WITHIN months, a robotic submarine will slip into the Mediterranean Sea to start excavating a wreck believed to be that of HMS Sussex, a British warship that sank off Gibraltar in 1694. The Sussex sank carrying gold coins that today could be worth $4 billion.
The event will mark the beginning of a controversial collaboration between commercial shipwreck salvagers, marine archaeologists and the British government that highlights the long-standing enmities between scientists and those they disparagingly call “treasure hunters”.
According to the archaeologists, the commercial exploitation of wrecks is ravaging a priceless cultural heritage that lies undiscovered beneath the oceans.…
