The fraught battle over the holy grail of shipwrecks

It is known as the most valuable shipwreck in the world.

More than 300 years ago, a Spanish galleon, the San Jose, was sunk by the British off the coast of Colombia. The ship was carrying billions of dollars worth of gold, silver and emeralds.

But years after its discovery, debate still rages over who owns the treasure and what should be done with the remains.

Claims have been made by Colombian and Spanish states, a U.S. salvage company and indigenous groups in South America. Colombia and the United States are involved in a court dispute, with the case currently before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

The Colombian government said it hopes to salvage the wreckage of the ship and place it in a museum. Treasure hunters suggest the commercial value of the cargo could be as high as $18bn (£1.3bn).

But archaeologists say the wreck — and thousands of similar ones scattered around the world — should stay where they are. Maritime historians remind us that the San José was a cemetery and should be respected: some 600 people drowned when the ship sank.

“This is a mess, and I don’t see any easy solutions,” said historian Carla Rahn Phillips, who wrote a book about the San Jose River. “The Spanish state, the Colombian government, the various indigenous groups, the treasure hunters. I don’t think there’s any way to satisfy everyone.”

The San Jose sank in 1708 while sailing from what is now Panama to the Colombian port city of Cartagena. From there it was intended to cross the Atlantic to Spain, but Spain was at war with Britain at the time and a British warship intercepted it.

The British attempted to seize the ship and its treasure, but mistakenly fired a cannonball into the San Jose’s powder magazine. The ship exploded and sank within minutes.

The wreck lay on the ocean floor until the 1980s, when American salvage company Glocca Mora said it had found it. It tried to persuade Colombians to cooperate in raising the treasure and dividing the proceeds, but the two sides could not agree on who should get what share and became embroiled in a legal battle.

In 2015, the Colombians said they had discovered the ship in a different location on the seabed, unrelated to the information provided by the Americans. Since then, they have argued that Grocamora (now known as the Sea Search Fleet) had no right to the ship or its treasure.

The Spanish government has pressed its case, saying the San José and its cargo remain state property, while indigenous groups in Bolivia and Peru say they are entitled to at least some of the loot.

They believe it is not a Spanish treasure because it was looted by the Spaniards from mines in the Andes during the colonial period.

“This wealth comes from the mineral deposits of Potosí in the Bolivian highlands,” said Samuel Flores, a representative of the Guerragueira people, one of the indigenous groups.

“These cargoes belong to our people – silver, gold – and we believe they should be pulled from the bottom of the ocean to stop treasure hunters from plundering them. How many years have passed? Three hundred years? They owe us this debt.”

Colombians have released tantalizing video of the San José captured on a diving camera. They show the prow of a wooden ship covered in marine life, several bronze cannons scattered on the beach, and blue and white porcelain and gold coins glittering on the seafloor.

The Maritime Search Fleet commissioned a study of the cargo as part of the Hague court case. It estimates its value at $7-18 billion.

“The treasure that sank with the ship included 7 million pesos, 116 steel boxes filled with emeralds and 30 million gold coins,” said Rahim Moloo, a lawyer representing the Ocean Search Fleet. He described it as “the greatest treasure in human history.”

Others are less convinced.

“I try to avoid making current estimates on anything,” Ms. Rahn Phillips said.

“If you’re talking about gold and silver coins, are we now basing our estimates on the weight of the gold? Or are we looking at what a collector might pay for those gold coins?

“To me, trying to come up with a number right now is almost pointless. To me, the treasure hunter’s estimate is laughable.”

While the San Jose is often described as the Holy Grail of shipwrecks, it is just one of approximately 3 million sunken ships on the ocean floor, according to the United Nations. It’s often less clear who owns them, who has the right to explore them and – if there’s treasure on board – who has the right to keep it.

In 1982, the United Nations adopted UNCLOS – is often described as “the makings of the sea,” but it rarely mentions shipwrecks. As a result, the United Nations adopted a second set of rules in 2001— UNESCO 2001 Underwater Cultural Heritage Convention.

That says more about the wrecks, but many countries have refused to ratify the deal, fearing it would weaken their claims to the wealth in their waters. For example, Colombia and the United States have not yet signed.

“The current legal framework is neither clear nor comprehensive,” said Michail Risvas, a lawyer at the University of Southampton in the UK. An expert in international arbitration and maritime disputes, he added: “I’m afraid there is no clear answer in international law.”

For many archaeologists, shipwrecks like the San Jose should sit quietly and be explored “in situ”—on the seafloor.

“If you just go down and take a lot of artifacts and bring them to the surface, you’re going to get a bunch of stuff. There’s no story to tell.” Mexican deep-sea diver Rodrigo Pacheco Ruiz ), who has explored dozens of shipwrecks around the world.

“You can count coins, you can count china, but there’s no ‘Why is this on a boat? Who’s the owner? Where is it going?’ — the human story behind it.”

Juan Guillermo Martín, a Colombian maritime archaeologist who has followed the San José case closely, agrees.

“The treasures of the San José should remain at the bottom of the sea along with the remains of the 600 crew members who died there,” he said. “The treasure is part of the archaeological context and therefore has no commercial value. Its value is strictly scientific.”