The San Jose was misplaced for hundreds of years, its £16bn treasure trove of gold and emeralds swallowed up by the Caribbean Sea. Not any extra.
Researchers say they’ve recognized the “world’s richest shipwreck”, a discovery more likely to gas a global row over which nation owns the 300-year-old galleon.
The San Jose was crusing in 1708 because the flagship of a treasure fleet, made up of three Spanish warships and 14 service provider vessels, when it was sunk after an assault by the Royal Navy off the coast of Colombia.
Powder magazines on board the ship detonated in the course of the battle, destroying the vessel and sending nearly all of its 600-man crew to the underside, alongside together with her hoard of gold, silver, and emeralds.
Greater than three centuries later, a wreck believed to be the San Jose was found in 2015 at a depth of 600 metres within the Caribbean Sea.
Picture:
Researchers analysed the cash – or cobs – discovered amid the wreck. Pic: Ariza et al/ARC-DIMAR 2022
To find out whether or not the ship was certainly the San Jose, the Colombian navy used an unmanned, remotely operated underwater automobile to survey the wreck non-invasively.
Sonar photos recognized bronze cannons, weapons, ceramics and different artefacts amongst its cargo – however the true curiosity was the gold.
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A variety of cash on the ocean ground have been revealed in high-resolution photos, in line with analysis printed within the journal Antiquity on Tuesday.
“Coins are crucial artefacts for dating and understanding material culture, particularly in shipwreck contexts”, says lead researcher Daniela Vargas Ariza.
“Hand-struck, irregularly shaped coins – known as cobs in English and macuquinas in Spanish – served as the primary currency in the Americas for more than two centuries.”
By analysing options on the cash, such because the Jerusalem Cross, researchers have been in a position to acquire an understanding of the ship’s perform and the occasions surrounding its sinking.
“This case study highlights the value of coins as key chronological markers in the identification of shipwrecks,” Ms Vargas Ariza provides.
Whereas the cash should still be 600 metres beneath the waves, the identification of the wreck because the San Jose is probably going so as to add gas to an ongoing worldwide row over who owns the treasure.
Who owns the San Jose?
Spain, which owned the San Jose again in 1708 when it sank, considers it a state ship; its stays are labeled as an underwater graveyard and can’t be commercially exploited.
Colombia, in whose waters the wreck is positioned, has instructed that Spain surrender its declare in its favour, a transfer that some fear might set a harmful precedent.
Colombian regulation favours treasure hunters.
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Cannons discovered within the wreckage of Spanish galleon San Jose. Pic: Reuters/Colombian Ministry of Tradition
Lawyer Jose Maria Lancho, an skilled in underwater heritage, stated: “If Spain, in this case, renounces its sovereign immunity, there will be no state or treasure-hunting company that does not invoke this precedent.”
Mr Lancho has filed a request to Spain and UNESCO on behalf of three South American indigenous communities, asking them to declare the San Jose “common and shared heritage” from which they too ought to profit.
The Killakas, Carangas and Chichas peoples estimate that their ancestors, usually working in slave-like situations, extracted the metals that make up round half of the ship’s cargo from mines in what’s now Bolivia, then below Spanish management, which have been then transported north to Cartagena.
“Our native communities consider any act of intervention and unilateral appropriation of the galleon, without consulting us directly and without expressly and effectively considering its common and shared character, to be an act of plunder and neo-colonialism,” the indigenous communities stated within the letters despatched to UNESCO and Spain final yr.
Full picture credit: Daniela Vargas Ariza, Antonio Jaramillo Arango, Jesus Alberto Aldana Mendoza, Carlos Del Cairo Hurtado, Juan David Sarmiento Rodriguez and ARC-DIMAR 2022
