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Two shipwrecks believed to be centuries old have been found near the ruins of the famous San Jose galleon, which sank off the coast of Cartagena more than 300 years ago, according to Colombian naval officials.
Colombian authorities have also released new footage of the San Jose wreckage, which was discovered in 2015 and is often described as the “holy grail” of shipwrecks.
The footage was taken during four Colombian Navy observation missions using a remote-controlled vehicle sent to a depth of about 3,100 feet off the Caribbean coast. The ominous blue-green images show gold coins, pottery and an intact porcelain cup scattered on the seabed. They give an idea of the ship’s treasure, which is estimated to cost billions of dollars today.
The vehicle also found the remains of a colonial boat and schooner, believed to date from about 200 years ago, shortly after Colombia’s war of independence from Spain.
The San Jose, a 64-gun galleon with 600 men on board, belonged to King Philip V of Spain. It sank near Cartagena in 1708 while fighting the British Navy during the Spanish Succession War.
The wrecked ship is believed to contain one of the most valuable treasures ever lost at sea – a cargo of gold, silver, emeralds and other valuables taken from the Spanish colonial empire. which could cost more than $ 17 billion in current value.
The stage galleon has been the subject of popular imagination for years, including the Nobel Prize-winning novel by Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Love in Cholera.
Treasure hunters have long been trying to find his remains, with an American company joining the search with Colombia’s permission in the 1980s and claiming to have found the site of the remains.
President Ivan Duque shared news of fresh images and additional ruins in a televised statement Monday.
“The equipment our army has acquired and the level of precision have kept this treasure intact, but at the same time we will be able to protect it for later retrieval,” he said.
The remote sensing machine is a product of years of work, said Gabriel Alfonso Perez, commander of the Colombian Navy.
“In previous years, we have made four expeditions that have allowed us to check from the surface whether the area where the San Jose galleon is located has not been touched by human intervention,” Perez said.
The ship is at the center of protracted court battles with Colombia, Spain, an American company and a Bolivian local group, all fighting for the right to its treasure.
Spain, citing a UNESCO convention, claims the rights to the destroyed ship, as it belonged to the Spanish navy three centuries ago and the remains of hundreds of Spanish sailors lie in the wreckage.
The indigenous Qhara Qhara group in present-day Bolivia says they must receive the treasure because the Spanish colonizers forced their ancestors to extract some of the precious metals they thought were on board.
Meanwhile, the American company Sea Search Armada has filed a lawsuit against the Colombian government to stop the excavations of the ship, claiming that the company owes a share of the treasure. Colombia’s Supreme Court has upheld a 2007 ruling that the SSA is entitled to 50 percent.
But Colombia said the location determined by the company was incorrect and that the actual vacation spot in San Jose was discovered with the help of Massachusetts-based oceanographic institution Woods Hole in 2015.
Colombia passed a law in 2013 requiring sunken ships found in its waters to be considered a national heritage site. Vice President Martha Lucia Ramirez announced earlier this year that artifacts found among the remains of San Jose will be housed in a museum to be “proud of Colombia, the Caribbean and the world.”
A presidential decree issued in February stipulates that companies or individuals wishing to participate in the discovery of the ship’s treasure will have to sign a contract with the government and present an inventory of their findings, CBS News reported. But a court order delayed the excavations until legal issues were resolved.
Duque said Monday that the government intends to develop sustainable funding mechanisms for shipwrecks. Colombian authorities are working to find about a dozen more historical remains with the same technology, he added.
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