A part of the priceless treasure that the galleon San José was carrying when it sank more than 300 years ago will see the light of day for the first time.
The Colombian government announced this week that it will soon carry out a “high-level” operation “with innovative technology” in deep waters to investigate and rescue parts of the shipwreck, which for a long time was one of the most sought after lost treasures in the world.
The galleon San José was a 40-meter-long Spanish vessel that was shipwrecked in the Battle of Barú in 1708 around the Rosario Islands, an archipelago near the city of Cartagena, Colombia.
In 2015, when the Colombian State found a fragment of the boat 600 meters deep, the then president Juan Manuel Santos described it as “one of the greatest finds of submerged heritageif not the largest, some say, in the history of humanity.”
Based on historical documents, it is assumed that the galleon It carried tons of merchandise, gold, silver and precious stones.
“The galleon had passed through the port of Portobelo in Panama, where merchandise exchanges took place that came from the Viceroyalty of Peru and the Caribbean,” Alhena Caicedo, the director of the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH), explains to BBC Mundo.
“We know that there was part of the treasury that had been collected in the viceroyalties. We also sense that there are some illegal trade lines that also participated in this shipment, smuggling and other things,” he adds.
The galleon was declared in 2020 as an asset of cultural interest in Colombia, which is why the government defends that its value should not and cannot be accounted for in monetary terms.
“I understand that for a good part of Western societies, value has been equated with price. But there are issues, like the one that brings us together today (the galleon), that, in my view, have an immense value that is priceless,” said the Minister of Culture, Juan David Correa.
In any case, an American treasure hunting company that claims to own part of the galleon has speculated that The treasure could be valued at about $20 billion..
What is known about the cargo that the galleon was carrying, however, comes from archival sources and has not been able to be confirmed first-hand at the site of the shipwreck.
In 2022, the National Navy and the National Maritime Directorate of Colombia They made the first non-intrusive exploration of the galleonthanks to which images of it were known, in which you can see cannons, some coins and some Chinese tableware.
“What we can identify are jugs, vessels, syringes, glasses, porcelain, some coins, those types of materials that speak of life on board,” explains Caicedo.
One of the purposes of the new research project is to have more certainty and details about what lies in the galleon at a depth of 600 meters.
The technology of operation
The exploration, which according to the Minister of Culture, Juan David Correa, will be carried out between April and May 2024, will use a remotely operated robot of Swedish design and British manufacture that will descend to the galleon and recover some pieces among those that are arranged more superficially.
The objective is to observe how these pieces react when leaving the water.
“Once they are removed from the water, they are materials that are very vulnerable, because they have been subjected to very significant pressures for 300 years and then they can perfectly fall apart“Alhena Caicedo explained to BBC Mundo.
“We need to guarantee that we know how to handle these types of materials, how to stabilize them, how to preserve them so that, if at some point we want to hold an exhibition, we have pieces that will not perish in the attempt,” he adds.
The pieces will be studied in a laboratory in Cartagena and, in the medium term, the construction of a museum is contemplated.
For now, the Colombian authorities They rule out large amounts of gold and silver being taken from the galleon.
The robot that will descend to the galleon will be operated from the ARC Caribe, a ship that the Colombian State purchased from a Chinese shipyard in 2017 for US$13 million.
“Our ship has the ability to face the waves, the wind and all the movements in six directions that exist in the ocean to be able to hold on to a precise point, because exploration requires that the robot at a depth of 600 meters can be connected to the hand and eye of the operator who is on the ship,” Admiral Hermann León explained to the EFE agency.
The operation will be a coordinated effort of the Ministry of Culture, the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History, the National Navy (ICANH) and the National Maritime Directorate, all public institutions.
This represents a change compared to the initial plans that the Colombian State had during the government of Juan Manuel Santos to make a public-private alliance that contemplated dividing the galleon’s treasure and paying the exploring company in kind, that is, with part of the treasure.
The first phase of the investigation, which will be carried out in 2024, will cost the state about $4.5 million dollars.
In addition to detailing the information about the pieces that are in the galleon and extracting the first ones from the water, the exploration seeks to be a source to define a long-term archaeological management plan for the remains and declare a protected archaeological area.
According to Caicedo, this is important because of the risk of plunder that exists, that is, that unauthorized people such as pirates or treasure hunters reach it and loot it.
Since it was found, The coordinates of the galleon are a secret of the Colombian State.
Based on the new information that is known about what lies at the bottom of the sea, “Colombia hopes to obtain answers to multiple scientific research questions about the submerged history of maritime trade between America and Europe at the beginning of the 18th century,” says a statement from the Ministry of Culture.
The critics
A dozen experts grouped in the University Network of Submerged Cultural Heritage expressed criticism of the government because they consider that the archaeological management plan for the galleon has important “gaps” and “inconsistencies.”
According to academics, There is no “due scientific justification” to extract pieces of the galleon and goes against the principle of in situ conservation that ICANH itself has suggested applying.
They affirm that currently there is an “imperative” to extract the fragment of the galleon that “takes precedence over any scientific, technical and management procedure, with which the archaeological management plan is a mere formality to comply with, compared to decisions made in advance by the current government.”
Also, they point out that “no details are mentioned, nor are data presented from the seasons carried out between 2015 and 2016 by the treasure hunting firm Maritime Archelogy Consultants, which would have also implied a possible intervention on the wreck.”
That was the company that had signed a contract with the State during the government of Juan Manuel Santos to extract the galleon remains, although the subsequent government of Iván Duque decided that they would not go ahead with the agreement.
The director of ICANH, Alhena Caicedo, clarified to BBC Mundo that, on the advice of the State Legal Defense Agency, the current research project cannot take into account any report on the galleon produced by the firm at that time.
The disputes over the galleon
At the same time that the government announced this ambitious deep-sea scientific research, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague formally began an international dispute between Colombia and Sea Search Armadaan American company, for the galleon.
Sea Search Armada says it found the wreck before Colombia and is demanding $10 billion, which in its calculations corresponds to half the value of the galleon.
The director of the National Legal Defense Agency of the State, which is the institution that must assume the defense of Colombia in the case, described this claim as “grotesque” and “frivolous”and stated that “the coordinates given by the plaintiff are not the coordinates where the galleon is.”
Colombian laws say that the galleon is “inalienable, imprescriptible and cannot be seized.” But That has not prevented disputes about who owns it since its discovery.
In 2015, the Spanish Foreign Minister said that “Spain will not give up the galleon because it is a state ship.” However, both governments have maintained their intention to achieve an amicable and diplomatic resolution of the dispute.
On February 23, the Spanish ambassador to Colombia said that he had instructions from his country’s government to offer Colombia “the possibility of working on a bilateral agreement to create a new paradigm in terms of protection of underwater heritage.”
Although she reiterates that the galleon belongs to Colombia, Alhena Caicedo, director of the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History, says that “heritage has other dimensions that also have to be considered, such as the symbolic dimension.”
“We recognize and want to recognize that we share the history with many others, we share that history of the galleon specifically with Spain, with Bolivia, with people from what was the old New Kingdom of Granada, with many social actors that we want to recognize,” he explains.
The Bolivian Qhara Qhara indigenous community also claims part of the galleon, arguing that The gold and silver it transported were obtained from the mines of Potosí through violence and exploitation.
“This is a heritage that we all have to look at with curiosity. “Everyone is invited,” concluded Minister Correa.
Click to read more stories from BBC News Mundo.
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