The shallow wreck of the 16th-century French galleass La Trinité has been the subject of a legal claim by a US treasure-hunter, but now seems to have lost his battle with the French government, following a new court ruling.
Robert Pritchett and his company Global Marine Exploration (GME) had discovered the wreck, described by the USA’s National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as the “single most historically important shipwreck in North America”, in 2016. It lies at a depth of about 10m, not far off Cape Canaveral in Florida.
However, GME’s claim to salvage rights ran up against the USA’s 2004 Sunken Military Craft Act, which recognises the claims of states, in this case France, to reclaim their former warships.
The three-masted, 32-gun La Trinité, propelled by both oars and sail, had sunk in a hurricane off Florida with three other French vessels in 1565, after which the survivors were massacred by their Spanish colonial rivals.
After locating the wreck, GME had revealed that its divers had found three bronze cannon embossed with the French fleur-de-lis symbol, 19 iron cannon and 12 anchors, along with a marble column bearing the French King Charles IX’s coat-of-arms, intended to mark his sovereignity in the New World.
However, GME had argued that when La Trinité sank it had been carrying goods and settlers bound for the new French colonial settlement Fort Caroline and, because it was not engaged in military conflict, it was effectively a merchant vessel exempt from the US legislation.
Changing history’s course
In June 2018, a federal court had ruled that La Trinité was a French naval vessel. It was part of a squadron of seven ships under the command of Captain Jean Ribault, sent by Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, leader of a French Huguenot group, to supply Fort Caroline. Set up in Florida the previous year, it is now the site of Jacksonville.
At the time France outnumbered Spain in terms of ships, troops and arms in the New World, and the course of history could have changed drastically had it gone on to colonise Florida. As it was, the devastating loss of the four ships with all the sailors, troops and colonists onboard decided King Charles IX to abandon his Florida ambitions and shift his focus to Canada instead.
Fort Caroline was soon sacked by the Spanish, who were at the time setting up a little further south in Florida in St Augustine.
Today’s French government, represented in the US District Court for the Northern District of Florida in Tallahassee by US lawyer Jim Goold, argued that La Trinité had been considered a military vessel at the time. Extensive archival research was said to have revealed specific details about the cannon and gunpowder that could be associated only with an active naval vessel.
And although there had been no declaration of war between France and Spain at the time, the ship had still been engaged in international conflict arising from the land dispute between the French Huguenots and Catholic Spain. Captain Ribault was even said to have told Fort Caroline’s commander that he proposed to attack the Spanish.
GME went on to argue that France had benefited unduly from its work in locating, recording and surveying the wreck, but US District Judge Allen Winsor considered that France could hardly be held responsible for expenditure on services it had not requested.
“France has presented sufficient uncontested evidence to establish that La Trinité sank while on military non-commercial service,” ruled the judge, who considered that this rendered the wreck a “sunken military craft”.
A French government representative said it hoped that the end of the legal action would now allow the state to concentrate on preserving its cultural heritage.
Also on Divernet: ‘Too easy’: key 16th-century Spanish wreck found in Florida, Has Colombia really mislaid ‘Holy Grail of Shipwrecks’?, Diver’s $100k find runs in the family, Outstanding wreck-hunter Bob Marx dies
