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Two shipwrecks believed to be centuries old have been discovered near the ruins of the famous San José Galleon, which sank off the coast of Cartagena more than 300 years ago, according to Colombian naval officials.
Colombian authorities also released new images of the remains of San José, which were discovered in 2015 and are often described as the “holy grail” of shipwrecks.
The images were taken during four Colombian naval observation missions, using a remotely operated vehicle sent to a depth of about 3,100 feet off the country’s Caribbean coast. The strange blue and green images show gold coins, pottery and an intact porcelain cup scattered across the seabed. They offer a glimpse into the ship’s treasure, which is believed to be worth billions in current dollars.
The vehicle also found the remains of a colonial ship and a schooner that was thought to date from about 200 years ago, in the period shortly after the Spanish Revolutionary War in Colombia.
The San José, a 64-gun galleon with 600 people on board, belonged to King Philip V of Spain. It sank near Cartagena in 1708 while fighting the British Navy during the War of the Spanish Succession.
The wrecked ship has been thought to contain one of the most valuable treasures ever lost at sea: a cargo of gold, silver, emeralds, and other expensive objects from the Spanish colonial empire. which could be worth more than $ 17 billion in current value.
The historical galleon has been the subject of popular imagination for years, even appearing in the novel by Colombian Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez “Love in the Time of Anger.”
Treasure hunters have been trying to locate his remains for some time, and an American company joined the search with permission from Colombia in the 1980s and claimed to have discovered the site of the wreck.
President Iván Duque shared the news of the new images and additional shipwrecks during a televised announcement on Monday.
“The equipment that our army has acquired and the level of accuracy have kept this treasure intact, but at the same time, we will be able to protect it for later extraction,” he said.
The remote scanning vehicle was the product of years of work, said Gabriel Alfonso Pérez, commander of the Colombian Navy.
“During the previous years we made four expeditions, which allowed us to check from the surface that the area where the San José galleon is located had not been touched by human intervention,” Pérez said.
The ship has been at the center of long legal battles, with Colombia, Spain, an American company and a Bolivian indigenous group, all fighting for the right to their treasure.
Spain, citing a UNESCO convention, claims the rights to the destroyed ship since it belonged to the Spanish navy three centuries ago and among the remains are the remains of hundreds of Spanish sailors.
The indigenous Qhara Qhara group in present-day Bolivia says they should get the treasure, as Spanish settlers forced their ancestors to extract some of the precious metals they say were on board.
Meanwhile, the US company Sea Search Armada has sued the Colombian government for stopping the excavation of the ship, alleging that the company had part of the treasure. The Colombian Supreme Court upheld a 2007 ruling that SSA was entitled to 50 percent.
But Colombia said the company’s location was incorrect and that the actual San Jose resting place was discovered with the help of the 2015 Massachusetts-based Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
In 2013, Colombia passed a law stating that sunken ships discovered in its waters would be considered national heritage. Vice President Marta Lucía Ramírez announced earlier this year that artifacts found among the remains of San José would be placed in a museum to be “a source of pride for Colombia, the Caribbean and the world.”
A presidential decree issued in February stipulates that companies or individuals wishing to participate in the exhumation of the ship’s treasury must sign a contract with the government and submit an inventory of their findings, CBS News reported. But a court order has suspended the excavation until legal issues are resolved.
Duke said Monday that the government intends to develop sustainable funding mechanisms for shipwreck excavation. Colombian authorities are aiming to locate a dozen more historic shipwrecks with the same technology, he added.