300 years ago, a Spanish ship laden with treasure was sunk by the British army off the coast of Columbia. The ship was the ‘San Jose galleon’, and the Colombian government has been searching for it for years. The ship was laden with gold, silver, gems and jewelry, which according to BBC news was worth at least one billion dollars. Last week, the Colombian government announced that they had discovered the sunken ship and were going to begin excavation.
The location of the wreck has not yet been released, but the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, said in an interview with BBC that the find “constitutes one of the greatest – if not the biggest, as some say – discoveries of submerged patrimony in the history of mankind.” Santos said that the government intends to build a museum in Cartagena to house the ship’s treasure.
Fox News said the find may be the largest sunken treasure site in the world. Nothing is completely certain yet, as no one has physically reached the site of the wreckage. Thus far, according to Fox News, the government has only sent down “autonomous underwater vehicles… [which] brought back photos of dolphin-stamped bronze cannons in a well-preserved state that leave no doubt to the ship’s identity.”
Despite the immense cultural and historical significance that the wreckage brings, Wall Street Journal said that the find may spark legal battles. A U.S. based salvage company called Sea Search Armada (SSA) has laid claim to the wreckage, and claims that they were the ones who located the ship originally. The SSA sued the Colombian government for billions of dollars for a breach of contract. However, according to BBC News, an American court ruled that the galleon was property of the Colombian state.
According to the Wall Street Journal, tne main reason for the country’s legal victory over the SSA was that in 2013 the Colombian government passed legislation to protect “the cargo of shipwrecks in it waters as cultural heritage to prevent private search firms from claiming valuable historic coins and other materials.”
The few sonar images that have been released show a wealth of ceramics, bronze cannons and weapons. It seems that the immense depth of the waters where the boat sank allowed for a cold enough temperature to preserve certain vital parts of the boat. Entire flanks of the boat’s wood and even clothing could have been preserved in the wreck.
The wreck has been rightly called the holy grail of shipwrecks by many historians and treasure-hunters, and the president has expressed his sincere excitement over the find. It could be extremely valuable for the Colombian government, not only culturally and historically, but financially. The wealth of the valuables found therein offer the country a very bright future, and a wonderful image of early Spanish colonial culture.