December 5, 2015Posted by Joseph R Fonseca
Colombia (click here) has found the wreck of a Spanish galleon that sank off the coast of Cartagena and is thought to be laden with emeralds and gold and silver coins, President Juan Manuel Santos said on Friday.
More details will be provided at a news conference on Saturday, Santos said from his Twitter account.
The San Jose sank in 1708 in the Caribbean Sea close to the walled port city of Cartagena. It was part of the fleet of King Philip V as he fought the English during the War of Spanish Succession.
"Great news! We have found the San Jose galleon. Tomorrow we will provide details at a press conference from Cartagena," Santos tweeted.
The government's claim on Friday did not shed light on a legal wrangle with Sea Search Armada, a U.S.-based salvage company which had a long-standing suit against Bogota over ownership of the wreck. SSA said in 1981 it had located the area in which the ship sank.
SSA and the government were partners back then and following international custom, they agreed to split any proceeds. The government later said any treasure would belong to Colombia.
In 2011 a U.S. court declared the galleon property of the Colombian state.
(Reporting by Helen Murphy; Editing by Sandra Maler)
The coin to the right is a maravedí. It may have been coined in Liberia during the 11th to 14th century. Before 1492 and Columbus. But, it was the smallest denomination of Spanish currency.
The coin to the left is the next denomination, a Spanish real.
The coin to the right is literally a piece of eight. The silver coins which were mostly probably minted from South American silver, were divided to 'make change' in trading of goods. These while valuable also represent a time in history when coin's value was according to the value of the silver. Literally, it was a trading commodity.
The Spanish Galleon San Jose sank in the early seventeen hundreds. It would have silver coins and pieces of eight on board to carry out commerce.
...A 1783 Chalmers (Maryland) Shilling (click here)
Although dividing a Spanish dollar into eight parts or "bits" was probably satisfying, it was even more fun if one could divide it into nine or ten bits. These underweight "short bits" started to become a problem in the Annapolis area and John Chalmers and another silver smith, Thomas Sparrow, decided to do something about it. Sparrow and perhaps Chalmers made sets of dies for three pence, six pence and shillings, and offered to convert the "bits" into coins which had a defined weight and purity for the very modest of charge of 8%. Although these coins were unofficial, the powers at be seemed to be okay with it because there is no record of any proceedings taken against Chalmers and his partner.
Today the Chalmers coins are quite scarce with perhaps a couple hundred shillings known. The three and six pence pieces are much scarcer. The piece shown below is the more common "short worm" variety. The "worm" is the prize that the two birds are fighting over on the obverse....
September 5, 2015
By Tribune wire reports
...The ship, (click here) 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."
