Shipwrecks: The search for the San José
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 796 Ratings
🗓️ 1 October 2024
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the first of our three part series looking at the money behind shipwrecks, we start with what's been called "the most valuable shipwreck in the world".
The San José is a Spanish galleon sunk by the British off the Colombian coast more than 300 years ago.
The treasure onboard is estimated to be worth $18bn, which means plenty of people are looking for it, and trying to lay claim to it.
A salvage company, the Colombians, the Spanish and a Bolivian indigenous community all say the shipwreck and treasure is theirs.
We hear their claims and find out more about this "holy grail of shipwrecks".
Presented and produced by Gideon Long.
(Image: Wagner's action of Cartagena (depicting the moment the San Jose exploded) by Samuel Scott. Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Gideon Long and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:08.0 | Today, it's been hailed as the most valuable shipwreck in the world, the San Jose, |
| 0:12.8 | a Spanish galleon that was sunk by the British off the coast of Colombia over 300 years ago, |
| 0:18.1 | taking its cargo to the bottom of the ocean. |
| 0:20.3 | This treasure that sank with the ship included 7 million pesos, 116 steel chests, full of emeralds, |
| 0:28.8 | 30 million gold coins, the biggest treasure in the history of humanity. |
| 0:34.6 | But who owns the treasure on the San Jose and what's it worth? One US salvage company says |
| 0:39.9 | it could be as much as $18 billion. And as we'll hear on this program, there are plenty of people |
| 0:45.8 | who claim those riches should be theirs. The Spanish state, the Colombian government, of course, |
| 0:51.7 | and then there are various indigenous groups, and then of course |
| 0:55.3 | there are the treasure hunters. I don't think there's any way that everyone can be satisfied. |
| 1:00.7 | Over the next three days, I'll be looking at the fraught case of the San Jose and exploring |
| 1:05.1 | the complicated and lucrative business of shipwrecks and treasure hunting. So, squeeze yourself |
| 1:10.4 | into your wetsuit, |
| 1:11.5 | strap on your oxygen tanks, |
| 1:13.0 | and let's dive in. |
| 1:16.9 | The train at Captain 4 is the 0947. |
| 1:22.5 | Mind the gap, please. |
| 1:23.9 | This is Greenwich. |
| 1:26.8 | I'm in Greenwich in South East London,, famous of course for Greenwich Mean Time or GMT, |
| 1:32.9 | the standard used for setting clocks around the world, but famous also for its maritime history. |
| 1:39.1 | Greenwich is on the River Thames at the entrance to London and it's home to Britain's National Maritime Museum which is packed |
... |
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