Life of Guangzhou - Spanish Officials Detain U.S. Treasure Ship

The Odyssey Explorer, shown here, was seized by the Spanish Civil Guard due a dispute over 0 million worth of treasure.

GIBRALTAR — A Spanish Civil Guard ship seized a U.S. treasure-hunting vessel at gunpoint Tuesday in a dispute over 0 million worth of gold and silver coins taken from a sunken colonial-era ship.

The warship escorted the boat, which belongs to U.S. company Odyssey Marine Exploration, to the Spanish port of Algeciras, so police could carry out a search.

Spanish police boarded the vessel, escorted sailors off one by one and arrested the captain, said Ali Nessar, a company representative on the boat. "They threatened us to obey or they would use deadly force," Nessar told Reuters by phone. "We were forced at gunpoint to come to Algeciras."

The dispute dates from May, when Odyssey — a Tampa-based company that specializes in deep-sea explorations — announced the discovery of a colonial-era shipwreck in the Atlantic. The find yielded gold and more than 500,000 silver coins, weighing more than 17 tons.

Spain filed claims in a U.S. federal court over the find, arguing that if the shipwrecked vessel was Spanish — or removed from its waters — the treasure belongs to Spain.

The Spanish Civil Guard acted on an order from a Spanish judge who instructed authorities in June to seize two vessels belonging to Odyssey Marine Exploration if the boats left the British colony of Gibraltar on Spain's southern tip.

Another Odyssey vessel was seized in July and released after a week.

According to Odyssey, the shipwreck, code-named "Black Swan," was outside any country's territorial waters, but the company has not given its exact location or the name of the sunken ship.

Odyssey says it has flown the treasure to the USA.

"We are sure that the Spanish government is now well aware that the (shipwreck) was not in Spanish waters and that the disposition of the coins is now subject to U.S. federal court jurisdiction, so we're not sure what the inspection … is meant to accomplish," Gregg Stemm, Odyssey's co-founder and co-chairman, said in a statement.