There is one hell of a story connected to the ships bell of the CSS Alabama. I will try to find the story and post it.
Found it
"Ownership of Ship Wreckage Debated
By Helen O'neill
AP National Writer
Saturday, November 28, 1998; 11:00 a.m. EST
Richard Steinmetz knew exactly what the federal marshals wanted when
they pounded on his door: his nicotine-stained shipwreck treasure, the
Alabama bell.
For years the bell, a relic of the notorious Confederate raider, the CSS
Alabama, sat in his antiques store in New York. In 1990, strapped for
cash and facing heart surgery, Steinmetz put it up for auction.
Then the feds came calling.
``They accused me of stealing government property,'' Steinmetz says,
wheezing in indignation when he recalls the scene. ``I told them they
were stealing if they took it from me.''
Wrong, he was told. The Navy doesn't abandon warships. All of them, even
rusting confederate ones, belong to the United States government.
Never mind that the bell had spent 73 years in the murky depths off the
coast of France, that it had been fished out by an English diver in
1937, that he had traded it for drinking rights at an island pub, where
for years it was rung as last call for locals. War erupted. The pub was
bombed. The bell wound up in an English antiques store, where it was
eventually bought by Steinmetz.
Today it sits in a Washington Navy museum, still black from years of pub
smoke.
Steinmetz, who fought his claim in court unsuccessfully for years,
wasn't the only one left shaking his head at the peculiar brand of
justice that rules the high seas.
There are thousands of shipwrecks around the world and thousands of
treasure hunters searching for them, spinning dreams of gold as they
scour the ocean blue.