A section of Spanish galleon San José, which sunk off the Caribbean coast of Colombia in 1708
It has been hailed as the most valuable shipwreck in the world.
A Spanish galleon, the San José, was sunk by the British off the coast of Colombia more than 300 years ago. It had a cargo of gold, silver and emeralds worth billions of dollars.
But years after it was discovered, a debate still rages over who owns that treasure and what should be done with the wreck.
The Colombian and Spanish states have staked a claim to it, as have a US salvage company and indigenous groups in South America. There have been court battles in Colombia and the US, and the case is now before the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague.
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The Colombian government says it wants to raise the remains of the vessel and put it in a museum. Treasure hunters point to the commercial value of the cargo, which could be as much as $18bn (£13.bn).
But archaeologists say the wreck – and thousands like it scattered across the world – should be left where it is. Maritime historians remind us that the San José is a graveyard and should be respected as such: around 600 people drowned when the ship went down.
“It’s a great mess and I see no easy way out of this,” says Carla Rahn Phillips, a historian who has written a book about the San José. “The Spanish state, the Colombian government, the various indigenous groups, the treasure hunters. I don’t think there’s any way that everyone can be satisfied.”
The San José sank in 1708 as it sailed from what is now Panama towards the port city of Cartagena in Colombia. From there it was due to cross the Atlantic to Spain, but the Spanish were at war with the British at the time, and a British warship intercepted it.
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The British wanted to seize the ship and its treasure, but fired a cannonball into the San José’s powder magazines by mistake. The ship blew up and sank within minutes.
The wreck lay on the seabed until the 1980s, when a US salvage company, Glocca Mora, said it had found it. It tried to persuade the Colombians to go into partnership to raise the treasure and split the proceeds, but the two sides could not agree on who should get what share, and plunged into a legal battle.
In 2015, the Colombians said they had found the ship, independently of the information provided by the Americans, on a different part of the sea bed. Since then they have argued that Glocca Mora, now known as Sea Search Armada, has no right to the ship or its treasure.
National Maritime Museum
The San José was attacked and sunk by the British, as depicted in this 18th-Century painting
The Spanish state has staked its claim, arguing that the San José and its cargo remains state property, and indigenous groups from Bolivia and Peru say they are entitled to at least a part of the booty.
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They argue that it is not Spanish treasure because it was plundered by the Spanish from mines in the Andes during the colonial period.
“That wealth came from the mines of Potosí in the Bolivian highlands,” says Samuel Flores, a representative of the Qhara Qhara people, one of the indigenous groups.
“This cargo belongs to our people – the silver, the gold – and we think it should be raised from the sea bed to stop treasure hunters looting it. How many years have gone by? Three hundred years? They owe us that debt.”
The Colombians have released tantalising videos of the San José, taken with submersible cameras. They show the prow of a wooden ship, encrusted with marine life, a few bronze cannons scattered across the sand, and blue-and-white porcelain and gold coins shining on the ocean floor.
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As part of its court case at the Hague, Sea Search Armada commissioned a study of the cargo. It estimates its value at $7-18bn.
“This treasure that sank with the ship included seven million pesos, 116 steel chests full of emeralds, 30 million gold coins,” says Rahim Moloo, the lawyer representing Sea Search Armada. He described it as “the biggest treasure in the history of humanity”.
Others are less convinced.
Reuters
The Colombian government sent a team to explore the wreck earlier this year
“I try to resist giving present-day estimates of anything,” says Ms Rahn Phillips.
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“If you’re talking about gold and silver coins, do we make an estimate based on the weight of the gold now? Or do we look at what collectors might pay of these gold coins?
“To me it’s almost meaningless to try to come up with a number now. The estimates of the treasure hunters, to me, they’re laughable.”
While the San José is often described as the holy grail of shipwrecks, it is – according to the United Nations – just one of around three million sunken vessels on our ocean floors. There is often very little clarity over who owns them, who has the right to explore them, and – if there is treasure on board – who has the right to keep it.
That says far more about wrecks, but many countries have refused to ratify it, fearing it will weaken their claim to riches in their waters. Colombia and the US, for example, have not signed it.
“The legal framework right now is neither clear nor comprehensive,” says Michail Risvas, a lawyer at Southampton University in the UK. A specialist in international arbitration and maritime disputes, he adds: “I’m afraid international law does not have clear-cut answers.”
Rodrigo Pacheco Ruiz
Deep-sea diver and shipwreck explorer Rodrigo Pacheco Ruiz is one person who thinks that the San José should remain where it is
For many archaeologists, wrecks like the San José should be left in peace and explored “in situ” – on the ocean floor.
“If you just go down and take lots of artefacts and bring them to the surface, you just have a pile of stuff. There’s no story to tell,” says Rodrigo Pacheco Ruiz, a Mexican deep-sea diver who has explored dozens of wrecks around the world.
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“You can just count coins, you can count porcelain, but there is no ‘why was this on board? Who was the owner? Where was it going?’ – the human story behind it.”
Juan Guillermo Martín, a Colombian maritime archaeologist who has followed the case of the San José closely, agrees.
“The treasure of the San José should remain at the bottom of the sea, along with the human remains of the 600 crew members who died there,” he says. “The treasure is part of the archaeological context, and as such has no commercial value. Its value is strictly scientific.”
Uber is launching a limited-time safari experience in Cape Town, South Africa, available from 4 October, 2024, to 25 January, 2025, as the latest experience in their ‘Go Anywhere’ series of travel products
You wrote about Kemi Badenoch’s controversial comments on maternity pay at the Conservative party conference (Report, October 1), yet over the past two weeks a broader and ongoing clash of opinions over parental rights has been unfolding.
Deloitte made a clear statement by equalising parental leave, Campaign group The Dad Shift called for longer paternity leave and Badenoch argued statutory maternity pay is “excessive”. What’s clear is the lack of consensus on how best to support working parents.
But this isn’t about pitting genders against each other over caregiving roles or trading the “motherhood penalty” — the term used to describe the disadvantages that working mothers face in the workplace compared to childless women or men — for a broader “parenthood penalty”.
The choice hinges on organisations offering extended or equalised parental leave to encourage fathers to share responsibilities — critical to reducing the motherhood penalty, which accounts for 80 per cent of the gender pay gap. A cultural shift is needed where senior leaders model and endorse active parenthood to create an environment where both men and women feel confident using parental support without fear of damaging their careers or reputations.
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Emma Spitz Chief Client Officer and Parental Transition Coach, The Executive Coaching Consultancy, London EC3, UK
Andrew Jack’s article on the Model UN for schools (“Students learn from Model UN to handle disagreements diplomatically”, Outlook, September 26) says Model United Nations was created at Georgetown University in 1963.
As the organiser of the Model UN General Assembly held at Cambridge university in 1964, that claim comes as a surprise, as when contacted back in 1963, we were told by the UN that we were the first to host such an event. Such is British-American rivalry!
The Cambridge version was funded by a £20,000 donation from Roy Thomson, owner of the Sunday Times, and this paid for student delegations to come for a week from further and higher education institutions across the UK. The 7,000-strong membership of the Cambridge University United Nations Association (CUUNA) was an example of the international idealism that then permeated the university.
Attending this year’s UN General Assembly and the Summit of the Future event and recalling the frequent cynicism about the ability of the UN to resolve major issues in today’s world, I am pleased to see the Model UNGA format continues, albeit now more at high school than university.
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Anthony Colman Chair, CUUNA 1963-64, Aylmerton, Norfolk UK
I read with interest your observations on Sri Lanka’s election of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (“Sri Lanka’s Lenin-loving new president riles old guard”, Report, September 28; and “Sri Lanka bets on a leftist outsider”, FT View, September 27).
I agree that there is concern about the remains of Dissanayake’s old People’s Liberation Front (JVP) and its role in insurrections in 1971 and 1987-89, but the general election on November 14 is unlikely to give the party a two-thirds majority in parliament, and the president is keen to reduce his own executive powers. He has clearly renounced any return to the use of force.
Yet I felt the article was less than generous in its critique when previous elected governments have been mired by corruption and incompetence, with Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the 2019 election winner, needing to flee the country to escape the consequences of misrule — the fall in the value of the Sri Lanka rupee from SLRs250 to SLRs420 to the pound sterling being just one example.
In last month’s vote, the old guard was well defeated at the ballot box and indications so far are more optimistic than you portray. The stock market has moved sharply upwards, the IMF seems to have had satisfactory preliminary talks and the impression that he is anti-Indian does not correspond with his public statements. Indeed the island itself seems to have confidence in the new dawn, although of course it’s very early days.
Banks will have the power to pause payments for up to four days to give them more time to investigate fraud, the government has said.
Currently, transfers must be processed or declined by the end of the next business day, but the new law will allow an extension of three more days.
For years, banks have needed to have reasonable grounds to suspect fraud before being able to investigate – but have also faced pressure from customers who want payments to be made instantly.
The long-proposed new regulations will come into force at the end of October – later than originally planned.
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Fraud is the most common offence in the country, accounting for a third of all crime in England and Wales.
Criminals have stolen billions of pounds through romance scams or by impersonating a genuine trader to trick victims into transferring money.
“We need to protect these people better, which is why we are giving banks more time to investigate suspicious payments and break the criminal spell that scammers weave,” said Tulip Siddiq, the economic secretary to the Treasury.
Banks have lobbied for permission to take longer to agree to payments, to allow them to investigate suspicious transfers.
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The new law will give them time to look at unusual spending patterns, contact a customer, and investigate further before the money is transferred.
The previous government’s draft legislation had proposed giving banks the new powers by 7 October, but now they will take effect from the end of the month.
UK Finance, the banking trade body, has welcomed the new rules. Consumer groups say the powers should be used in a careful and targeted way.
The changes could lead to some frustration among account holders who have become accustomed to bank transfers made online or via a mobile app going through almost instantly.
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Banks will need to inform customers when a payment is being delayed, explain what the customer needs to do in order to unblock the payment, and pay compensation if the delay lands the customer with extra charges.
The rules will come into force a few weeks after the introduction of a stricter mandatory scheme that will see fraud victims receiving up to £85,000 in refunds from banks within five days of an authorised push payment scam.
The maximum compensation has been reduced from a previous proposal of £415,000.
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The US and its western allies are trying to limit Israel’s response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack in the hope of preventing a widening regional conflict from spiralling out of control.
Washington has made clear it supports Israel’s right to respond militarily to Tuesday’s missile attack, and is holding frequent calls with Israeli officials as they plan their next move.
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US President Joe Biden on Wednesday spoke with the other leaders of the G7 to co-ordinate sanctions on Tehran for the attack and advise Israel on its response.
“We’ll be discussing with the Israelis what they’re going to do . . . all seven of us agree that they have a right to respond, but they should respond in proportion,” Biden told reporters after the call.
But US officials acknowledge their influence on Israel may be limited.
Israel is weighing several response options to retaliate against Iran, including attacks on missile launchers or oil infrastructure. Some Israeli officials have called for strikes against its nuclear facilities, though a person familiar with the matter said this is not being considered. Biden has also said he would oppose such an attack.
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The US and other western allies are instead urging Israel to focus on military targets, said people familiar with the matter.
Kurt Campbell, the deputy US secretary of state, on Wednesday said Washington recognised a “response of some kind would be important” and there had to be a “return message” to Iran.
But he added: “The region is really balancing on a knife’s edge and [there are] real concerns about an even broader escalation, or a continuing one . . . which would imperil not only Israel, but our strategic interests as well,” he said in a virtual event at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank, on Wednesday.
However, western officials acknowledge Israel is increasingly self-confident and emboldened after its recent success in assassinating much of the leadership of Iran-backed Hizbollah — including its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
The Israeli government may be prepared to take military and political losses if it means notching a strategic victory over Iran, they said.
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US state department spokesperson Matt Miller on Wednesday said: “They’re a sovereign country, they do make their own decisions, we talk with them at a number of different levels about what we believe is in their interest, what we believe is in the interest of the region — we’ll continue to do that, but ultimately it’s up to them.”
Tuesday’s strikes, in response to the assassination of Nasrallah last week, were much larger than an earlier Iranian attack in April, incorporating about twice as many ballistic missiles — although only a few got through Israel’s air defences.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned Iran would face “severe consequences” for the strikes, which he described as “defeated and ineffective”, adding the US would “work with Israel to make that the case”.
But the green light to go ahead with a response does not mean a blank cheque, analysts said. The goal for the US and its allies is that Israel’s response does not in turn prompt further escalation by Iran.
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Dana Stroul, the Biden administration’s former top Pentagon official on the Middle East who is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said: “The administration continues to adhere to the line that they want to see de-escalation and prevent the kind of all-out regional war that could lead to massive collateral damage and civilian casualties across much more of the region than we have seen thus far.”
Jonathan Panikoff, a former senior intelligence official now at the Atlantic Council, said that while some in Israel are arguing for targeting Iranian oilfields, “US officials are probably concerned that an Israeli decision to target oilfields could result in Iran striking back by targeting oilfields of US companies and allies in the Gulf”.
Such an attack could also hit petrol prices ahead of next month’s US presidential election.
Panikoff added that direct targeting of Iranian nuclear sites would be viewed in Tehran as a significant threat that would demand a response.
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“Tehran is likely to view a strike against its nuclear programme as a fundamental and direct attack on the regime’s stability itself, likely ensuring a response that moves all parties up the escalatory ladder,” he warned.
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