plied the Baltic. Some vessels have been long forgotten. Others are more recent, like the ferry Estonia, sunk in 1994 after towering waves ripped off its bow doors, with 852 of its 989 passengers and crew lost.

There could be as many as 100,000 shipwrecks in the Baltic Sea, said Stefan Wessman, a marine archaeologist at Finland's Maritime Museum. "The Baltic Sea has huge potential, and I believe this is recognized by scientists internationally," he said. "There is nothing comparable to it in the world."

It's not just the number of Baltic wrecks that enthralls underwater researchers like Wessman and Mass. It's that so many are well-preserved -- veritable time capsules certain to expand understanding of the past. "It's hard to imagine something telling us more," said Wessman, speaking by telephone from Helsinki. "You can get a whole cross-section of a society on one ship. The only equivalent on land I can think of is if you found a whole ancient library buried intact."

Sweden's royal warship Vasa, the most celebrated Baltic Sea discovery, was so well preserved when it was raised in 1978 -- some 350 years after it sank -- that minute details were clearly visible, down to flashing teeth on the carved lions that adorned its elaborate interior.

Archeologists can thank the lack of wood-eating shipworms. The teredo navalis -- actually a mollusk, not a worm -- thrives in high-salt oceans and is averse to low-salt waters like the Baltic. "If the Vasa had sunk in almost any other sea, you might find parts of it that were buried under the seabed -- but any wood exposed to the sea would be gone," Wessman said.

American marine scientist Robert Ballard, famous for discovering the wreck of the Titanic, also noted the Baltic's interest to undersea explorers. "There is an appreciation among researchers around the world of the discovery potential of the Baltic given its unique characteristics for preservation of ancient wooden ships," he said. The Baltic's frigidity also acts as a preservative.

The Swedish schooner Jonkoeping, sunk by a German submarine in 1916 and salvaged near Finland in 1998, held nearly 5,000 bottles of French champagne, perfectly preserved in constant 4 degree Celsius temperatures. Several bottles were auctioned by Christie's in London for $4,000 apiece.

The Baltic is also a mere 55-meters deep on average, making its seafloor accessible to even relatively low-tech, cash-strapped explorers. By contrast, the Atlantic's average depth is 3,700 meters.

Sonar has also improved chances of finding wrecks -- even by accident. A Swedish submarine crew doing routine scanning two years ago stumbled upon an 18th century ship intact and upright -- as if set lovingly on the seabed, a carved sea horse presiding majestically at its stern. Human skulls on the deck were the only obvious signs of mishap. The mystery ship has never been identified or salvaged.

But the most important factor in opening up new opportunities in marine archaeology, at least for Mass, has been the demise of the Soviet Union which severely limited underwater exploration off the shores of its satellite states. "The Soviets were paranoid about everything -- that we might see underwater military equipment, that we might escape to the West," recalled Mass, born the year the Red Army occupied the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1940.

With no Soviet-era courses on marine archaeology, Mass taught himself -- taking inspiration from the films of Jacques Cousteau. Now, Mass is one of just a few regional experts in the field, a one-man force in Baltic shipwreck hunting. Speaking in his office in Tallinn's Maritime Museum, he keeps excusing himself to answer the phone as his Nordic counterparts called to ask about his latest discoveries.

"There's a hundred year's worth of work out there," he said, sweeping his hand at stacks of paper on his desk and estimating that 10,000 ships have sunk near Estonia alone. "Life's short. I've got to give it 100 percent."

His most recent find, in July, was of Russia's first armored naval ship, the Russalka, or Mermaid. Underwater photos of the ship, which sank in a storm in 1893, showed it stabbed vertically into the sea floor like an enormous sword. Russian authorities haven't yet decided whether to salvage the wreck, Mass said.

Hungry for more discoveries, Mass has thumbed through old newspaper clippings and quizzed fishermen to learn clues about the sleek-white Vironia, attacked by German planes as it fled the Nazis' 1941 wartime invasion of Estonia. The Vironia was in a 90-ship convoy carrying Soviet officials and their families in a frantic, last-minute escape from Tallinn. In hours, 30 ships were sunk. Some 15,000 people died, one of the largest death tolls for a single engagement at sea, Mass said. Fishermen told him how their nets kept becoming snagged near where the Vironia was believed to have perished -- crucial information that will help narrow down its precise location.

Mass said finding something comparable to Sweden's Vasa, the dramatic centerpiece of a Stockholm museum, is the fantasy of most divers. His is to find an Estonian-built ship from the Viking era, when Estonians staged raids across the Baltic Sea. Shipwrecks also arouse talk of sunken treasure, but Mass says he pays no heed to the rumors that circulate along towns on the Baltic coast. "I've got history on my mind, not gold," he said with a laugh.

Could "Santa Cruz" be present day Charlotte Harbor? Could the remains of the explorer's foundered ship be located? That's one of the maritime mysteries J. "Coz" Cozzi hopes to find out. Cozzi, a nautical archaeologist, was recently hired by Mote Marine Laboratories to conduct a shipwreck survey of Charlotte Harbor. "It's one of the great adventures in the exploration of the American continents -- and it may have gotten kicked off right here," Cozzi said. "But, we just don't know where (Santa Cruz) is."

Mote intends to search for wrecks of all kinds dating back to several eras of Charlotte Harbor's maritime history. That history ranges from the canoes used by Indians to the steamers that ran a Union blockade to smuggle cattle to Confederate states, Cozzi said. The site of one wreck near Boca Grande has been previously located by a "treasure hunter," and later documented by beach renourishment engineers, Cozzi said. That wreck is believed to date back to the 1800s.

None of the Charlotte Harbor wrecks are expected to hold treasures, however. In the 1600s, Spanish treasure ships typically sailed through the Caribbean to Cuba, then followed the Gulf Stream along Florida's East Coast before crossing the Atlantic. Here, the only items likely to be left after time, tides and saltwater have wrought their work are rusty anchors, cannons and iron spikes, said Cozzi, who recently conducted a similar wreck survey in the Pensacola area.

But, the real treasure held within Charlotte Harbor's wrecks may be the stories they could tell of life in what was then a remote outpost. "I think it's important because the historical records are silent on local maritime activities," Cozzi said. "Because it was a frontier area, there was no newspaper to print the local comings and goings. So, finding one of these shipwrecks is a fabulous way to fill in the gaps of local history."

For example, for several hundred years, Spaniards from Cuba are believed to have operated "fish ranches" in Charlotte Harbor. After working their nets for weeks, they'd load their schooners down and return to Cuba. "They did that for centuries," Cozzi said. "It's hard to believe that in the hundreds of years that they were here they didn't lose a ship."

Later, in the late 1800s, entrepreneurs Jacob Summerlin and Joel Knight built a dock and a store off Bayshore Road in Charlotte Harbor. There, cattle were loaded onto steamers and shipped to either Cuba or northern states.

During the Civil War, the steamers ran a Union blockade to smuggle the beef to other Confederate states. "This was a hotbed for union smuggling," Cozzi said of Charlotte Harbor. Cozzi cited one episode in which a Union ship, the USS Gem of the Sea, sent a landing party up "Peace Creek" to destroy a smuggler's warehouse. The mission was a success, but the site of the warehouse remains unknown, he said.

Cozzi said he plans to explore the Peace River to also locate abandoned wooden barges used to transport phosphate gravel to loading docks in Punta Gorda in the 1880s. By 1906, a railroad was built to carry the ore to ships at Boca Grande, rendering the barges obsolete.

Documenting Charlotte Harbor's role as a landing site for several of the first explorations of North America would prove to be the most significant find. The explorations are believed to have begun when Ponce de Leon landed in 1513 and 1521. He tried to establish a colony on Pine Island, but was repelled by Calusa Indians, according to some historians. Wounded by an arrow, Ponce fled to Puerto Rico where he died.

Hernando DeSoto is believed by some to have landed in 1539 at a point near the northern end of the U.S. 41 bridges. He then led an expedition that discovered the Mississippi River, where he died. But, Narváez's journey is one of the most colorful. He left Trinidad bound for Havana in five ships with 400 men and some of their wives, and 80 horses. But, on April 15, 1528, a storm blew them off course to the Southwest Coast of Florida.

The explorers anchored at the mouth of a small, shallow bay. They found a much larger bay inland, according to local historian Lindsey Williams, who recounted the journey in his book, "Boldly Onward." Under constant Indian attack, the explorers trekked overland to the Tallahassee area, where they built makeshift boats. They ate their horses for food before embarking west. Those who didn't perish explored Texas and Mexico before returning to Spain. Only four survived to tell the tale.

Mote will soon apply for state permits to use a magnetometer, which detects the presence of iron, and side-scan sonar, which detects objects that jut up from the bottom, to locate the wreck sites. Mote may eventually apply for permits to excavate artifacts, Cozzi said. Some artifacts could be placed in a museum, but no plans have been made to date.

Mote has requested a $50,000 grant from the Legislature to help fund the wreck survey. State Rep. Jerry Paul, R-Port Charlotte, said he supports the request. Paul is chairman of the House Subcommittee on Agricultural and Environmental Appropriations. "Learning about the culture of the past can help you make policy decisions for the future," he said.