The Colombian government has launched a mission to recover a three-century-old sunken ship believed to contain treasure worth $20 billion.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro ordered his administration to exhume the “Holy Grail of shipwrecks” (the Spanish galleon San José) from the bottom of the Caribbean Sea as soon as possible, the country’s culture minister told Bloomberg last week.
Petro wants to surface the 62-gun, three-masted ship before his term ends in 2026 and has requested that a public-private partnership be formed to do so, Culture Minister Juan David Correa said Wednesday. in the middle.
“This is one of the priorities of the Petro administration,” he said. “The president has told us to accelerate the pace.”
But mystery surrounds the ownership of the enormous treasure of gold, silver and emeralds estimated to be worth between $4 billion and $20 billion, according to a lawsuit.
The galleon San José sank in a battle against British ships on June 8, 1708. Wikipedia
The crux of the matter seems to revolve around who is believed to have found it.
The galleon San José, with 600 crew on board, sank about 2,000 feet on June 8, 1708, during a battle against the British in the War of the Spanish Succession.
Built in 1698 by Duke Aristides Eslava, the ship was the flagship of Spain’s treasure fleet. During the war, the San José regularly traveled between Peru and Spain carrying gems and precious metals.
Accounts vary about what exactly happened on its last voyage in 1708, but it is believed that the San José departed Panama for Cartagena, along with two other galleons and 14 merchant ships.
The ship was loaded with gold, silver and emeralds mined in Bolivia, which were essential to finance Spain’s war effort against the British.
After docking for the night on the island of Barú, off the coast of Cartagena, the fleet encountered four British warships and engaged in a fierce firefight that lasted into the twilight hours.
One of the three galleons, the San Joaquín, managed to flee the skirmish under cover of nightfall and emerge unscathed. The fleet’s other galleon, the Santa Cruz, was later captured but had few valuables on board.
The San José, however, suffered catastrophic damage when its magazine exploded after being hit by British gunfire. She quickly slipped beneath the sea’s surface, killing all but 11 of her crew.
The wreck was found and photographed about 2,000 feet underwater in 2015. Presidency of the Republic – Colombia
The wreck remained a legend for years as its exact location was unknown.
Then, in 1981, the American company Glocca Morra claimed to have discovered the lost treasure and handed over its coordinates to Colombia with the promise that it would receive half of the fortune when it was recovered.
Years later, in 2015, then-president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, said that the country’s navy found the wreck of the San José in a different location on the seabed.
Colombia has never revealed the coordinates of the ship’s final resting place, but Glocca Morra, now called Sea Search Armada, believes the country found part of the same debris field in 2015 that it first discovered 34 years earlier.
The wreck is known as the “Holy Grail of shipwrecks” due to its enormous treasure. Presidency of the Republic – Colombia
The company is suing the Colombian government for half of the treasury, or $10 billion, by its estimate, under the US-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement, according to Bloomberg.
Correa, for his part, told the outlet that government investigators visited the coordinates shared by Sea Search Armada and “concluded that there is no shipwreck there.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn