From Popular Mechanics, June 12:
That’s a lot of lost loot.
- Considered the world’s richest shipwreck, the San Jose was found off the coast of Colombia in 2015.
- New research into the gold coins now scattered on the ocean floor offered insights into the decorative pieces minted in Lima.
- Valued at a modern-day $17 billion, the San Jose’s bounty is still untouched.
Exploration of the San Jose shipwreck and the precious metal coins it scattered about 1,970 feet below the ocean’s surface off the coast of Colombia confirmed it really was the richest shipwreck in the world.
Considered the Holy Grail of all shipwrecks, the Spanish galleon San Jose blew up and sank in 1708 at the hands of British cannons, and it took with it what experts have estimated to be $17 billion in modern-day wealth, largely in the form of coins from 10 years of taxes saved up from the Americas. The shipwreck was first located in 2015.
A new study published in the journal Antiquity showed how using remotely operated vehicles allowed researchers to get close to the underwater coins and confirm that the wreck found in 2015—which launched a custody battle between Colombia and Spain—really is the long-sought San Jose with an untold number of coins still on the seafloor.
“Among the key finds are hand-struck, irregularly shaped coins—known as cobs in English and macuquinas in Spanish—that served as the primary currency in the Americas for more than two centuries,” the study’s lead author, Daniela Vargas Ariza, wrote about the coins often cut from gold or silver ingots. Ariza is a maritime archaeologist at Colombia’s Almirante Padilla Naval Cadet School in Cartagena and the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History in Bogota....
....MUCH MORE
