Posted on 11/06/2023 9:02:18 AM PST by SJackson
Colombia is hoping to expedite its mission to recover a three-century-old sunken treasure worth as much as $20 billion as the ownership of the fortune lies in legal limbo amid an ongoing court battle.
President Gustavo Petro ordered his administration to exhume the “Holy Grail of shipwrecks” — the Spanish galleon San José — from the floor of the Caribbean Sea as soon as possible, the country’s minister of culture told Bloomberg last week.
Petro wants to bring the 62-gun, three-masted ship to the surface before his term is up in 2026 and has requested a public-private partnership be formed to see it through, Minister of Culture Juan David Correa told the outlet Wednesday.
“This is one of the priorities for the Petro administration,” he said. “The president has told us to pick up the pace.”
But mystery surrounds the ownership of the massive trove of gold, silver and emeralds estimated to be worth anywhere between $4 billion and $20 billion, according to a lawsuit.
The crux of the issue appears to revolve around who is believed to have found it.
The San José galleon — with 600 crew members onboard — sank some 2,000 feet on June 8, 1708, during a battle against the British in the War of the Spanish Succession.
It remained a thing of legend for years as its exact location was unknown.
Then in 1981, the US company Glocca Morra claimed it discovered the lost treasure and turned over its coordinates to Colombia with the promise it would receive half the fortune when recovered.
Years later, in 2015, Colombia’s then-President Juan Manuel Santos said the country’s navy found the San José wreck at a different location on the sea floor.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
The ship was a warship, a sovereign vessel. The treasure belongs to Spain.
Perhaps, or the owners, even if the King or Spain, insurer.
Mel Fisher had to go to the US Supreme Court to prevent the State of FL from stealing part of the Atocha’s treasure.
Florida Dept. of State v. Treasure Salvors, Inc., 458 U.S. 670 (1982)
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/458/670/
In the fictional TV series I wrote earlier about, the ship that had been sunk by the British had civilians traveling on board it. Many were the families of the officers. It was part of 3-4 other ships traveling together. I don’t know what the policy was of civilians being on these galleons, but I wonder if any of the individuals, of the 600 that were supposed to be on the ship at the time it was sunk, could have been civilians. Wikipedia, nor any of the other articles I’ve looked at, mention that possibility.
The Spanish Armada shipsAbout a century and a half earlier, they only have the crew and soldier numbers by squadron, but considerably smaller. I assume there's an original source for the 600 number.
I believe that the principle of national ownership is that the vessel must be continuously gaurded by Spain in order for Spain to retain ownership.
That is why they do not dispute ownership of all the dozens of treasure ships that sank around the world. They only claim ownership of what was sunk near Spanish waters.
BTW the Santa Ana listed on the Biscay squadron was the Santa And de San Jose referred to that way as there were 4 Santa Anas on the expedition.
https://www.cnn.com/2012/02/01/world/europe/spain-u-s--treasure-dispute/index.html
There are some Florida ones also I believe.
Good point, figured you can only haul so much. 600 men and supplies? Weapons and ammo? And a boat load of gold? Sounds like 1 heck of a boat for 1700 circa
Well, ships of that time had to carry a bunch of ballast in the hold anyway to keep the ship from tilting over, maybe they just replaced the rocks with gold?
Well, yes, Spain does sometimes dispute ownership, but the only cases they win, as far as I know, is when the wreck is near Spanish waters.
I loved that documentary — I wonder if it’s on stream somewhere.
They had a copy of the ship manifest from Seville, and it listed the cargo items, including the serial numbered gold bars with their respective weight. I just got a cold chill thinking about it again — they weighed one of the numbered bars, and it had the exact weight listed in the manifest.
That’s how the Atocho wreck was positively IDed.
Thanks for the info. I hope once they get this settled legally, that whoever brings the wreck and its treasure up, that they produce a documentary, and publication about it...and that I’m still alive to see them both. I love stuff like this. Underwater archaeology is awesome.
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I saw the headline, Colombia and $20B and figured it had to be cocaine.
So gold mined through slavery has paid the lawyers in this case?
We visited the Mel Fisher Museum in Key West several years ago. Worth the trip.
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