No quarter given in fight over sunken treasure ship
San Jose’s cargo took down galleon, embroiled nations
WASHINGTON — The evening of May 28, 1708, was moonless and stifling, with little in the way of wind to fill the massive sails of the Spanish treasure ship San Jose as it manoeuvered in the calm waters off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia. Not far off, barely visible in the fast-fading light, a British warship streaked toward the Spanish galleon, slowly but steadily gaining ground.
The ships angled toward one another, guns at the ready, battle flags raised. Billions of dollars in jewels and precious metals and the outcome of what some consider the first modern global war hung in the balance.
The confrontation would end in a cacophony of cannon fire and a final, fatal blast that sent the Spanish ship and its costly cargo plummeting to the sea floor. Neither the British nor the Spanish and their French allies would be able to use the loot to finance their efforts in the bloody War of Spanish Succession; the fight would drag on for six more years and end inconclusively, leading to 100 years of power struggles between the European nations.
Meanwhile, the San Jose and its riches remained submerged somewhere at the bottom of the Caribbean. The “Holy Grail of shipwrecks” it was thought to contain at least $1 billion (all figures US) and as much as $14 billion in emeralds, silver and gold.
In a statement Saturday, Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos announced that researchers with the country’s Ministry of Culture had found a wreck matching the San Jose using sonar, underwater cameras and remotely-operated robots.
The story of the San Jose begins not with the bloody sea battle in the spring of 1708, but seven years before, at the deathbed of Charles II of Spain. The ailing king had named as his successor the grandson of the famous French monarch Louis XIV — establishing a connection between France and Spain that other European powers found too close for comfort. The disputed “Spanish succession” launched a 13-year-long struggle over who would get to control the extensive Spanish colonial empire and its many riches.
The war pitted France and Spain against a coalition of British, German, Austrian, Portuguese and Dutch forces. By 1708, its coffers all but empty from the prolonged fight, France was desperate for the silver and gold mined by native people enslaved in the Spanish colonies.
Finally, Louis XIV ordered a 15-boat treasure fleet to set sail for Europe, with the San Jose as its flagship. The huge vessel was 150 feet from bow to stern and three decks deep and armed with 64 cannons and a crew of 500 men, and it carried the bulk of the fleet’s shipment of coins, bullion, jewels and valuable trade goods. The majority of the treasure belonged to Peruvian and Spanish merchants — the taxes on that, along with more than half a million Spanish reals bound for royal coffers, would amply finance the French war effort.
According to a history written by Sea Search Armada, a Washington-based commercial salvage company involved in the search for the San Jose wreck, the fleet’s cargo was worth as much as three times Spain’s annual income.
But Charles Wager, commodore of a small British squadron in the Caribbean, had other plans. Wager’s Expedition took on the San Jose just after sunset and hit a store of gunpowder, sparking a tremendous explosion.
By the time Wager could turn his attention back to the enemy ship it had entirely vanished. All but 11 of the 600 people on board perished, either incinerated in the explosion or drowned at sea.
Wager had denied the French access to the Spanish treasure, but he wouldn’t have access to it either.
But the 1708 struggle at sea wasn’t the only battle that the San Jose would be a part of. Even before anyone was certain of its location, it was embroiled in a decades-long legal dispute between Sea Search Armada (SSA) and Colombia’s government over who would get the sunken ship’s riches once they were finally found.
SSA claimed to have pinpointed the San Jose’s location in 1981, and negotiated with the Colombian government for 35 per cent of the ship’s treasures if the wreck was indeed recovered there. But Colombia’s government has laid claim to the entirety of the wreck’s contents, except for a five per cent finder’s fee, based on a law passed after the agreement with SSA was purportedly reached.
Meanwhile, Spanish culture secretary José María Lasalle said his country was also interested in the recovered loot. He said Saturday Spain was examining the information provided by Colombia before deciding “what action to take in defence of what we consider to be our sunken wealth.”