Featured Image Credit: Shutterstock/ARMADA DE COLOMBIA
Topics: World News
Aisha Nozari
The Colombian navy has released new footage of a centuries old shipwreck that’s carrying $17 billion (£14 billion) worth of treasure.
Spain's San Jose galleon was sunk during the War of the Spanish Succession by British navy ships in 1708 and is one of the most valuable shipwrecks in the entire world.
The San Jose would have had around 600 people on board, not to mention 200 tonnes of treasure - including gold and silver coins alongside emeralds - that are worth billions in today’s currency. Watch the new footage below:
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The ship, dubbed ‘the holy grail of shipwrecks’ according to Insider, was found in 2015 after a search that lasted three centuries.
The San Jose sits on a seabed off the coast of Cartagena, but its exact location has never been revealed.
In a press conference on 6 June, Colombian President Iván Duque released incredible new images of the 64-gun galleon.
The photos were captured using remotely operated state-of-the-art equipment that descended all the way down to the wreckage, which lies around 3,280 feet beneath the water’s surface.
New footage reveals previously unseen treasures including more gold coins, swords, cannons, jars and even Chinese ceramics that have never before been examined in such detail.
Of the discovery, Duque said: "The idea is to recover it and to have sustainable financing mechanisms for future extractions. In this way, we protect the treasure, the patrimony of the San Jose galleon."
The president also revealed that the new monitoring of the San Jose had led to the discovery of two other shipwrecks, an 1800s schooner and a colonial boat.
Duque added: “Our Government decided that all this treasure is a unified heritage, that it cannot be divided, that it cannot be separated, that it is a whole, of enormous patrimonial wealth.”
Cameras picked up inscriptions on the cannons that revealed they were manufactured in Seville and Cádiz back in 1655.
Admiral José Joaquín Amézquita, General Maritime Director, shared: "You appreciate different gold objects; the macuquinas (coins) of Eight Reales appear, with the coinage typical of the time.”
Amézquita also revealed archaeologists are now working to identify the inscriptions on the Chinese pottery to determine whether the pieces came from Mexico or South America.
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