Message #147346

[Bianca]

Once back in port, Stemm sped to London to see the Second Sea Lord, hoping to broker a deal with English Heritage, the Ministry of Defence, and the Department of Culture, Media and Sport. To provide physical proof that Victory had been found, OME was permitted to lift two of the bronze cannon from the site last October. They are now under lock and key in Portsmouth dockyard.

The maritime archaeology community did not greet Stemm’s announcement in February that he had found the wreck with unreserved enthusiasm. Even though he has scientists, archaeologists and historians on board his ships, the more traditional confines of archaeology regard him as an opportunistic arriviste. “There are some horrendous examples of commercial archaeological salvage companies destroying valuable finds because they are driven by commercial imperative,” says Mike Williams, secretary of the Nautical Archaeological Society and an expert on maritime law at the University of Wolverhampton.

“I agree 100 per cent,” Stemm says, “but Odyssey Marine isn’t one of them.” To underline its credentials, yesterday the company published details of 267 wrecks it has found in the Channel during a 4,700 square-mile mapping exercise that was conducted over four years, the first deep-sea survey of anywhere in Europe. These findings, Stemm claims, reveal the “incredible damage that is being done to these wrecks by trawlers and dredgers”.

“The English Channel is like a giant industrial wasteland. The devastation we have found flies in the face of government policy, which is to preserve wrecks in situ. We are saying that this cannot be done and that the most important artefacts must be raised.”

“From a mid-17th century merchant vessel with a cargo of elephant tusks to German U-Boats, the Channel is the history of Britain, our moat,” says Kingsley. “We are allowing our heritage to be literally sliced through.”