Thirty-seven years ago, a young lifeguard named Peter Leo went for a swim near Jupiter Inlet.
To his surprise, he discovered an anchor and a cannon about 100 yards offshore. Leo and his friends determined the artifacts had likely come from a Spanish galleon that sank near the inlet in the late 17th century.
The find touched off court battles with the state and federal governments over the rights to salvage treasure found at the wreck site, and how that salvaging could be done. Nearly four decades later, the salvage company that Leo formed with his partner, former marina owner Dominic Addario, has filed another federal lawsuit that accuses the Army Corps of Engineers of illegally withholding renewal of a “dredge and fill” permit that the company has been required to obtain for the past 33 years.
After discovering the anchor and cannon in 1987, Leo and Addario then found Spanish-minted silver coins, some gold coins, two gold bars and an 80-pound silver bar marked with the date 1669.
Suspecting that their retrieval of the artifacts would be contested, the pair quickly formed a company, Jupiter Wreck, and hired David Paul Horan, a Key West-based maritime attorney who represented famed salvor Mel Fisher in Fisher’s successful effort to claim ownership of valuables found at the site of the Nuestra Señora de Atocha in the 1970s and 1980s.
Horan directed Addario to file an admiralty claim in federal court, kicking off a yearslong battle with the state of Florida over the state’s claim of ownership of the wreck site and all of its artifacts.
Ultimately, the state agreed to permit Jupiter Wreck’s salvage operation as long as the company remitted 20% of anything it found, Horan, 81, said in an interview.
That deal worked out well for years, Horan said. The company and its unlikely origin became the focus of numerous news stories, books and TV shows. Jupiter Wreck recovered thousands of coins ranging in value from a couple hundred dollars to $15,000 each, Horan said. To retrieve artifacts found on the ocean’s hard surface, the state allowed the company to use a blower that attaches to the boat’s propeller and sends water through a tube to uncover sand, Horan said.
Addario died last October and Leo sold his shares in the company to a group of investors. The new president, Scott Thomson, said he was restricted from talking about the newest lawsuit. But he added, “When we are allowed to dive, we bring up treasure almost every day.”
The ship’s ballast has never been found. The company’s current investors believe that when it is found, a large quantity of silver and gold will be found with it, Horan said.
“Oh yeah,” he said when asked if more treasure exists. “It’s a very shallow wreck, but some areas are covered with very deep sand. When we get there, I believe we will find significant treasure.”
The latest lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, names the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as defendant, and asserts that Robin Moore, an archaeologist with the agency’s Jacksonville district, is blocking an extension of the company’s dredging permit. Moore is following the Register of Professional Archaeologists’ code of conduct that prevents recovery or excavation of archaeological resources “for commercial exploitation,” according to the suit.
In an email, a spokeswoman for the Army Corps of Engineers, Peggy Bebb, said she could not comment on pending litigation. Moore couldn’t be reached for comment despite an email request by the Sun Sentinel.
The suit says that current federal law defines dredging as “removal of materials from waters of the United States.” The company says its excavator never removes material from the water, according to the lawsuit. Instead, it displaces sand to form a berm around a hole, it says. “As soon as the excavator is stopped, the hole begins to fill, giving the divers only a few minutes to check the hole with their metal detectors. Within a few hours the holes are completely refilled and the sand is dispersed back over the bottom,” the suit says.
The company received permit extensions from the Army Corps every five years for 30 years, the suit states, and most recently applied for one in December 2022, well before its most recent extension expired in July 2023.
The suit says that the Army Corps instead offered a “programmatic agreement” and then a “proffered permit.” Both give the agency “complete control of all aspects of (the company’s) rights under their admiralty claim,” the company said in the suit.
Jupiter Wreck rejected the offer and filed an appeal, but the Army Corps failed to schedule a hearing on the appeal within 60 days as required and has yet to issue a decision on it, the suit says. In a recent conference in late July, the Army Corps said it would take another year to make a final decision on the permit extension request, the suit states.
The suit asks the court to declare that the Army Corps does not have jurisdiction over the wreck under the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987, that Jupiter Wreck’s activities are not “dredging or filling” as defined by federal law, and that the Army Corps has no power or authority to require inspections or permits.
Lindsey Brock, a Jacksonville-based attorney who, with Horan, is representing Jupiter Wreck, said the Army Corps is exceeding its authority by withholding the permit extension.
“For over 30 years, the Army Corps of Engineers has never opposed the reissuance of Jupiter Wreck’s permit,” Brock said. “The federal court in admiralty granted the salvage rights to Jupiter Wreck (and) the state of Florida has granted the salvage permits, so the Army Corps of Engineers has no authority to try and stop this lawful salvage by the company.”
Ron Hurtibise covers business and consumer issues for the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He can be reached by phone at 954-356-4071, on Twitter @ronhurtibise or by email at rhurtibise@sunsentinel.com.
