Odyssey Explorer in Falmouth Docks : Wiki Commons
Last week the maritime archaeology community was rocked by an accusation published in the Sunday Times [3 June 2012] which suggested a “blunder” by English Heritage had led to the disclosure of the location of the wreck site of HMS Victory, lost with all hands in a storm in October 1744.
In a statement quoted by the newspaper, Dr Sean Kingsley of the consultancy “Wreck Watch;” the co-author of the latest report on the HMS Victory wreck site commissioned and published by the Victory’s finder, Florida based commercial salvage and treasure hunting company Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc, alleged…
“Through the publication of the general co-ordinates of the Victory’s location in a desk based assessment commissioned by English Heritage on behalf of the Department of Culture Media and Sport, fishermen and illicit salvors have been able to pinpoint the site.” Kingsley further alleged that this publication had led to the site being damaged by trawlers and the illicit lifting of cannon by a Dutch salvage vessel.
There is no more serious accusation a heritage organisation can face than that its actions place in danger the very object it is there to protect and English Heritage denied the allegation saying “The precise position of the wreck has never been published, and great care was given to keep that information in strictest confidence.”
Now Heritage Daily can reveal that Odyssey’s accusation was baseless. Even more embarrassing for Odyssey, it seems likely that if anything gave away the position of HMS Victory it is more likely to have been the activities of Odyssey itself and particularly those of its flagship the Odyssey Explorer. The person who revealed this embarrassing PR blunder by Odyssey and its high end PR company the Brunswick Group? None other than Odyssey co-founder and CEO Greg Stemm.
In the episode of the Odyssey Marine documentary/infomercial series “Treasure Quest” called “The Legend,” regularly repeated on the Discovery History channel, Stemm states on camera “There are a lot of people tracking us all the time…” That is because anyone with an internet connection can follow where Odyssey’s vessels are operating.
As “Treasure Quest” explains; like all other vessels of more than 299 tons, Odyssey’s ships are required to carry the “Automatic Identification System” [AIS] which transmits a vessel’s position in real time and is designed as a maritime safety measure, helping ships to avoid collisions and assisting in rescue operations by pinpointing vessels in difficulty. AIS information is placed in the public domain in real time on web sites such as http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/. Something Stemm views as “absolutely absurd and…an incredible violation of privacy.”
Odyssey’s PR problem is that the programme in which Stemm admitted that Odyssey’s vessels were tracked was being filmed as the wreck of “the Legend”- HMS Victory, was located in May 2008, well before the publication of the English Heritage report in September 2009 and AIS has been compulsory under International Maritime Organisation [IMO] regulations since December 2004.
To compound Odysseys problems in defending its allegation, its own reports detail regular visits to monitor and work on the HMS Victory site enabling anyone to observe the activity on AIS and anyone at sea in the area to observe the Odyssey Explorer visually. The Victory site is situated in a busy sea lane which is fished by vessels from both France and south west England.
The company’s own initial report on the Victory, published in 2009, revealed that the Odyssey Explorer spotted a trawler while departing the site in September 2008. The Odyssey crew has also observed vessels based in France, and monitored others based in, amongst other places, Brixham and Salcombe. It defies logic to suggest those same fishing boats did not also spot the distinctive yellow and white hull of the Odyssey Explorer when she was on station over the wreck.
Odyssey’s treasure hunting activities are well known and indeed are the subject of regular gossip and speculation in Internet chat rooms, so it is most unlikely that the trawler skippers and the masters of other commercial salvage vessels, needed to wait for the publication of an archaeological report to confirm that Odyssey were over an “interesting target.” A quick check on the AIS Tracks, a gossip over a pint in the pubs of Brixham or Salcombe, or even a glance out of the wheelhouse windows would serve just as well.
Given the story of English Heritage’s “blunder” can be demolished so easily by the words of its own CEO, the question remains why Odyssey chose to make such a serious allegation public through the “Sunday Times?” Many in the maritime archaeology world believe that Odyssey is attempting to discredit English Heritage as the UK Government’s statutory adviser on maritime archaeology in advance of the final decision by Ministers over the excavation of the Victory and the fate of the artefacts she carries.
English Heritage participates in the Advisory Group set up by the Ministry of Defence after the ship was “gifted” to Odyssey’s employer, the Maritime Heritage Foundation in January 2012. The Advisory Group is tasked to ensure that Odyssey and the MHF observe archaeological best practice and in particular the Annex to the UNESCO Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage 2001.
It is stated UK policy to observe the Annex as the foundation of the management of all historic wreck sites such as that of the Victory. Unfortunately for Odyssey, its contract with the Maritime Heritage Foundation which depends on the sale of objects to recoup costs and turn a commercial profit and for the company’s overall business model, the UNESCO Annex forbids the breaking up of collections of material from wreck sites and the sale of artefact’s for profit or to cover costs. To have any hope of forcing the Cameron Government to renege on this stated policy Odyssey needs to discredit the Advisory Group and its leading expert organisation English Heritage.
Secondly an e-mail released under the Freedom of Information Act shows that a senior official at English Heritage warned the Ministry of Defence that the three trustees of the Maritime Heritage Foundation, including senior Conservative Peer Lord Lingfield, were ignorant of “… very basic principles of heritage management, and the implementation and management experience/practice of established legislation… All of which is, and has been, freely available.” The official then added that the MHF might well not be competent to enter into commercial contracts because the ignorance of the trustees and their relationship with Odyssey…
“…calls into question the transparency and nature of access to advice. It might be suggested that the Foundation acquires such advice in relation to the historic environment, at trustee level, before they enter into commercial contracts with service companies?”
The result of this damning review of the competence of the MHF and by implication, Odyssey’s financial conflict of interest in being both archaeological adviser and commercial contractor to the MHF, with an interest in being able to sell artefacts, is immense pressure on the Cameron Government to rescind the gifting of HMS Victory and place the future of the ship in the care of independent experts who will undertake to observe the spirit and letter of the UNESCO Annex. A course of action which would inevitably involve advice from English Heritage and which, were it to come about, would be both a humiliation and almost certainly a commercial disaster for Odyssey.
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Written by Andy Brockman
HeritageDaily : Archaeology News : Archaeology Press Releases
June 10, 2012 at 3:36 pm
It seems like neither "English Heritage/maritime archaeology community" nor "MHF/Odyssey" can be fully trusted. What's a body to do? Self-interest vs. Self=interest. Who has the best ideas for bringing our maritime history back to life?
August 11, 2012 at 10:38 pm
To be fair, I can see why Odyssey might be a bit touchy about their operations despite the mud-slinging going on. I have not worked for Odyssey and have never owned any stock in them. However, I have had a long think about the current state of 'wet' versus 'dry' archaeology and I can say my opinion mirrors that of other academics (including myself) who wish to remain anonymous due to concerns over their careers and reputations. As a professional maritime archaeologist I was highly sceptical of Odyssey for many years based upon the withering criticism that they have received from the academic community. I therefore assumed they must not be doing any proper archaeology and as a result I never bothered to read any of their publications until quite recently. I have found when you get beyond the public 'treasure and pirates' spin, things get very interesting from a purely academic perspective. They have poured a great deal of their own money and research into their projects and have not done a smash and grab on their projects. Their pre-disturbance surveys, mapping and conservation techniques are the stuff that many underwater archaeologists (myself included) would struggle to replicate on sites in 10 metres of water, never mind the depths which they are accustomed to working at.
The clear reality of the situation is that anything in over 40 metres of water might as well be on Mars as far as virtually all of the academic/commercial archaeological community is concerned, because currently we cannot afford to do anything other than perhaps a tiny bit of multi-beam sonar trawling. I would hazard a guess and say that Odyssey's budget just for mapping the Victory site thus far exceeds the annual total spent by the world's maritime archaeology units combined. Overall, I strongly get the impression that this group is actually interested in the archaeology and history of the sites they work on, but would also like to make a living whilst doing so.
Currently, Odyssey is either contracted by governments to carry out deep-water survey and excavation on their behalf, while the objects they do sell are what they term 'repetitive artefacts', e.g. coins or glass bottles (and amazingly lumps of coal?) – not unique objects which go to museums or public education displays. All of this extremely costly work is funded by investors, much in the same way research in other academic/corporate sectors (e.g. medicine or engineering) is funded by outside investors for profit. This raises the question of 'commercial' archaeology on land? How much money do some directors make versus what some highly educated site assistants with years of experience do at £7 or £8 an hour? What about the tendering process here? Another story I suppose.
To close on, the Victory site has been damaged by trawlers and scallop dredging almost to the point of complete obliteration. Guns have been dragged off-site a considerable distance by nets. Now that the ships location is known for whatever reason, the bottom line is that despite what the folks at UNESCO or elsewhere might think, in-situ preservation clearly does not work for deep-water sites, and if we are expecting quangos to fund work of this nature to the same standard that Odyssey has through private investment, we may well be in for a very long wait.