Diagram shows the layout of a Spanish typical galleon like the San Jose. SciencePhotoGallery.com.

Where to find $17 billion under the sea is hardly a secret. A tangled snarl of claims to the holy grail of treasure wrecks plus technical challenges of visiting the ship are thwarting the recovery of its prize. The San Jose is some 2,000 feet below the waters off Colombia, where it sank in a battle in 1708. How to salvage its cargo while maintaining respect for the 600 souls that were lost in its sinking is keeping its bounty in situ.

Colombia announced plans early in 2024 to have its navy recover items from the wreck for preservation and display in museums. Whether that effort got under way has yet to be seen. When Colombia originally planned to salvage the treasure in 2018, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization said, “not so fast!” UNESCO claimed the project would go against the best scientific standards and international principles. Besides, some international laws hold that as a warship the wreck and its contents remain the property of the nation flying its flag, which was Spain.

Gold coins litter sea floor where the San Jose rests off Colombia. Armada de la Republica de Colombia.

The battle for ownership started in 1981, not long after Sea Search Armada said it found the wreck. SSA is a United States-based company that offered to give Colombia 35 percent of the proceeds for salvage rights to the treasure. Colombia countered with an offer to give SSA 5 percent, upon which it would levy a 45 percent income tax. That gave SSA little incentive to mount a costly recovery operation at sea, so it twice sued for better terms in U.S. courts, which ultimately ruled that the matter was in Colombia’s hands, without providing SSA’s coordinates for the wreck site. Then in 2015, Colombia ruled that SSA’s stack of legal papers was a pile of poppycock. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced that the nation’s navy had discovered the real wreck, identifying the ship with photos taken by a remotely operated vehicle of distinctive dolphin moldings on its bronze cannons. Colombia claimed the wreck as part of its submerged patrimony, and pledged to preserve the ship and all of its contents. The Colombian Navy has since patrolled the waters to thwart visits by other operators.

Dolphin-shaped designs on cannons helped identify the San Jose wreck. Woods Hole Oceanography photo at DeeperBlue.com.

Groups representing Aztecs, Mayans and Incas – the indigenous people of Central America — have also laid claim to the treasure. Precious metals aboard Spanish treasure fleets were mined in Mexico, Bolivia and Peru by slave labor of the Native Americans. Theodor de Bry, a Belgian artist and publisher, showed what the slaves thought of working conditions in those mines as far back as 1594 in an engraving depicting natives in an uprising pouring molten silver into the mouth of a bound Spanish conquistador.

The San Jose’s fate was set in motion when King Charles II of Spain died childless. With no successor to the throne, Philip Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France squared off with Archduke Charles of Austria to gain the crown. The Archduke was backed by a coalition of the Holy Roman Empire, the Dutch Republic and Great Britain. However beyond the fight over the reign of Spain was the drive to rule the seas and the colonies they touched. Spain at the time was running regular naval armadas to the New World to enrich its royal treasury with gold, silver, gems and agricultural goods gained from the enslaved inhabitants of its conquered lands. Caribbean ports also warehoused goods hauled overland across Central America from Spanish fleets operating in Pacific and Asian waters, including Chinese porcelain, tea, indigo, silks, Indian cotton, Persian carpets, medicines and perfumes.

Spanish trade routes are charted by World History Encyclopedia. World history.org.

Native Americans exact revenge for their slave labor in New World mines by pouring molten silver into the mouth of a Spanish Conquistador in a 1594 engraving by Theodore de Bry. Public domain image at WorldHistory.org website.

The Treasure Ship
Built in 1697 in Usurbil by order of Spanish Archbishop Pedro Arostegui, the San Jose was launched the following year, initially as a merchant ship. The ship was about 100 feet long with a beam of 30 feet and a draft of 16 feet. Like her sister ship, the San Joaquin, the San Jose had three main masts and three decks. The distinction between merchant and naval battle ships was blurred in days when fending off pirates and privateers was common. The ships sported 64 cannons: 26 18-pounders on the lower deck, 26 10-pounders on the middle deck and 12 6-pounders on the rear quarterdeck and forecastle. Their sides were reinforced with heavy wooden beams to withstand cannon balls shot from competing vessels in battles.

The San Jose, its sister ship San Joaquin and the smaller Santa Cruz were laden with goods while rounding up a shopping trip in the New World in late spring 1708. The San Jose had some 11 million pesos of goods aboard, or roughly $17 billion in modern currency. The San Joaquin held about 5 million pesos. The Santa Cruz had only a fraction of those sums in its hold. Captain Jose Fernandez de Santillan was leading the expedition aboard the San Jose. His small squadron of 14 merchant ships took on supplies from Pequena Baru, a small island in the Rosario chain, when it received a warning from Cartagena’s governor that some British vessels were sighted in the area.

San Jose explodes when a hot cannon shot from the HMS Expedition ignites its gunpowder store. Painting by Samuel Scott National Maritime Museum.

The Battle
Captain Santillan was uneasy about the approaching hurricane season with its possibilities of violent storms for the return leg of the trip to Spain. Adding to his ill-ease was word that Jean-Baptiste du Casse, head of the military escort, was threatening to leave Havana without the San Jose and the other ships under Santillan’s direction. So he opted to take his chances with his heavily armed galleons for protection to make a break for Cuba. The small fleet dropped anchor off Portobelo, Colombia, on the evening of June 7, planning to sail on in the morning.

June 8 dawned with little wind, but it was just enough for British Senior Captain Charles Wager to spring his trap. Wager came from a long line of British sailors and sea captains, and had been sent by the Royal Navy to Jamaica in 1707 to keep an eye on Spanish ship movements. His intelligence paid off aboard the HMS Expedition from which he spotted Santillan’s ships still at anchor that evening like a flock of sitting ducks. Wager quickly surprised the Spanish with superior firepower. Besides the Expedition’s 70 cannons, the British had 60 cannons aboard the Kingston, 50 on the Portland, and 28 on the Vulture, an expendable fire ship that could be used to bomb the enemy.

Although Sir Charles Wager did not get the San Jose’s treasure, lesser spoils from capturing the Santa Cruz brought him fortune and fame.

The Spanish circled to defend their treasure ships, but the British knew enough to go for the big galleons, which would hold the gold. The Kingston’s attempts to overcome and board the San Joaquin were thwarted as the ship slipped off into the night toward the heavily armed Spanish fort at Cartagena, making it folly for the British to pursue. The San Jose then became the target of Wager’s ships, pummeling the galleon with cannonballs as the Expedition approached it with intent to board the ship. Unfortunately, one of those hot rounds hit the San Jose’s powder stores, and the ship suddenly exploded, quickly sinking, taking all but 11 of its estimated 600 navy crewmen and passengers to a deep watery grave. Wager found the Santa Cruz as the night wore on, engaging it in a battle that left 14 British and 90 Spanish dead before it was boarded and seized. Its cargo of 13 chests of pieces of eight and 14 pigs of silver were private property, the spoils of which went largely to Wager.

Although Wager missed capturing the big prizes, the swag from the Santa Cruz made him a wealthy man. Since he captured it, Wager avoided the court martial that befell the captain who let the San Joaquin escape with its vastly larger treasure. Wager became a hero for his actions in the West Indies. He was promoted to Admiral, and knighted on December 8, 1709, then elected to parliament in the following year. He was appointed Treasurer of the Navy in 1742, and died peacefully at his Chelsea home in 1743. His grave in the north transept of Westminster Abbey is marked with a bas-relief by Peter Scheemakers showing his famous battle with the San Jose. He shared his wealth with philanthropy, becoming a patron of the Cockney Feast that evolved into the Cockney Festival, an event prized by posh Londoners every March to this day.

Author: Bob Sterner

Bob Sterner has covered sport diving and marine conservation with stories and photos as a staffer and freelancer for leading magazines and news organizations. The founding co-publisher and editor of Immersed, the international scuba diving magazine, he has represented the publication and been a presenter at scuba diving trade shows across the US, Canada and Asia.