U.S. bounty hunters should not be allowed to raise the wreck of one of Britain's greatest warships and take some of the millions of pounds of gold it contains, it has today been claimed.

Leading archaeologists and descendants of the crew of HMS Victory, predecessor to Nelson's flagship, say that allowing it to be exploited for commercial gain would be a 'flagrant breach' of the military covenant and a betrayal of the more than 1,000 Royal Navy sailors who died. In 2008, the wreck was discovered by Odyssey Marine Exploration, a U.S. company, some 264 years after it sank in a storm off the Channel Islands.

The Government is expected to make an announcement soon on whether it will allow the proposals to go ahead.

In a letter to the Daily Telegraph, Richard West, another descendant of Admiral Sir John Balchen, and Robert Yorke, chairman of the Joint Nautical Archaeology Policy Committee, said it 'represented the most inappropriate and distasteful kind of commercial exploitation.'They said that any finds raised from the ship would be sold on the antiquities market for private gain.

To read the complete article, see:American bounty hunters submit plans to raise gold coins worth hundreds of millions from the wreck of HMS Victory(www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2257514/Anger-U-S-bounty-hunters
-submit-plans-raise-gold-coins-worth-hundreds-millions-wreck-HMS-Victory.html)