Hidden treasure

Researchers offer new details how they found a 300-year-old ship that sank with $17 billion in treasure

For decades, researchers and governments have searched for a Spanish ship that sank more than 300 years ago, carrying gold and silver worth $17 billion today.
Trying to find the San Jose' has often been called the "holy grail of shipwrecks." It was finally discovered off the coast of Cartegena, Colombia, in 2015. But details of the find were kept under wraps until now -- when researchers with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) got the blessing of various governments to disclose them.

The history of the ship

The San José was a 62-gun, three-masted ship -- the flagship and largest galleon of a Spanish fleet carrying gold, silver and emerald from the mines of Potosi, Peru. It was traveling from Panama to Colombia when it went down on June 8, 1708, during a battle with British ships in the War of the Spanish Succession. Six hundred people were on board.
The British couldn't take the treasure before it sank. And the loss of the San José and its cargo caused financial hardships to merchants throughout Europe and the New World, according to an online account posted by Sea Search Armada (SSA), a group of US investors engaged in marine salvaging.