Admiralty law
was a fifth rate British warship, carrying 44 guns and over 200 men, captained by a descendant of Sir Francis Drake's brother. It had scored victories over French and Spanish ships in battle, but was lost on a reef at what is now known as the Legare Anchorage in Biscayne National Park in 1748. The sunken vessel became the subject of an ownership dispute with a part-time treasure salvor who presumed that it was part of the Spanish treasure fleet. Through legal conflicts and systematic surveys and archaeological investigations of the 1980s and 1990s, Fischer and his staff from the Park Service and students from Florida State University not only identified the sunken vessel but won a legal battle that effectively changed how Admiralty law was applied to submerged shipwreck sites. The court found that the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 was to be applied to submerged shipwreck sites as it is to historic sites on land, no longer allowing plundering by individuals using marine salvage and Admiralty law to profiteer from the non-archaeological salvage of a historic shipwreck in National Park grounds. This activity is seen by many of his colleagues and former students as George Fischer's defining act.