Next April, the ship carrying $17 billion in treasure will be salvaged

Colombian authorities announced they could salvage the San José ship carrying treasures of gold, silver, emeralds and many other goods as early as next month.

The sinking of the San José in 1708 is at the center of a dispute over ownership of the wreck, including its accompanying $17 billion in treasure. Since the Colombian navy discovered the location of the Spanish galleon San José in 2015, the specific location has remained a state secret, and the wreck and the precious cargo it was transporting still lie deep below the sea surface. Caribbean.

The wreck of the San José is lying at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. (Photo: Armada de Colombia).

Efforts to salvage the ship and recover its treasure led to a series of complex international disputes with Colombia, Spain, Bolivian indigenous tribes and an American salvage company all claiming ownership of the same wreck. gold, silver and emeralds worth 17 billion USD. When Colombia sought to pay the huge costs of the salvage operation, UNESCO and the country's high court both intervened. But eight years after the discovery, authorities say they could start salvaging artifacts from the shipwreck as early as April 2024. "We are thinking about how to access historical and archaeological information from the wreck , " Guardian on April 19 quoted Alhena Caicedo, director of the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History.

On the way back to Europe with treasure to support the War of Spanish Succession, the San José was sunk by a British warship in 1708 near the Caribbean port city of Cartagena. Historians say the wreck could help reveal much about the Spanish empire at the height of its power as well as the overlapping histories of Europe and Latin America. Caicedo's team hopes to salvage the wreck and display it in a museum for visitors to explore. But as the expedition continued to explore the shipwreck site, the scale and complexity of the challenge became clear.

Few ships like the San José have ever been salvaged and none have been raised from warm tropical waters . "This is a huge challenge and a project without much precedent. We are pioneers ," Caicedo admitted. The closest comparison may be the Mary Rose, part of King Henry VIII's fleet, which sank in 1545 during a battle with France off Portsmouth. That 16th-century wreck was explored by hundreds of divers for a decade before a careful salvage in 1981. The remains of the ship's hull now reside in the galleries of a $45 million museum.

The Colombian Navy is studying the Mary Rose and many other maritime conservation projects to learn how to raise and preserve the 40-meter-long ship and its cargo without causing it to fall apart. Cargo on the San José included glass, ceramics, and leather. Historians hope the cargo can help them understand more about the global 18th-century trade network, Spain's complex colonial system and the lives of the 600 people who died in the shipwreck.