THURSDAY, JUNE 9 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
BY CLAIRE PARKER
AND ANA VANESSA HERREROTwo shipwrecks thought to be
centuries old have been discov-
ered near the ruins of the famous
San José galleon, sunk off the
coast of Cartagena, Colombia,
more than 300 years ago, accord-
ing to that country’s naval offi-
cials.
Colombian authorities also
r eleased new footage of the San
José wreckage, which the gov-
ernment says was discovered in
2015 and which is often de-
scribed as the “holy grail” of
shipwrecks.
The footage was taken during
four observation missions by the
Colombian navy, using a remote-
ly operated vehicle sent to a
depth of some 3,100 feet off the
country’s Caribbean coast.
T he eerie blue-and-green im-
ages show gold coins, pottery
and intact porcelain cups scat-
tered on the seafloor. They pro-
vide a glimpse of the ship’s
treasure, thought to be worth
billions in today’s dollars.
The vehicle also found the
wrecks of a colonial boat and a
schooner thought to date to
about 200 years ago, to the
period shortly after Colombia’s
war of independence from Spain.
“Every wreck is like a little
Pompeii — it’s a snapshot of
society at one specific time,” said
Leonardo Moreno-Álvarez, a
graduate student at the Univer-
sity of Pittsburg studying early-
modern maritime economies.
The San José, a 64-gun galleon
with 600 people aboard, be-
longed to King Philip V of Spain.
It sank near Cartagena in 1708
while battling the British navy
during the War of Spanish Suc-
cession.
The ruined ship has been
thought to contain one of the
most valuable treasure troves
ever lost at sea — a cargo of gold,
silver, emeralds and other expen-
sive objects taken from Spain’s
colonial empire that could be
worth more than $17 billion in
current value.
The storied galleon has been
the subject of popular imagina-
tion for years, even featuring in
the novel “Love in the Time of
Cholera” by Nobel Prize-winning
Colombian author Gabriel Gar -
cía Márquez.
Treasure hunters had long
tried to locate its remains, with
an American company joining
the search with Colombia’s per-
mission in the 1980s and claim-
ing to have discovered the site of
the wreck.
“The fear has always been that
whatever pieces of silver or gold
or whatever is in the ship” could
be taken by treasure hunters, in
such a way that “the wreck is
completely destroyed so all the
archaeological information is
lost,” said Moreno-Álvarez. But
some of those same fears apply to
how the government could act,
he said.
President Iván Duque shared
the news of the fresh images and
additional wrecks during a
t elevised announcement Mon-
day.
“The equipment that our army
has acquired and the level of
precision have kept this treasureintact, but at the same time, we
will be able to protect it for later
extraction,” he said.
The remote exploration vehi-
cle was the product of years of
work, said Gabriel Alfonso Pérez,
commander of the Colombian
navy.
“During the previous years, we
made four expeditions, which
allowed us from the surface to
verify that the area where the
galleon San José is located had
not been touched by human
intervention,” Pérez said.
The ship has been at the center
of protracted legal battles, with
Colombia, Spain, an American
company and a Bolivian Indig-
enous group all vying for the
right to its treasure.
Spain, citing a UNESCO con-
vention, claims rights to the
destroyed ship because it be-
longed to the Spanish navy three
centuries ago and the remains of
hundreds of Spanish sailors lie inthe wreckage.
The Qhara Qhara Indigenous
group in present-day Bolivia says
it should get the treasure be-
cause Spanish colonizers forced
its ancestors to mine some of the
precious metals it says were
aboard.
“All those debates about
a rchaeology are also debates
about colonialism,” Moreno-
Álvarez said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. firm Sea
Search Armada, which took over
the stake of a company that
claimed to have found the San
José in the 1980s, has sued the
Colombian government to stop
the ship’s excavation, claiming
that it is owed a share of the
treasure.
I n 2007, Colombia’s Supreme
Court upheld a ruling that Sea
Search Armada was entitled to
50 percent of any treasure at the
site that wasn’t considered “na-
tional patrimony.”
But Colombia said that the
location pinpointed by the previ-
ous company was incorrect and
that the actual resting place of
the San José was found with the
help of the Massachusetts-based
Woods Hole Oceanographic In-
stitution in 2015.
Colombia passed a law in 2013
that said sunken ships discov-
ered in its waters would be
considered national heritage.
Vice President Marta Lucía
Ramírez announced this year
that artifacts found amid the
wreckage of the San José would
be put in a museum to be “a pride
for Colombia, the Caribbean and
the world.”
A presidential decree released
in February stipulates that com-
panies or individuals who wish
to be involved in unearthing the
ship’s treasure will have to sign a
contract with the government
and submit an inventory of their
discoveries, CBS News reported.
But a court order has put excava-
tion on hold until the legal
questions are resolved.
Duque said Monday that the
government intends to develop
sustainable financing mecha-
nisms for excavating shipwrecks.
Colombian authorities have their
sights set on locating about a
dozen more historic wrecks
w ith the same technology, he
added.Colombia finds 2 shipwrecks, shares photos of another
PHOTOS PROVIDED BY COLOMBIAN PRESIDENCY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
A video image of the wrecked Spanish galleon San José, which lies off Cartagena, Colombia, in the Caribbean Sea. The ship sank in 1708
while battling the British navy. The new images offer a glimpse of the galleon’s treasure, thought to be worth billions in today’s dollars.Porcelain cups on the seafloor. “Every wreck is like a little Pompeii
— it’s a snapshot of society at one specific time,” said one scholar.Susan Stone
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