Colombia has found the wreckage of the San Jose, a Spanish galleon that sunk off Cartagena more than 300 years ago and is thought to be full of treasure, the country's president tweeted Friday.
The ship was carrying gold, silver, gems and jewelry when it was attacked by a British warship and sunk in June 1708. Estimates of the treasure's value vary, from around $1.5 billion to between $4 billion and $17 billion. It has been described as "the holy grail of shipwrecks."
Gran noticia: ¡Encontramos el Galeon San José! Mañana daré los detalles en rueda de prensa desde Cartagena.— Juan Manuel Santos (@JuanManSantos) December 4, 2015
President Juan Manuel Santos said he would give more details on Saturday.
What he didn't address in the tweet is the legal dispute over the treasure. U.S. salvage company Sea Search Armada (SSA), at the time working in partnership with Colombian government, said it located the area of the wreck in 1981. It said Colombia reneged on an agreement to share proceeds from the treasure, and a long series of lawsuits over ownership ensued. In 2011 an American court ruled that the wreck was the property of the Colombian state.
(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));A summary of SSA's 22+ years of litigation with the Colombian government:Posted by Sea Search Armada on Saturday, September 22, 2012
The San Jose was carrying jewels from the South American colonies to the Spanish king to help finance The War of the Spanish Succession. It's thought that more than 1,000 galleons and merchant ships sank off Colombia during colonial rule.