Colombia is in a hurry to raise $20 billion-worth of treasure from the “holy grail of shipwrecks” — although its ownership is still in dispute.
Left-wing President Gustavo Petro has pledged to recover the 18th-century trove of Spanish gold coins for the South American nation before his term of office ends in 2026, and has authorised a public-private expedition to get the job done.
"This is one of the priorities for the Petro administration," Colombian Culture Minister Juan David Correa told media last week. "The president has told us to pick up the pace."
Treasure hunters believe the Spanish galleon San José was carrying a vast fortune of up to 11 million quadruple doubloons, each weighing 27 grams — almost one ounce of 22-carat gold per coin — when she was sunk in battle in 1708.
But the rights to the treasure are subject to a decades-long legal dispute between Bogotá and a group of US investors.
The wreck of the San José was discovered near the port city of Cartagena on Colombia's Caribbean coast in 1981 by the Sea Search Amada (SSA) group bankrolled by the Glocca Mora Company.
This undated photo taken by Colombia's Anthropology and History Institute (ICANH) and distributed by Colombia's Ministry of Culture, shows sunken remains from the Spanish galleon San Jose, on the sea floor off Cartagena, Colombia
© AP Photo / This undated photo taken by Colombia's Anthropology and History Institute (ICANH) and distributed by Colombia's Ministry of Culture, shows sunken remains from the Spanish galleon San Jose, on the sea floor off Cartagena, Colombia
The Colombian government rejected the company's offer of a 65-35 percent split, and the country's congress later passed a law declaring the treasure state property and awarding SSA a mere five percent finder's fee — which would in turn be taxed at a rate of 45 percent. The firm launched a lawsuit against the government in 1989.
Then in 2015, then-President Juan Manuel Santos announced that the Colombian navy had located the wreck of the San José at a different site to where SSA claimed to have found her.
United Nations heritage agency UNESCO has urged the Colombian government to leave the wreck undisturbed.
The 64-gun San Jose, launched in 1698, was sunk during the battle of Barú island, just south-west of Cartagena, in 1708 by a four-ship British flotilla commanded by Charles Wager.
She was serving as the flagship of the Spanish treasure fleet under the command of José Fernández de Santillán, transporting gold back to Spain to fund the Franco-Spanish forces in the War of the Spanish Succession.
Wag'r's flagship HMS Expedition drew as close as 60 metres to the San José in an attempt to board her and seize the gold. But after an hour of fierce fighting, with cannon fire exchanged at close range, the Spanish ship's gunpowder magazines exploded in a spectacular fireball, hurling sailors high into the air according to contemporary accounts. The ship sank in 2,000 feet of water and only 11 of the 600 men aboard survived.
Even then the fleet's treasure was the cause of legal disputes. Wager prosecuted the captains of two other ships in his group at a court-martial for failing to capture other Spanish ships and leaving him with a meagre haul of booty.