The fight for a legendary shipwreck's treasure

0:00This is Planet Money from NPR. 10 years ago, Mike Purcell was on one of his missions, on a ship in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Colombia. And for about a week, every night, he had been sending out his autonomous underwater vehicle to search the sea floor. I bet if you go along that coast of Colombia every four miles, there's a ship. A sunken ship. This autonomous vehicle that Mike helped develop is like a little underwater drone. It would scan the bottom of the ocean and record whatever it came across. And one day, it came across a very, very big object. Yeah, we see something in the sonar that is a possible, yes.

0:46A possible, yes. Mike gets called in for all kinds of jobs like this. He was once asked to find Amelia Earhart's plane. No luck. Another time to locate this Air France plane that went down between Rio de Janeiro and Paris. That one they did find. This time, a private group and the Colombian government wanted his help finding a 300-year-old shipwreck that was the stuff of legend. The Spanish galleon, the San Jose. It was one of the most famous shipwrecks and maybe the most valuable one of all time. To investigate, they sent the drone back down to take pictures. And when the images came back up, Mike and his team crowded around this one guy's desk to see what they'd found.

1:33You know, we're down in this pretty old ship in this room that's a big, probably smaller than your closet. He's at his desk here and we're just looking at it and I'm behind him looking down at the pictures. And as they look at these grainy black and white underwater images from a few meters off the seafloor, they start to make things out. There is part of the hall, the wood hall. There's a hundred teacups sitting on the surface. A hundred teacups just lying there nestled into the sand next to the fish and crabs. Well, we saw cannons. We saw the anchor. We start taking the pictures and put them together like in a little bit of a mosaic.

2:17You can see an outline of the ship. And they see, no joke, a bunch of gold coins. I feel like my image of what a shipwreck looks like is literally that, like a chest with gold coins spilling out of it. Yeah. You're telling me that's actually real. That's actually what the picture showed you. Yeah, well, they weren't really spilling out. But they were there, maybe not in a chest, but scattered about the seafloor. Mike and his team were pretty sure this was the San Jose. We found it. We knew we found it. The San Jose was a Spanish galleon that sank in 1708 with billions of dollars worth of gold and silver and teacups aboard.

3:01They sent the big news back about a week later when they returned to port. They were told they had a visitor. Then the president and they came on board and we chatted with him briefly about finding it. Wait, you chatted with the president? Of Colombia, yes. Was he so excited? Yeah. He was very happy it was found. There's no doubt about that. This was 10 years ago, and that shipwreck is still sitting on the bottom of the seafloor. Because while the Colombian government is clearly invested in this ship, they are not the only ones. The battle that sank the San Jose was fierce. And so is the battle over who deserves control of its shipwreck and all its billions of dollars of treasure.

3:47Maybe it turns out to be$20 billion. Maybe it's$5 billion. I don't know. But it seems to me that they're lining up to fight over who gets it. So who will make out in the end here? I'm not sure. Are you in line? Do you have a seat? All I want is a teacup. Just a teacup. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Erica Barris. And I'm Mary Childs. So the San Jose shipwreck was found. But it is not clear who it actually belongs to. Turns out shipwrecks with billions of dollars worth of stuff on them can get pretty confusing and contentious. Colombia, Spain, American financiers, South American indigenous groups.

4:31Everyone wants a say in what should happen to the San Jose. And because the laws that govern this stuff can overlap and the jurisdictions can be so murky, every single group kind of has a valid argument. Today on the show, the fight for the San Jose. What one 300-year-old shipwreck can teach us about just how hard it is to untangle the legacy of colonialism.

5:07This message comes from NPR sponsor Zendesk. introducing the next generation of AI agents built to deliver resolutions for everyone. With an easy setup that can be completed in minutes, not months, Zendesk AI agents resolve 30 % of interactions instantly, quickly giving your customers what they need. Loved by over 10 ,000 companies, Zendesk AI makes service teams more efficient, businesses run better, and your customers happier. That's the Zendesk AI effect. Find out more at Zendesk.com. To Colombians, the ship that Mike Purcell found plays a huge role in the country's cultural imagination. To them, it was another El Dorado, the lost city of gold.

5:50The great Colombian author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, even wrote about the ship. In Love in the Time of Cholera, one of the characters wants to recover the San Jose so the woman he loves can bathe in gold. I, quite frankly, thought it was a legend. This is Juan Manuel Santos. So I really didn't give that importance to the San Jose until we found it. He was the president of Colombia from 2010 to 2018, the one who shook Mike Purcell's hand after they found the San Jose in 2015. President Juan remembers vividly when he found out that Mike's team had located the shipwreck. The minister called me and woke me up.

6:32And when I said, listen, I think it's two o 'clock in the morning. Oh, my God, Mr. President, I'm so sorry, but I have good news. And she told me. How did you feel at that moment? I thought, my God, God is on our side. And I started to say, how are we going to rescue it? How are we going to sell it to the world? Also, the type of legal fights that we were going to have. He could see the legal fights coming. But President Juan, he was pretty confident that Colombia would win those fights. Because for years, people had been beating down his door trying to work with the government to search Columbia's waters for the San Jose.

7:08Finally, one group got through, the group that Mike Purcell was working with. And they made a deal to work together and find it. And then they could figure out what to do with whatever profits. And then they found it. So President Juan says it's theirs. That's how it works. I remember because I studied, worked and studied in Great Britain. And I'm not a lawyer, but I remember something from the British law that the British had always applied that principle that said finders keepers. So if you find it, you keep it. So I'm going to apply that law to the galleon. Finder keepers, the galleon is ours.

7:49Okay. So you're already doing all these machinations in your head. Yes, yes, yes. I mean, I didn't sleep that night. And finders keepers is a legitimate legal argument. It's called the law of fines. If someone finds a shipwrecker cargo, they have the rights to it. So long as that thing was abandoned. And Colombia did find it because Mike Purcell and his autonomous underwater vehicle, his group was working with the Colombian government. And the San Jose has been sitting at the bottom of the sea for over 300 years. That sounds abandoned. Now, the law of fines mostly applies to ships found in international waters.

8:30This ship was in Colombia's territorial waters. And according to the UN's Convention on the Law of the Sea, countries have some jurisdiction over a certain area off their shores and over the removal of archaeological and historical objects found in there. Not long after he heard the news, President Juan gave a speech standing at the naval base in Cartagena about how Colombia was bearing witness to one of the greatest discoveries in the history of humanity.

9:12President Juan is no longer the president, but he says the nation wants to salvage the San Jose and to build a museum. That's the plan. This is a Colombian galleon, and we will do with the galleon what we think we should do. But historically, it's kind of not a Colombian galleon. It was a Spanish ship from Spain. To learn its history and learn about Spain's claim, we called up a Spanish expert in these types of artifacts, Ricardo Sanz Marcos. ¿Qué tal estás, Erika? ¿Cómo vas? Muy bien, muy bien. ¿Cómo estás? The San Jose was built in the late 1600s, and this ship was fancy. It weighed more than a thousand tons.

9:53It was built of wood that could withstand the salty seas and was reinforced with iron. It had three masts and 64 brass cannons, which were etched with dolphins. Ricardo says the San Jose was a state-of-the-art ship.

10:15tecnología de finales del siglo XVII. Uh, bueno, eso ahora tal vez no se ve, pero en ese tiempo. En ese tiempo era como lanzar un cohete a Marte. Ricardo says it had all the latest technology. For the 17th century, it was like a rocket built to go to Mars. Spain was a global superpower. And the route the San Jose took was iconic. Pues está, por supuesto, la historia de la carrera de Indias. La Carrera de Indias, the maritime network that connected Spain to the Americas and Asia and created what is often called La Primera Globalización. The first era of globalization, the period when Spain helped to establish this global network of trade.

11:03Porque ten en cuenta que los chinos traficaban, las sedas y las porceladas chinas llegaban a través de México. He says Spain was sending ships all over the world, moving porcelain and silk that came from China, gold and silver from the Americas. Great for Spain, but not everyone liked it. Including the English. England and Spain were at war over trade and colonies. And in June of 1708, the San Jose was going from what is now Panama to the coast of Cartagena before starting its journey to Spain. An English ship showed up to seize what was on board. They shot a cannonball into the San Jose, but that ball hit the ship's powder reserves.

11:44So, boom, the ship sank, along with nearly 600 men. Which makes this shipwreck site a Spanish war grave. This ship was never abandoned, Spain says. It's theirs. And that is why they also have a claim to the San Jose. The San Jose was flying the Spanish flag when it sank. And warships generally have something called sovereign immunity, which means they fall under their country's jurisdiction no matter where they are. So our expert Ricardo, who does not work for the Spanish government, says the San Jose does not belong to Colombia. It belongs to Spain. A nivel legal, a nivel de propiedad, el buque es un buque de Estado español y la propiedad es española.

12:28No cabe duda. No cabe duda, without a doubt. Ricardo likens it to a sunken embassy. And also, he says, it's a piece of history, Spain's history. Eso es como una cápsula del tiempo en el día que se hundió. It's like a time capsule from the day it sank. Ahí está la información de cómo se construían los barcos, de qué comida llevaban a bordo, de cómo eran los productos y los materiales que habían cargado en América. He says it has information about how the boat was constructed, what they ate, what they carried, where that stuff came from. And Spain has successfully made this argument before. Ricardo says about 20 years ago, different Americans found a different Spanish boat sunk by the English.

13:10Apparently that happened a lot. They recovered more than 500 ,000 silver and gold coins. And a U.S. court said the Spanish boat had sovereign immunity. So Spain ended up getting the coins. Ricardo says the same law should be applied to the San Jose.

13:31Now, Spain has tried to insert itself into other recent legal proceedings around this galleon, but to date it hasn't brought its own legal case based on sovereign immunity. Spain did put out a public statement that described the San Jose as an underwater tomb that, quote, cannot be subject to commercial exploitation, end quote. In other words, don't just haul off the silver and gold and dump the rest. So that is Spain's claim to the San Jose. It is an historical claim. But if we're talking historical claims, there's another group with a claim that goes slightly further back in history. Because while the ship itself may have come from Spain, that was not true of everything on board.

14:17To hear this claim, I called up Tata Samuel Flores Cruz.

14:26He was in Potosí, Bolivia.

14:31Which, he says, is in the jurisdiction of the indigenous Caracara Nation. He's one of the leaders of the Caracara. He says his interest in the San Jose began back in the 1990s. The movie Titanic had just come out. There were documentaries about it, and one of those documentaries made a reference to the San Jose. And he was like, wait, that's a ship that we, the Caracara, have a connection to. He says a lot of the silver and gold on the ship came from their land. Potosí is home to mines, gold and silver. One of the world's largest silver deposits was in Potosí. Tata Samuel says he became kind of obsessed with the San Jose.

15:21He says his community had documents dating back to the 1500s, including ones that showed what was on board the San Jose when it left Potosí, a whole lot of silver and gold that was mined by his ancestors. Possibly the same coins that Mike Purcell spotted scattered about the seafloor. The circumstances under which this mining took place were terrible. Spain had a horrific system of forced labor. Mistreatment, suffering, humiliation, human exploitation. There are estimates that over 8 million indigenous and African people died there as they worked the mines during Spanish colonialism. What Tata Samuel wants is an acknowledgement that the silver and gold mined in Potosí belongs to them.

16:09If there's any financial gain that comes from what's on board the San Jose, he wants to be sure that the Caracara benefit. La nación Caracara es dueño de toda la plata y el oro que salió en la colonia. He says the Caracara own the silver and gold mined during the years of colonialism. Si son plata de Potosí tiene que volver o tiene que servir para reparar a la nación Caracara. If it's silver from Potosí, it has to come back. Or it has to fund reparations for the Caracara. Tata Samuels traveled to Colombia to meet with government officials to make his case. And he says they seem open. As for Spain?

16:48He says if they want to, they can claim their cannons, their wood, if it even still exists. This isn't just about the San Jose. In his research, he's found that there were all these other sunken ships with silver and gold that he says the Caracara have a right to.

17:19This ship could be an example, could set a precedent. Last year, some other indigenous groups in Bolivia said they have a claim, too, and wanted to be part of his cause. Tata Samuel was like, yeah, great. The more, the merrier. So the Colombians, the Spanish, the Caracara, they all seem to have pretty valid claims to the San Jose. But guess who else also has a claim to the San Jose? A bunch of American businessmen. That's after the break.

17:53So far, we've talked about three groups who are claiming the San Jose shipwreck. Colombia, Spain, and the Caracara. But there is this other group whose claim is throwing a wrench in the proceedings of all the others. They call themselves the Sea Search Armada. And their claim goes back to the 1980s, when shipwreck treasure hunting was kind of having a moment. In all of the bodies of water where wooden chests full of gold coins might be found. All these private companies were out there searching for treasure. And one of those groups out there searching was a pair of American businessmen, both named Jim, who pooled together millions of dollars from investors to look for the San Jose.

18:36In 1981, they say they found pieces of wood that looked like they'd been blown up. Cannons, artifacts. So they told Colombia the secret coordinates where they had found evidence of a shipwreck. Now, their impression was, under Colombian law at the time, that entitled them to 50 % of whatever they found. They find it, they get to keep it, right? But almost immediately, they say, the Colombian government started changing the rules. So Sea Search Armada sued all the way to Colombia's Supreme Court. But in 2020, Colombia passed another law saying actually everything on that ship is cultural patrimony.

19:20No one can sell it, which means Cesar's Armada would get 50 percent of nothing. So Cesar's Armada sued Colombia anew. Yeah, the public transmission has started. Microphone, please. Last year, more than 40 years after they say they found the San Jose, they took their case to the Permanent Court of Arbitration. This is the first of two days of public hearing on jurisdiction between Sea Surge Armada, LLC, and the Republic of Colombia. This court exists to resolve international disputes. It's the place the world goes when a government and a business interest disagree. In this case, Sea Search Armada is arguing that Colombia is in violation of the free trade agreement between Colombia and the United States.

20:09And the fight in this court kind of encapsulates the four decades of Sea Search Armada's dispute with Colombia. Sea Search Armada's lawyers say Colombia gave us permission to search a little area and we found the San Jose in that area, which entitles us to half of what we found. The rights, and the Supreme Court confirms this, the right to treasure is acquired by its discovery. Colombia's lawyers say what they have been saying to the Sea Search Armada. You never found it. There was nothing in your coordinates or anywhere close. By the way, Colombia's lawyers declined to comment for this story.

20:49There's this one exchange that I really love between first one of Colombia's lawyers and then one of the arbiters. Columbia says Seasrch Armada is trying to claim a zone that is way too big, miles wide. They're saying that they are entitled to the Discovery Area, which includes the Galea San Jose, but may include other of the hundreds of shipwrecks that are supposed to be located in that particular area, because it is well known that it's an area full of shipwrecks. And mermaids and other underwater species. I don't know why I'm hunting up on mermaids. We have beautiful rips, which is the reason why there are so many shipwrecks as well.

21:28So that our position is that even if it is true that the Galeon is locating those coordinates, this is not how it works. Sea Surge Armada says, yeah, that is how it works. The ship blew up and it's been floating around on the seafloor for 300 years. It's going to be spread out by now. Sea Search Armada's case before the tribunal court will reconvene at the end of this year. This whole thing is now going on year 44. OK, so everybody has a claim. Colombia and the group that financed Mike Purcell's voyage. Spain, the Caracara Sea Search Armada. Because since the San Jose sank in 1708, power has shifted so much.

22:16The way we think about territory and land and ownership has shifted. And we are left trying to use today's tools to resolve something that started hundreds of years ago. This is all really complicated. And if you're wondering why nobody has just gone and brought the San Jose up from the seafloor, it's partly for legal reasons the SeaSearch Armada has an injunction, but also because in the years after it was found, there was a giant Colombian naval ship floating over the San Jose, guarding it. Maybe the simplest possible way to claim it.

23:04This episode of Planet Money was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kessler with help from Willa Rubin and edited by Keith Romer. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Neil Rauch with help from Robert Rodriguez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Thank you to Nicolette Kahn, Carla Ron Phillips, Leonardo Moreno Alvarez, Jose Maria Lancha, and Mariano Javier Aznar Gomez. And before we go, we just want to say a big thank you if you are one of the listeners who answered the call in the last few months and supported our show by signing up for NPR+. That support is so important to keeping our work going, so thank you.

23:37And if you heard about NPR +, but aren't supporting us yet, it is really easy to sign up. Just go to plus.npr.org. I'm Mary Childs. I'm Erica Barris. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.