It has been hailed as essentially the most priceless shipwreck on the planet.
A Spanish galleon, the San José, was sunk by the British off the coast of Colombia greater than 300 years in the past. It had a cargo of gold, silver and emeralds price billions of {dollars}.
However years after it was found, a debate nonetheless rages over who owns that treasure and what ought to be executed with the wreck.
The Colombian and Spanish states have staked a declare to it, as have a US salvage firm and indigenous teams in South America. There have been courtroom battles in Colombia and the US, and the case is now earlier than the Everlasting Court docket of Arbitration on the Hague.
The Colombian authorities says it desires to lift the stays of the vessel and put it in a museum. Treasure hunters level to the industrial worth of the cargo, which may very well be as a lot as $18bn (£13.bn).
However archaeologists say the wreck – and hundreds prefer it scattered internationally – ought to be left the place it’s. Maritime historians remind us that the San José is a graveyard and ought to be revered as such: round 600 individuals drowned when the ship went down.
“It’s an awesome mess and I see no simple means out of this,” says Carla Rahn Phillips, a historian who has written a ebook in regards to the San José. “The Spanish state, the Colombian authorities, the assorted indigenous teams, the treasure hunters. I don’t suppose there’s any means that everybody could be glad.”
The San José sank in 1708 because it sailed from what’s now Panama in the direction of the port metropolis of Cartagena in Colombia. From there it was as a consequence of cross the Atlantic to Spain, however the Spanish have been at battle with the British on the time, and a British warship intercepted it.
The British wished to grab the ship and its treasure, however fired a cannonball into the San José’s powder magazines by mistake. The ship blew up and sank inside minutes.
The wreck lay on the seabed till the Nineteen Eighties, when a US salvage firm, Glocca Mora, stated it had discovered it. It tried to influence the Colombians to enter partnership to lift the treasure and cut up the proceeds, however the two sides couldn’t agree on who ought to get what share, and plunged right into a authorized battle.
In 2015, the Colombians stated that they had discovered the ship, independently of the knowledge supplied by the Individuals, on a special a part of the ocean mattress. Since then they’ve argued that Glocca Mora, now often called Sea Search Armada, has no proper to the ship or its treasure.
The Spanish state has staked its declare, arguing that the San José and its cargo stays state property, and indigenous teams from Bolivia and Peru say they’re entitled to not less than part of the booty.
They argue that it isn’t Spanish treasure as a result of it was plundered by the Spanish from mines within the Andes throughout the colonial interval.
“That wealth got here from the mines of Potosí within the Bolivian highlands,” says Samuel Flores, a consultant of the Qhara Qhara individuals, one of many indigenous teams.
“This cargo belongs to our individuals – the silver, the gold – and we predict it ought to be raised from the ocean mattress to cease treasure hunters looting it. What number of years have passed by? 300 years? They owe us that debt.”
The Colombians have launched tantalising movies of the San José, taken with submersible cameras. They present the prow of a picket ship, encrusted with marine life, a number of bronze cannons scattered throughout the sand, and blue-and-white porcelain and gold cash shining on the ocean ground.
As a part of its courtroom case on the Hague, Sea Search Armada commissioned a examine of the cargo. It estimates its worth at $7-18bn.
“This treasure that sank with the ship included seven million pesos, 116 metal chests stuffed with emeralds, 30 million gold cash,” says Rahim Moloo, the lawyer representing Sea Search Armada. He described it as “the largest treasure within the historical past of humanity”.
Others are much less satisfied.
“I attempt to withstand giving present-day estimates of something,” says Ms Rahn Phillips.
“When you’re speaking about gold and silver cash, will we make an estimate based mostly on the load of the gold now? Or will we take a look at what collectors would possibly pay of those gold cash?
“To me it’s nearly meaningless to attempt to give you a quantity now. The estimates of the treasure hunters, to me, they’re laughable.”
Whereas the San José is commonly described because the holy grail of shipwrecks, it’s – in accordance with the United Nations – simply considered one of round three million sunken vessels on our ocean flooring. There may be usually little or no readability over who owns them, who has the proper to discover them, and – if there’s treasure on board – who has the proper to maintain it.
In 1982, the United Nations adopted the Conference on the Legislation of the Sea – usually described as “the structure of the oceans”, nevertheless it says little or no about shipwrecks. Due to that, the UN adopted a second algorithm in 2001 – the Unesco Underwater Cultural Heritage 2001 Conference.
That claims way more about wrecks, however many nations have refused to ratify it, fearing it should weaken their declare to riches of their waters. Colombia and the US, for instance, haven’t signed it.
“The authorized framework proper now could be neither clear nor complete,” says Michail Risvas, a lawyer at Southampton College within the UK. A specialist in worldwide arbitration and maritime disputes, he provides: “I’m afraid worldwide legislation doesn’t have clear-cut solutions.”
For a lot of archaeologists, wrecks just like the San José ought to be left in peace and explored “in situ” – on the ocean ground.
“When you simply go down and take a number of artefacts and convey them to the floor, you simply have a pile of stuff. There’s no story to inform,” says Rodrigo Pacheco Ruiz, a Mexican deep-sea diver who has explored dozens of wrecks around the globe.
“You possibly can simply rely cash, you possibly can rely porcelain, however there isn’t any ‘why was this on board? Who was the proprietor? The place was it going?’ – the human story behind it.”
Juan Guillermo Martín, a Colombian maritime archaeologist who has adopted the case of the San José carefully, agrees.
“The treasure of the San José ought to stay on the backside of the ocean, together with the human stays of the 600 crew members who died there,” he says. “The treasure is a part of the archaeological context, and as such has no industrial worth. Its worth is strictly scientific.”