Spain seizes US treasure boat near Gibraltar

Spanish police boarded a boat operated by a US treasure hunting company yesterday after it left the British colony of Gibraltar, a witness aboard the boat said.

Spain says the company, Odyssey Marine Exploration, has treasure that Madrid believes could have been retrieved from Spanish waters or from a Spanish galleon which sank in the Atlantic during the colonial period.

The Ocean Alert sailed from Gibraltar, on Spain's southern tip, yesterday and was followed by a Spanish Civil Guard patrol boat for 5.5 kilometres.

Police confronted the captain with a court order to search the boat and invited him to dock at the port of Algeciras, the Civil Guard said in a statement.

Odyssey Marine Exploration, a Florida-based treasure hunting company, has said it legally recovered gold and silver coins worth an estimated $500 million from a colonial-era wreck code-named Black Swan at a location in the Atlantic Ocean which it refuses to disclose.

Spain suspects the company of illegally flying treasure to the US.

Odyssey said police forcefully boarded the vessel in international, rather than Spanish, waters.

"We made it clear to them that we were being illegally boarded in international waters under threat of force," said Odyssey's international business development head Aladar Nesser.

The Ocean Alert, which had a Spanish lawyer on board, is one of three vessels belonging to Odyssey which are subject to a search warrant issued by a Spanish court last month.

Effectively, it had been stuck in Gibraltar since. It was not clear what its destination was yesterday.

Once in the port of Algeciras, crew had their possessions removed and searched. No one was immediately arrested or charged. It was not clear whether arrests would follow or if the boat would be confiscated.