Colombian military shares image of shipwreck carrying billions of lost treasure, including gold, silver and emeralds | Science & Technology News

The Colombian military has released video showing gold coins and other valuables around the shipwreck in the San Jose galleon, believed to be the resting place of billions of dollars in treasure.

Royal Navy ships sank the Spanish battleship in 1708 during the War of the Spanish Succession, but its resting place – near the port of Cartagena on the Colombian coast with the Caribbean – has been a mystery. hidden for more than three centuries before the Colombian navy officially announced it. discovered in 2015.

Experts speculate that the ship contained at least 200 tons of treasure, including millions of high-purity gold coins, as well as many silver and emerald coins that the Spanish empire had robbed. from South America, worth up to 17 billion dollars (pounds). 13.5 billion) today.

The video reveals a huge bounty on the ship that goes beyond even gold coins and gold bars, including ancient cannons as well as intact Chinese porcelain, pottery and cannons.

Military and government archaeologists of Colombia are studying the inscriptions on the material to determine its origin.

President Ivan Duque praised his country’s navy for capturing “images with a level of precision never before seen” and asserted that the wreck and its belongings would stay in Colombia, not be sold as is. part of the salvage operation.

Salvation rights have gone through decades of litigation and are contested by a professional salvage company that claims to have first discovered the wreck in 1981, as well as Colombia, Spain and Qhara’s country of Qhara. the native Bolivians claimed the Spaniards took wealth from its people.

The images shared by the Colombian military were captured by a remotely controlled diving vehicle diving to a depth of nearly a kilometer. Its specific location is considered a state secret.

US-based salvage company Sea Search Armada – owned by investors including adviser John Ehrlichman, a White House adviser under President Nixon convicted for his role in the Watergate scandal – claimed to have first found the wreck in the early 1980s.

It is not clear whether the site identified by the company is the same as the one discovered by the Colombian navy.

Several legal battles over the amount the company would incur if it carried out the salvage operations have now been completed, leaving Sea Search Armada with no further legal rights.

Colombian Navy Diving also found two shipwrecks nearby, a colonial boat and a submersible believed to date from Colombia’s war of independence from Spain in 1819.

“We now have two other finds in the same area, which show other options for archaeological exploration. So the work has just begun,” said Admiral Gabriel Perez, the navy’s commander, according to a statement. Reuters.

“The idea is to restore it and have sustainable financing for future mining operations,” added President Duque. “In this way, we protect the treasure, the ownership of the San Jose galleon.”