More than 450 years ago, a three-masted ship sank in a hurricane off the coast of Florida, taking with it France's hopes of colonizing the peninsula.
Since the wreckage of"La Trinite" was discovered in 2016, it has been at the center of an epic legal battle between an American treasure hunter and the French government, with Paris recently claiming a decisive victory -- or so officials hope.
The wreck of La Trinite lies at a depth of less than 10 meters , a stone's throw from a beach on Cape Canaveral. It was discovered in 2016 by a private underwater research company, Global Marine Exploration , led by American Robert Pritchett.
In June 2018, a federal court ruled that La Trinite was indeed Captain Ribault's flagship, and thus a French naval vessel. "A lot of people, a very excellent team did research in the Bibliotheque Nationale where there are a spectacular collection of records from the 16th century," Goold told AFP. He explained that upon leaving Fort Caroline -- the French colony in Florida where the US city of Jacksonville now lies -- Ribault"informed the French commander of the fort that he was going to attack the Spanish."
"This decision is a relief, and we hope that this legal saga will now stop, so that we can concentrate on the preservation of these elements of cultural heritage," Florence Hermite, a legal attache at the French embassy, told AFP.
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