New particulars of gold cash discovered off the coast of Colombia across the “world’s richest shipwreck” confirm they’re from the Spanish galleon San José, a treasure ship that sank in 1708 throughout a cannon duel with British warships.
The galleon was laden with as much as 200 tons (180 metric tons) of gold, silver and uncut gems when it sank, and the treasure’s trendy worth could also be as excessive as $17 billion, Dwell Science beforehand reported.
Colombia’s authorities hopes to get well a few of the artifacts for a devoted museum that’s but to be constructed. However there are opposing claimants, together with the Spanish authorities, which asserts the wrecks of its naval vessels, irrespective of how previous, stay the property of Spain.
The authors of a brand new examine, revealed Tuesday (June 10) within the journal Antiquity, embody researchers from Colombia’s navy and different Colombian authorities. Their evaluation included finding out photos taken by remotely operated autos (ROVs) of dozens of tough cash that now lie scattered across the wreck at a depth of roughly 1,970 ft (600 meters).
In 2015, Colombia’s authorities introduced that it had located the San José within the Colombian Caribbean close to the town of Cartagena, and the observations had been made throughout 4 ROV expeditions to the wreck in 2021 and 2022.
In response to the examine, the observations verify that the cash and the close by wreck particles are from the 1708 wreck of the San José.
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Sunken gold
The researchers describe seeing dozens of tough gold cash — the entire quantity shouldn’t be identified — at a number of places throughout the shipwreck, surrounded by different artifacts from the cargo, weapons and on a regular basis life because it was on board greater than 300 years in the past.
They used high-definition pictures to carefully study the cash and decided that they’d a median diameter of 1.3 inches (32.5 millimeters) and a probable weight of 27 grams (about 1 ounce).
The ROV photos revealed the cash’ designs. One aspect has a variation of a Jerusalem cross — one massive cross surrounded by 4 smaller crosses — and a defend adorned with castles and lions. On the again, these cash present the “Topped Pillars of Hercules above the waves of the ocean,” with the waves being distinctive to the Lima Mint, the researchers wrote within the examine.
In addition they famous that some bore distinctive marks that had been hammered into the steel, together with the marks of an assayer — an knowledgeable who assessments the purity of steel — from the Spanish mint in Lima, now the capital of Peru, in 1707.
By cross-referencing their observations with colonial information, the researchers decided that the cash and different artifacts got here from the San José, the examine mentioned.
Examine lead writer Daniela Vargas Ariza, a maritime archaeologist at Colombia’s Almirante Padilla Naval Cadet College in Cartagena and the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and Historical past in Bogotá, mentioned these colonial Spanish cash had been usually lower from gold or silver ingots.
“Hand-struck, irregularly formed cash — often known as cobs in English and macuquinas in Spanish — served as the first foreign money within the Americas for greater than two centuries,” she mentioned in a press release.
Richest shipwreck
The San José wreck is without doubt one of the most beneficial ever discovered, and there are intense authorized disputes about who has the fitting to get well it — though it is not identified if that is doable. Colombia hopes a few of the treasure may very well be offered to pay for the archaeological restoration effort of the complete ship, however Colombian legislation could prohibit promoting something deemed a historic artifact.
Spain additionally claims the shipwreck and all of its treasure, below a world conference on the Legislation of the Sea that states the wrecks of naval vessels belong to their authentic nation. However Colombia hasn’t ratified that conference, and critics say the supply is meant to guard trendy warship applied sciences, not centuries-year-old treasure wrecks.
The San José was main a treasure fleet of 18 ships from Cartagena sure for Europe on June 8, 1708, when it was attacked by a squadron of 5 British warships; Britain was Spain’s enemy through the Conflict of the Spanish Succession at the moment.
The three largest Spanish galleons fired again with their cannons, however the San José blew up and sank when its shops of gunpowder exploded; a lot of the Spanish fleet fled to security within the harbor at Cartagena.
