Colombia Finds What May Be World’s Largest Sunken Treasure
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CARTAGENA, Colombia — President Juan Manual Santos on Saturday hailed the discovery of a Spanish galleon that went down off the South American nation’s coast more than 300 years ago with what may be the world’s largest sunken treasure.

At a news conference in this colonial port city, Santos said the exact location of the galleon San Jose, and how it was discovered with the help of an international team of experts, was a state secret that he’d personally safeguard. The ship sank somewhere in the wide area off Colombia’s Baru peninsula, south of Cartagena.

While no humans have yet to reach the wreckage site, autonomous underwater vehicles had gone there and brought back photos of dolphin-stamped bronze cannons in a well-preserved state that leave no doubt to the ship’s identity, the government said.

The discovery is the latest chapter in a saga that began three centuries ago, on June 8, 1708, when the galleon ship with 600 people aboard sank as it was trying to outrun a fleet of British warships. It is believed to have been carrying 11 million gold coins and jewels from then Spanish-controlled colonies that could be worth billions of dollars if ever recovered.

The ship, which maritime experts consider the holy grail of Spanish colonial shipwrecks, has also been the subject of a legal battle in the U.S., Colombia and Spain over who owns the rights to the sunken treasure.

In 1982, Sea Search Armada, a salvage company owned by U.S. investors including the late actor Michael Landon and convicted Nixon White House adviser John Ehrlichman, announced it had found the San Jose’s resting place 700 feet below the water’s surface.

Two years later, Colombia’s government overturned well-established maritime law that gives 50 percent to whoever locates a shipwreck, slashing Sea Search’s take to a 5 percent “finder’s fee.”

A lawsuit by the American investors in a federal court in Washington was dismissed in 2011 and the ruling was affirmed on appeal two years later. Colombia’s Supreme Court has ordered the ship to be recovered before the international dispute over the fortune can be settled.

Santos didn’t mention any salvage company’s claim during his presentation, but the government said the ship had been found Nov. 27 in a never-before referenced location through the use of new meteorological and underwater mapping studies.

Danilo Devis, who has represented Sea Search in Colombia for decades, expressed optimism that the sunken treasure, whose haul could easily be worth more than $10 billion, would finally be recovered.

But he bristled at the suggestion that experts located the underwater grave anywhere different from the area adjacent to the coordinates Sea Search gave authorities three decades ago.

“The government may have been the one to find it but this really just reconfirms what we told them in 1982,” he told The Associated Press from his home in Barranquilla, Colombia.

The president said any recovery effort would take years but would be guided by a desire to protect the national patrimony.

During his presentation, Santos showed an underwater video that appears to show jewels and the cannons. In the footage, English-speaking crew members aboard a Colombian naval ship can be seen launching the underwater vehicle into the ocean.

最高價沉船寶藏 哥倫比亞海底找到了

哥倫比亞總統桑托斯5日宣布，在該國沿海發現一艘300多年前遭英軍擊沉、滿載寶藏的西班牙大帆船聖荷西號，並稱這是人類歷史上所發現價值最高的海底沉船寶藏。CNN報導，尋寶公司估計這批寶藏價值高達170億美元（約台幣5600億元）。

桑托斯在該國北部港口城市卡他赫納召開記者會時說，有關聖荷西號的確切位置以及該船是如何在國際專家團隊幫助下被找到，皆屬於國家機密，他將親自維護。聖荷西號沉沒之處大約位在卡他赫納以南、巴魯半島以外的廣大海域。

哥倫比亞政府表示，雖然尚未有人到過聖荷西號殘骸地點，自主式無人載具已到那觀測過，並拍到保存完好的銅砲，而砲管上刻著的海豚圖樣無疑地更證明沉船的身份。

此一發現是這個在3個世紀前就開始的尋寶傳奇最新篇章。1708年6月8日時，載有600人的聖荷西號為逃避英軍艦隊追趕而遭到擊沉。

外傳該船載有自西班亞殖民地搜刮來的1100萬枚金幣和珠寶，估計價值在40億至170億美元之間。

針對這些寶藏的歸屬問題，美國、哥倫比亞以及西班牙3國多所爭執，官司纏訟多年，迄今仍未了結。

美國的海艘艦隊公司（Sea Search Armada）在1982年時宣布，在海面下約214公尺處發現聖荷西號。兩年後，哥倫比亞政府推翻了國際海事法慣例中的與發現者均分收益規定，將分給海艘艦隊公司的比率大砍成5%的「發現費」。美國聯邦法院在2011年最終判定寶藏歸哥倫比亞政府所有，全案在兩年後定讞，而哥倫比亞最高法院則諭令先尋獲聖荷西號，才解決財富歸屬問題。不過，當年這項「發現」並無任何確切證據。

桑托斯在記者會上並未提及與任何打撈業者的法律糾紛。

哥倫比亞政府則表示，透過新型氣象與水下測繪研究，沉船已於11月27日在一處過去從未搜尋過的海域中找到。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2015/12/05/world/americas/ap-lt-colombia-sunken-galleon.html

2015-12-07．聯合報．A13．國際．編譯陳韋廷