Dispute over shipwreck salvage

An operation to salvage HMS Agamemnon, Lord Nelson's favourite battleship, and the battleship Graf Spee from the River Plate estuary has been hit by a legal battle over rights to the recovered booty.

The diver leading the salvage operations has sued the Uruguayan Government for £58 million for alleged breach of a contract that entitles him to half the wreckage and treasure that he brings up from the seabed. Héctor Bado says that he has salvaged pieces worth "several million dollars", but that Uruguay is illegally withholding his share.

Pieces salvaged from HMS Agamemnon, which took part in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 before it sank in a storm in 1809, include Nelson's personal seal and one of the 64 cannons of the vessel, which he called "the finest in the service". . .

Señor Bado has also salvaged a 27-ton section of the command tower from the Graf Spee . . . and the shell of the first embryonic radar antenna installed on a warship. . .

Uruguay has expressed concern over a "gold rush" in its waters, where the high volume of traffic while Montevideo was a main port of the Spanish Empire, together with the wind patterns, caused hundreds of shipwrecks. The commission's head has condemned the law that entitles Señor Bado to half the booty and pledged to block it until Uruguay has signed the 2001 Unesco Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage.

Posted by David on November 8, 2004 9:43 PM