A quest for a sunken ship and lost treasure. It is the stuff of childhood stories being played out in real life as Colombia sets out to retrieve the treasure of the San José galleon and a trove worth $20 billion.
The South American country is sending a robot into the deep to recover loot from the “holy grail” of shipwrecks. It sounds like a boy’s own tale, but it comes with a war of words over sovereignty and the raiding of a war grave.
The San José was found nine years ago at a depth of 600 metres, 307 years since the Spanish ship was sunk in the battle known as Wager’s Action (also known as the Battle of Barú). During this engagement with the British, the San José’s powder magazine ignited and the explosion led to the ship’s sinking, a moment which was rendered on canvas by Samuel Scott.
The ship was returning to Spain with treasures from its empire in South America. The records suggest that it had more than 100 steel chests full of millions of gold and silver coins and vast numbers of emeralds. This made it a top target for treasure hunters and, when it was discovered in 2015, its cargo was seen to be in a spectacular state of preservation.
The exact location of the find has never been disclosed, in order to ward off scavengers. President Gustavo Petro has made it a “priority” to raise the ship before his term ends in 2026 but, before they do that, they are going to secure some of the booty.
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Juan David Correa, the culture minister, told AFP that, in April and May, a submersible robot will retrieve some artefacts from “the surface of the galleon” in order to test “how they materialise when they come out [of the water]”. The insistence is that this expedition really is for cultural and research reasons. “History is the treasure,” Correa said but, for many others, the treasure is the treasure and they want a piece of it.
Among the claimants are the Spanish, whose ship it was, while Bolivia’s Qhara Qhara nation claims it belongs to them as their people were forced to mine by their Spanish colonisers. Spain is seeking a “bilateral agreement” with Petro’s government, while the indigenous Bolivians are seeking to co-operate with Colombia and are asking only for the return of a few items.
“Not only for the symbolic issue but more for the spiritual issue,” the native leader Samuel Flores told AFP. “We just want our ancestors to be at peace.”
Alongside them is an American firm, Glocca Morra, who were contracted to search for the ship in the 1980s. They claim they located it and were granted a percentage of any finds. Their rights are now owned by Sea Search Armada, who have brought multibillion-dollar legal actions against the Colombian government. A case is currently in progress at the UN’s Permanent Court of Arbitration for $10 billion, or 50 per cent of the estimated value of the wreck.
Then there are those who believe that no one should get any of it. It is a war grave and is thus supposed to be left at peace. Colombia seems unlikely to give much ground to these complaints or to other claimants, especially not to the former imperial masters.
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Correa said that the wish was “to stop considering that we are dealing with a treasure that we have to fight for as if we were in colonial times, with the pirates who disputed these territories”.
