Shortly after the coins had been spirited off to Florida, a Spanish warship forced the company's 250ft Odyssey Explorer salvage vessel into the nearby Spanish port of Algeciras, while it was searched. Odyssey's decision to use Gibraltar led to a tense stand-off in disputed waters off the rock. The treasure was found by one of Odyssey's remote-controlled, deep sea robots as it scoured the seabed 1,100 metres down. However, the whereabouts of a further 400,000 coins from the Mercedes remains a mystery. Rightful ownership of the coins, which fill 600 barrels, now belongs to Spain and to descendants of the 250 Spanish sailors who were lost when the vessel blew up. He also said cannon found there matched those on the Mercedes. Pizzo argued that the coins, all dated prior to 1804, matched the Mercedes' cargo of coins minted in Lima, Peru – part of a haul being brought back to finance Spain's European wars. The treasure-hunting company, he said, had set out to find the Mercedes and had clearly done so. The judge rejected Odyssey's argument that there was no clear wreck site, with the coins scattered so widely it was impossible to say exactly which vessel they came from.

To the fury of Spanish authorities it secretly landed the trove in Gibraltar and flew it out in chartered aircraft to its base in Florida.Ī American circuit court judge has upheld a decision by Atlanta judge Mark Pizzo, who had declared the trove came from the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, a Spanish frigate sunk by a British squadron off Cape St Mary, Portugal, in October 1804.

The court decision puts an end to nearly five years of intrigue on the high seas since Odyssey scooped the precious haul from the Atlantic seabed in May 2007. 'There is a space of 10 days in which the coins must be returned.' 'This sentence gives Spaniards back what was already theirs,' said the culture minister, José Ignacio Wert. A jubilant Spanish government announced on Wednesday that the $500m-worth (£308m) of gold and silver coins found at a site that Odyssey called 'Black Swan' would be back on Spanish soil within 10 days.

Hand of fate sunken treasure