Colombian Navy officials monitoring a historic Spanish shipwreck laden with treasure found the wreckage of two other ships in the same region.
The galleon San José was sunk in the Caribbean Sea by British privateers in 1708 near the port of Cartagena. With it, nearly 600 people disappeared and what is estimated to be billions of dollars worth of gold, silver and emeralds that the Spaniards transported from their colonies in South America to Europe.
Described as the “Holy Grail of shipwrecks”, for the immense amount of valuables it carried, it was lost at the bottom of the ocean for three centuries when, in 2015, the Colombian government announced that it had been found.
Now, a remotely operated vehicle monitoring the wreckage has located two other wrecks nearby.
“We have two other discoveries in the same area, which show other avenues for archaeological exploration,” said Admiral Gabriel Pérez, the navy commander. “The work has just begun.”
The images taken by the monitoring team give a clearer view of the treasure aboard the San José, including gold ingots and coins, cannons made in Seville in 1655 and an intact Chinese dinnerware — archaeologists are working to discover the origin of the dishes. based on visible inscriptions, officials said.
In a press conference this Tuesday (7), the president of Colombia, Iván Duque, showed the unpublished images, obtained at more than a thousand meters of depth. According to him, one of the vessels is from the colonial period and the other from the republican phase of the country.
In addition to them, the Navy would have been able to locate “a dozen similar vessels”, said the president.
