Colombia shares unprecedented images of treasure-laden wreck
phys.org
phys.org
This is begging for a pitch deck to a shady bank like HSBC: angel fund my startup to rapidly design/deploy some sonar-equipped unmanned submersibles to locate and snatch as much of this gold as possible from under everyone's noses. I know a guy who works robotics, a guy who studied underwater comms, a geologist interested in undersea mining....I can probably dig up a retired submariner through some Navy contacts....Hmmmm...
You don't need a sub with the crush depth of a Triton 36000/2[1] (price: $50 million), but you do need something with a large carry capacity to reduce the number of trips needed to exploit the site. Maybe something like Boeing's Orca would suffice. [2][3] Even if you spent $100 mil on the sub, $100 mil on the surface ship and staff, maybe even a few million bribing some Colombian Navy/Coast Guard officers.....for a chance to make off with $12 billion in gold (at the current spot price)? Seems like a no-brainer for somebody to fund such an endeavor.
[1] https://tritonsubs.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Datasheet-...
[2] https://www.naval-technology.com/analysis/boeing-orca-xluuv-...
[3] https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/navy-ships/a263440...
They didn't, not with sufficient detail. Hence the need for the sonar on the submersibles, probably need to do some undersea mapping to pinpoint the wreck. I only know it is "near" Islas del Rosario. It's in water 950 meters deep, so the average concerned citizen can't exactly strap on a wetsuit and go poking around the ocean floor for it.
This site [1] from 2015 claimed it was in 300 meter waters, ~25km from Cartagena. Some of the infographics suggest it is NW of Isla del Tesoro. Maybe best to look at nautical charts of the area, and plot a course from west of Isla Rosario to northwest of Isla del Tesoro, along the part of the sea floor that is ~900m deep (course runs roughly NE). Map/scan that with the sonar on the submersibles, focus on major "outcroppings" that are possibly the San Jose (or the other two nearby shipwrecks). For a second pass, go straight to those outcroppings with a higher-resolution scan, plus visual cameras (use the released photos as reference for visual confirmation). Once pinpointed, send in the bigger cargo-carrier sub with robotic arms, excavator shovel, etc. and start scooping up the treasure.
Split it 60/40 with HSBC, and your team still gets to keep ~$4.7 BILLION. That's a better unicorn offramp than building yet another BS SaaS cloud app.
[1] https://blog.geogarage.com/2015/12/spanish-galleon-may-conta...
You could set up monitoring of Colombian Naval resources.
You could position your team/startup to be the best contract to work the government retrieval job. Using knowledge from the winning bid, you extract part of the treasure during sanctioned reconnaissance.
Using some legal nonsense, you stake an organization to claim partial rights to the treasure and hope discovery during the legal nonsense reveals the location
You marry a daughter of Poseidon and ask for the treasure as dowry.
EDIT: Further research (reading the Wikipedia page) makes it sound closer to your estimate. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_galleon_San_José:
> The wreck of the San José is estimated to be worth about $14.43 billion as of 2021, based on the speculation that it had up to 11 million 4-doubloons (i.e. 11 million 8 escudos gold coins, or 11 million coins each of 27 grams of 92% gold, totaling 8.8 million troy ounces AGW, or $11.5 billion) and many silver coins on board at the time of its sinking
I now heartily endorse your plan!
Commercials will be more than content. Seasons will be made out of 15 minutes of footage. It'll be huge!
E.g. Would the criminal enterprise that went to such great lengths to obtain the material rather sell a sizable quantity of unmarked gold ingots to WeDon'tCareWhereItCameFromJewelers LLC for a nice return, or go through an arduous process to sell coins in varied quantities to wealthy collectors.
One ping only Vasili!
Spain does appear to have recognized law on their side - it was a Spanish flagged ship, and modern Spain is the recognized successor of historical imperial Spain. But giving the treasure to Spain would be tantamount to endorsing colonial looting.
On the other hand, giving it to anyone else sets a precedent for distributing colonial-era wealth as some form of reparations, and trying to unpick hundreds of years of history and population mixing to work out exactly who should be a beneficiary seems an impossibility.
Maybe it should stay sunken until we have matured a little more as a species.
That’s definitely interesting. Consider: - Stalin paid for American war supplies with gold during WWII (see HMS Edinburgh e.g.); - This gold was obtained via forced labor; - My relatives were made part of the forced labor force;
Not yet a hundred of years of history, not much of population mixing yet - I am here and not mixed with anyone except my wife, not much to unpick. So just tell me: which part of the US Treasury should be mine, if you do not want to endorse imperialistic looting?
In this case we're talking about a native culture that was destroyed, subjugated, colonized, and enslaved.
Imo, they should do the best they can to pay reparations of some sort to the remaining native populations and not just in Colombia. That would be the right thing to do, but unfortunately governments would never willingly set the precedent of correcting historical wrongs.
Saudí Arabia, our close ally, cuts off limbs for theft and has public beheadings for many crimes (recently over 80 in one day).
Having an accurate historical context and an understanding of the nuanced nature of history makes a difference. As far as the Spanish Conquest of the Americas goes, it's hard to wrap your head around the destruction they caused over hundreds of years. Entire cultures and civilians wiped out, indigenous populations worked to death in the millions. Also all of the natural resources exploited (which still happens to this day, unfortunately).
No, not at all. The people were not convinced by courts (sometimes kangaroo courts, other times not even that), and the thing they were conviced of were not crimes. And also there were forced labourers from other countries involved.
> In this case we're talking about a native culture that was destroyed, subjugated, colonized, and enslaved.
So actually completely the same thing that Stalin has done to other cultures in the Soviet Imperium, including vassal states.
There were some political prisoners, but much in the same way we imprisoned some British after the revolutionary war and later confederates. Also, someone being convinced of something without committing a crime is a non sequitur. Countries can make whatever laws they want.
I get where you're coming from, until I started studying Russian history I had the same view, I grew up with the same Cold War info like everyone else, but comparing that to the Spanish conquest of the Americas is night and day. The immense destruction has been unmatched in history (that we definitively know).
It is historically completely accurate, as lived by the brother of my grandfather who was one of those forced laborers. Never saw a judge or a court.
> Countries can make whatever laws they want.
They can, but if lawless and brazen enough they can also 'convince' you of anything regardless of laws, which is what often happened. Written laws were not worth very much back then.
> I grew up with the same Cold War info like everyone else
Born on the oppposite side of the Iron Curtain, I did not grow up with the same Cold War info like you, I presume.
> but comparing that to the Spanish conquest of the Americas is night and day
It really is not. Just the Holodomor killed millions of people and that is just an episode.
Hold on!!!
First, this ship sank in the middle of the night - after fierce fighting with HMS Expedition. Were her colors still flying at the time of the explosion, or had she surrendered to the superior British fleet, as other Spanish ships already had?
Second, this took place at a time when the rightful monarch of Spain was in dispute. Two people claimed to be King. Who really was the rightful ruler, and was the ship sailing under his orders at the time?
It's not so clear cut after all...
They should de divide the gold between all the natives (indigenous) of the region. I don't think the gold should go to Colombia simply because that country did exist back then, the Spanish were stealing from natives.
At the very least they should give all the gold to some branch of government concerned with indigenous rights.
I wish. But in practice I'd say when the hell freezes over.
as if there is only one. i live at least 3 different hells per day
There's no way to be fair with this. There is no "rightful owner" of this gold, so anything that's done with it is unfair in some way.
It's true that the descendants of the people who were harmed in the collection (stealing, mining, or both) of that gold were not alive then, but their current conditions were determined by the behavior of the colonists who collected the gold.
They would have inherited a very different (likely better) life if the colonists had not arrived.
> They would have inherited a very different (likely better) life if the colonists had not arrived.
This quote is making my head spin, what a damn bold statement from a modern democracy.
"Yeah you know how our ancestors enslaved, murdered and plundered your natives? Well, we're calling dibs on that bounty, after all conquistadors dropped it as they were heading home."
Granted, the article doesn't establish who exactly is "Spain".
Some Spaniard art or other cultural heritage on board sounds reasonable, but the obviously plundered bounty irks me.
>This quote is making my head spin
It's one step up from "Finders...Keepers". It was in our possession last, so therefore it is still ours (shh, don't worry about how we got it or who we took it from).
A truly mixed area. This mix gave way to a second generation of "mestizos", "zambos" and "mulatos". I imagine those words are problematic now, but that's what I was taught in school in south america
s/milkshake/sunken treasure/g
- The law of the sea recognizes that the cargo of a shipwreck belongs to the country of the ship’s flag. There was no Colombia nation at the time of the shipwreck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_galleon_San_José
It's believed that the gold, silver, and emeralds on board could be worth up to $17 billion at today's values.
A private company (Odyssey Marine Exploration) salvaged the wreck illegally:
> On February 17, 2012, it was reported that U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Pizzo ordered Odyssey to return the coins to Spain by February 24, 2012, where they will be dispersed to museums, not to heirs. The Supreme Court declined to stay this order and Odyssey will abide by the decision.[23] On February 24, 2012, two C-130 Hercules aircraft from the Spanish Air Force picked up the treasure in Florida and transported it to Spain.[24] Odyssey petitioned the Supreme Court to reconsider the issues in the case but on May 14, 2012, the court declined to take up the appeal.[25] The coins have been returned to Spain, whereby Spanish law dictates that they can never be sold to the public.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Swan_Project
The treasure can be visited at the Museno Nacional de Arqueología Subacuática in Cartagena (Murcia, Spain) https://www.culturaydeporte.gob.es/mnarqua/colecciones/pieza...
Some maps an information about the ship https://www.elmundo.es/cultura/laesferadepapel/2021/11/26/61...
Spain insists that the bounty is theirs since it was aboard a Spanish ship, while Bolivia's Qhara Qhara nation says it should get the treasures as the Spanish forced the community's people to mine the precious metals."
Sounds like a Star Trek TNG episode. Where's Picard?
> In the 150t range.
This one looks amazing. I hope they are able to raise the wreck and preserve the structure
However, as a good faith, a portion of the treasure could (and should) be given to Colombia.
Spain and Colombia are brother countries, I'm sure we can find some agreement (I hope!).
I understand the Colombian and Bolivian claims, but Spain trying to get their blood gold 300 years after enslaving and murdering the natives is a bit rich.
I agree it’s a dick move by Spain and really tarnishes their reputation today. But that’s not a legal argument.
(Both claims would be/are farcical)
If the Colombians don't give the treasure willingly the Spanish will start calling them tight arses.
[1]https://militarymaps.rct.uk/war-of-the-spanish-succession-17....
The war of Spanish Succession was between the countries you mentioned, as well as Catalonia as a part of both Spain and France. One important event in that war was the formation of an army of Habsburg loyalists by Catalonia to dispute the treaties of Utrecht. This in turn led to the Nueva Planta decrees and the end of Catalonia as an autonomous principality within Spain.
If you have any more questions about imperial Spain (particularly the colonies) or you'd like me to go into more depth, feel free to ask.
Sadly, what is in the past cannot be undone. We can help poor and needed people, though. And we should be doing that, independently of their ancestors.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/apr/13/barcelona-sla...
[2] https://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20200622/481890711216/a...
[3] https://aldianews.com/culture/heritage-and-history/very-prof...
[4] https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-latin-america-48476378