Page 422 - Green - Maritime Archaeology: A Technical Handbook. 2nd ed

Chapter 16: Legislation 401
gaining respectability. It is the profit motive, which in turn leads to the sale of artifacts, that is the problem. The archaeological profession has no prob- lems in condemning treasure hunting as it exists today. However, should the treasure hunters consider carrying out careful excavations in order to keep their collections together, conserved in proper environmental conditions, in a museum so that they may profit from the admissions and bookshop sales, then the story would be quite different. Such a situation has not occurred yet, and it will no doubt cause even more debate when it does. Certainly the move toward privatization in the UK and a general move internation- ally to become more cost-effective has worrying implications, because the treasure hunter has a profit-motivated pathway to achieve this.
The amateur diver is another interested party for which legislation may have an effect. There appear to be two extreme attitudes held by this group: either, that anything lying on the seabed is free to be collected and kept as souvenirs; or, alternatively, the diver has an intense interest in maritime archaeology and would like to find ways of fulfilling this interest. In many countries the Merchant Shipping Act 1894, or its equivalent, protects prop- erty rights and controls salvage. For example, any wreck (including flotsam, jetsam, lagan, and derelict) recovered from British territorial waters must be declared to the Receiver of Wreck. The duty of the receiver is to post notice of any wreck that has been received so that it may be claimed by the owner. The receiver keeps the wreck for a year during which time the owner may claim it and “upon paying the salvage, fees and expenses due, be enti- tled to have the wreck or the proceeds delivered up to him” (Merchant Ship- ping Act 1894, Section 521). The objective of this act was to prevent the plundering of wrecks, to ensure the rights of the proper owners, and to ensure the proper distribution of the salvaged property. The receiver was empowered, if the wreck was unclaimed, to
sell the same and shall pay the proceeds of the sale (after deducting there from the expenses of the sale, and any other expenses incurred by him, and his fees, and paying there out to the salvors such amount of salvage as the Board of Trade may in each case, or by general rule, determine) for the benefit of the Crown (Chippendale and Gibbins, 1990).
Thus it is quite clear that the concept of collecting undeclared souvenirs from a wreck is illegal; it has been, however, a traditional pastime of the amateur diver.
There now appears to be a growing international concern for conserva- tion, particularly in relation to the marine environment. Many amateur divers are aware that there are only a limited number of wrecks and if these are destroyed then future generations of divers will no longer be able to enjoy this aspect of the sport. There is even a commercial dimension to this argument, because dive tour operators, who take groups out to wreck sites,