Shipwreck treasure heads to Spain

A 17-ton trove of silver coins recovered from a Spanish galleon sunk by British warships on a voyage home from South America in 1804 was set to be flown Friday from the US to Spain, concluding a nearly five-year legal struggle with the Florida deep-sea explorers who found and recovered it. 

Silver coins from a treasure trove of gold and silver coins worth $500 million and recovered from a Spanish ship believed to be from the wreckage of the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes. A ship sunk by the British Navy in 1804 as it returned from South America, are handled by a Spanish expert at an undisclosed warehouse in Sarasota, Florida. The treasure of 594,000 gold and silver coins was the focus of an intense five-year legal battle between Spain and Odyssey, a US deep sea salvage company that found them five years ago off the coast of Portugal. Two Spanish C-130 military planes have landed at a US Air Force base in Tampa to transport the coins under armed guard, said Guillermo Corral, the cultural attache at Spain's Embassy in Washington.