A battle royal over deep-sea archaeology in the Caribbean
Colombia begins to explore one of the world’s most contested shipwrecks
The San José was sailing for Cartagena, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, when in 1708 a squadron of British warships set upon the galleon and she sank. She was carrying riches gathered in the New World back to Spain to fund its war of succession: emeralds, porcelain of the Qing dynasty, gold coins and silver from Potosí, modern-day Bolivia. With a present-day value estimated at many billions of dollars, the San José is the world’s most valuable wreck.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Arguing over a shipwreck”
From the June 8th 2024 edition
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