Colombia says it has found the shipwreck of a storied Spanish galleon laden with gold, silver and precious stones, three centuries after it was sunk by the British in the Caribbean.
"This is the most valuable treasure that has been found in the history of humanity," President Juan Manuel Santos declared on Saturday. He was speaking from the northern port city of Cartagena, close to where experts made the hugely valuable find.
The loot is estimated to be worth around $2 billion, its value having dropped significantly due to the falling price of silver, according to US-based company Sea Search Armada.
SSA, whose subsidiary claimed in the early 1980s that it had found the galleon's final resting place, was engaged in a long-running battle with the government of Colombia. The find was not confirmed and a US court ultimately ruled it was Colombian property.
The San Jose has long been the source of fascination and popular legends, and even figures in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Love in the Time of Cholera."
Although they found plenty of other wrecks, the San Jose's location had remained a mystery until now.
The San Jose was sunk in June 1708 near the Islas del Rosario, off Colombia's Caribbean coast, during combat with British ships attempting to take its cargo, as part of the War of Spanish Succession. The galleon was the main ship in a treasure fleet carrying gold, silver and other valuable items from Spain's American colonies to King Philip V.
Only a handful of the ship's crew of 600 survived when the San Jose sank.
哥倫比亞宣稱發明了三個世紀前在加勒比海被英國擊沉的西班牙聖荷西號巨型罹難風帆。據悉這艘著名汗青的風帆上載有大批的黃金、銀幣和寶石。
哥倫比亞總統桑托斯在周六公然說，“這是人類汗青上發明的最有代價的寶藏。” 他於北部的都會卡他赫納宣布了這則新聞，那邊距專家發明偉大寶藏的所在很近。
總部在紐約的海艘艦隊公司稱，這艘寶藏的代價估測為20億美元，但因為銀價跌落，它已顯著貶值。
海艘艦隊公司的子公司早在20世紀80年月便表現已發明了沉船的終極地位，然則卻陷於與哥倫比亞當局歷久的辯論中。爭議一向沒有成果，終極美公法院宣告這艘風帆的全部權歸哥倫比亞。
這艘名為聖荷西號的風帆一向是魔力之源和民間神話，乃至被作家加西亞·馬爾克斯寫進他的故事《霍亂時代的戀愛》裏。
只管人們已發明了大批的沉船殘骸，但聖荷西號的詳細地位仍舊是一個謎。
聖荷西號1708年沉落在加勒比海岸的口岸都會羅薩裏奧鄰近，其時西班牙在與英國征戰，英國船隊妄圖攔阻西班牙貨色，這也是西班牙王室繼續戰的一部門。這艘風帆作為主船隊，載滿著從西班牙在南美的殖民地供獻給西班牙國王費利佩五世金銀珠寶。
聖荷西號埋沒的時刻只有小部門600人的海員幸存。
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