Odyssey and the Lost Spanish Treasure

Before dawn on Feb. 16, a semitrailer truck left a secret, well-protected compound outside Sarasota, Fla., loaded with nearly nine tons of 200-year-old silver coins. Three U.S. Marshals and a security detail hired by the government of Spain guarded the truck on its 60-mile drive to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. There, U.S. airmen unloaded it so the truck could return to Sarasota for the rest of the coins. In all, 17 tons of coins, packed into 551 white plastic buckets, were transferred to two Spanish C130 Hercules military planes. The planes took off the next afternoon and arrived at the Torrejon Air Base in Madrid 28 hours later.

On board one of the planes was James Goold, a slightly rumpled American lawyer who represented the Spanish government in a five-year fight to reclaim the coins lost to the sea two centuries ago. “When we landed, I was in a daze,” says Goold. He had barely slept. There were no real seats, and he was too worked up to rest anyway. The coins, still in the buckets, were put into four armored trucks for the drive into Madrid. Police on motorcycles blocked off the highway. Helicopters flew overhead. The coins were brought to the headquarters of the Ministry of Culture; the building, constructed as a bank, had vaults where they could be stored. “Finally, the coins were back, and I was free,” says Goold.