The government of Colombia said this week that it had recovered a cannon, a porcelain cup and three coins from the wreckage of the San José, the Spanish galleon that was carrying a haul of gold, jewels and other goods when it sank in an ambush near the port city of Cartagena in 1708.
The artifacts were among the first to be collected from the San José since Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, said in 2023 that he wanted to accelerate a plan to bring the ship and its contents to the surface.
Mr. Petro was present when the items were collected aboard Colombian Navy vessels on Wednesday.
Treasure hunters have come to consider the San José the Holy Grail of shipwrecks because the haul of gold, jewels and other goods that it was carrying when it sank on its voyage from Seville, Spain, to the Americas could be worth upward of $20 billion today.
Some experts say that number is extraordinarily inflated. But the myth built around the San José has prompted the Colombian government to keep its exact location a secret as a matter of national security.
“We need to stop thinking of this as treasure. It’s not treasure in a 19th-century sense,” Juan David Correa told The New York Times in 2023, when he was Colombia’s culture minister. “This is a submerged archaeological heritage and it is of cultural and critical importance for Colombia.”
Expeditions to the site with underwater robotics have shown there are around 22 bronze cannons on the ocean floor, according to a government’s website devoted to the wreck.
Hundreds of white-and-blue porcelain cups have been spotted as well, possibly from China’s Qing dynasty. The cups may be evidence of smuggling on board the San José, according to the website.
A blue-and-white cup was recovered but the government did not say if it was a Qing dynasty cup.
Three coins were also retrieved that the government said were macuquinas.
Macuquinas, also known as cobs, are hand-hammered Spanish coins. The coins, which have an irregular shape, were struck in Spain and Spanish America and were in wide circulation by the end of the 16th century
The recovered artifacts will undergo a lengthy conservation process in a laboratory, the government said.
Archaeologists and historians have condemned the effort to bring the San José to the surface, arguing that disturbing the ship would do more harm than good.
Multiple parties, including Colombia and Spain, have laid claim to the ship and its contents. Indigenous groups and local descendants of Afro-Caribbean communities argue they are entitled to reparations because their ancestors mined the treasure.
Since 1981, Colombia has been in a legal battle with a search group called Glocca Morra, which claimed to have found the wreck. According to court documents, the group handed over the coordinates to the Colombian government with the understanding that it was entitled to half of the treasure.
Glocca Morra’s new owner, Sea Search Armada, is challenging a law that made everything from the wreck government property. The group is asking for what it estimates to be $10 billion worth of treasure.
Mr. Correa, the former culture minister, has said the government would retrieve a few artifacts, assess them, and then possibly proceed with a full excavation.
Rylee Kirk reports on breaking news, trending topics and major developing stories for The Times.
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