Friday, March 29

“Holy Grail” of Shipwrecks Filmed: See Video

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The three-masted, 64-gun Spanish galleon San José was on its way home, loaded with treasure from the New World in 1708. It was the flagship of a flotilla of two other warships and 14 merchant ships that had left Panama and was heading to Cartagena before returning to Spain.

The 1,051-ton San José itself was filled with treasure worth about $17 billion today, a cargo of gold, silver and emeralds sailing back to King Philip V of Spain. But on June 8, it ran into a British squadron off the Cartagena coast, and the British fired a cannonball that hit the San José’s powder magazines, causing a massive explosion. The ship sank; only 11 of the 600 people on board survived.

Because of its riches, archeologists have called the San José the “Holy Grail of shipwrecks.” An expedition from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution was able to locate the wreck, 3,100 feet underwater, in 2015.

Now, the Colombian Navy has released pictures of the wreck (and two more nearby) and some of its treasure. The footage was taken by a remotely-controlled underwater vehicle, and it was deemed important enough that Colombian President Iván Duque went on national TV to announce it. He said, “The equipment that our army has acquired and the level of precision have kept this treasure intact, but at the same time, we will be able to protect it for later extraction.”

It’s not a surprise that there’s now a fight over who owns the wreck, and all that treasure. Spain has claimed it, since the ship belonged to King Philip V when it sank. Colombia says it’s “a national treasure” and wants to display it in a museum to be built in Cartagena. And the Qhara Qhara, an indigenous group from Bolivia, say it belongs to them, since it was their ancestors who actually dug up all that gold and silver. Read more at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-6172220 and see a video below:

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