Colombia Just Recovered the First Treasure From the “Holy Grail of Shipwrecks,” Worth Up to $17 Billion, but a New Mystery Is Emerging

Colombia has begun raising treasure from the San José, a Spanish galleon considered the “Holy Grail of all shipwrecks,” but the recovery has set off looting accusations and a tangle of ownership claims. But has anyone already recovered artifacts from the wreck, and who will have the right to claim the treasures still on board?

The San José lies 1,970 feet below the surface off the coast of Colombia, and estimates of its on-board value run from $10 billion to $17 billion in today’s currency. Nearly a year after the first pieces surfaced, the wreck is producing more questions than answers.

The British Royal Navy sank the ship in 1708, during the War of Spanish Succession. It was long thought to have sat untouched on the seabed ever since, which makes the current allegations about what may have happened down there all the more striking.

A Cargo Ten Years in the Making

The San José carried ten years’ worth of gold, silver, and gems, tribute from Spanish colonies in Latin America headed back to the Spanish king. About 200 tons of gold, silver, and uncut gemstones were aboard, the result of a decade of taxation saved up before the fleet’s planned voyage to Spain.

The macuquinas, known as cobs in English, were the main currency in the Americas at the time. They were typically cut from gold or silver ingots and were the primary way the Spanish moved large volumes of wealth from the Americas to Europe. The coin hoards likely formed part of the royal treasure dispatched from Peru.

On June 8, 1708, a fleet of 18 ships left Cartagena bound for Spain and was attacked by five British warships. The cannon battle blew up the San José’s gunpowder stores, sinking the 150-foot ship and nearly 600 sailors with it.

The First Recovery, and the First Doubts

In late 2025, the Colombian Ministry of Culture, Arts, and Knowledge used a robotic underwater vehicle to take the first samples. The galleon’s structure was left intact, and the finds were few: three coins, two porcelain cups of different styles, and a bronze cannon, still bearing fragments of wood, rope, and sediment.

Alhena Caicedo Fernández, director of the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (ICANH), said in a translated statement that collecting the objects “opens the possibility that citizens can approach” the galleon’s history through material testimony. Not everyone agrees.

One Colombian archaeologist who has challenged the recovery plan since 2018 said “no scientific reasons were given” for pulling up the artifacts, while the research team maintains the objects help determine the site’s conservation through physicochemical studies.

Even the rope caused a quarrel. According to the watchdog’s director, it was “most likely modern,” but the research team countered that rope has survived on far older wrecks, including a 12th-century Viking vessel.

Who Really Owns It?

Earlier this year, a Colombian oversight group dedicated to the country’s submerged cultural heritage sent an open letter to the nation’s attorney general. It alleged looting and unauthorized interventions at the wreck site in 2016 and 2022, and claimed the site’s coordinates, officially a state secret since the government announced the discovery in 2015, have been disclosed.

As mentioned by Popular Mechanics, the group’s suspicions trace partly to a University of Southampton deep-sea archaeology expert, who compared imagery from 2015 and 2016 and found “selective areas with sediment removal.” ICANH has repeatedly denied any looting.

Who owns the wreck is still unsettled. Spain considers it a sovereign warship and war grave, while Bolivia’s Qhara Qhara nation, whose ancestors mined much of the silver, has staked its own claim. The main legal fight is at the Permanent Court of Arbitration, where Sea Search Armada demands $10 billion, about half the cargo’s value, for having supposedly found the galleon in the early 1980s. Colombia denies the company located the real site, and an adverse ruling could make this the costliest treasure recovery in history for Colombia.