San José 1708
Marker: recorded wreck position (Age of Sail).
Key facts
| Name | San José | Wikidata label |
|---|---|---|
| Year lost | 1708 | Wikidata P793 significant event, point-in-time qualifier |
| Era | Age of Sail | derived from year |
| Ship type | galleon | Wikidata P31 instance of |
| Nationality / flag | Spain | Wikidata P8047 country of registry |
| Operator | Spanish Navy | Wikidata P137 operator |
| Sea / ocean | Caribbean Sea | Natural Earth marine areas (public domain), point-in-polygon |
| Nearest coast | Colombia | Natural Earth (public domain); approx. 38 km from land |
| Position | 9.5833, -76.2569 | Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0) |
About the wreck
San José was a 64-gun galleon of the Spanish Navy, commissioned by the Spanish Crown and built in the Basque Country of Spain. Launched in 1698, she served as a flagship of the Spanish treasure fleet during the War of the Spanish Succession and sank in battle off Barú Island, near Cartagena, Colombia, on 8 June 1708. The sinking killed nearly all of the approximately 600 Spanish sailors and officers serving aboard under orders of the Spanish Crown, making the wreck both a significant underwater cultural heritage site and a war grave of the Spanish state. The ship's cargo of gold, silver and emeralds is estimated to be worth about US$17 billion as of 2023.
The sunken Spanish warship was located at a depth of 600 metres in November 2015. Its discovery triggered an international ownership dispute, with Spain asserting sovereign rights over the vessel as a commissioned warship of the Spanish Navy, and Colombia claiming it as submerged national patrimony under domestic legislation.
Diving & visiting
The wreck of the Spanish galleon San José is estimated to be worth billions of dollars. This is based on the speculation that, similar to its surviving Spanish sister ship, San Joaquín, it had 11 million pesos in coins on board at the time of its sinking, worth up to $17 billion as of 2023. The silver and gold are from the mines of Potosí, Bolivia. The enormous value of the cargo destined for the Spanish Crown has led to San José being called the "Holy Grail of Shipwrecks".
Glocca Mora Co., a group of investors from the United States, claimed to have found the Spanish shipwreck off the coast of Colombia in 1981.
Location
- Recorded position: 9.5833, -76.2569 (Wikidata P625 coordinate location (CC0); may be approximate)
- Sea / ocean: Caribbean Sea
- Nearest coast: Colombia
Wreck positions on this site are for interest only and are not for navigation. Many wrecks are war graves or legally protected: never disturb human remains or remove artefacts, and check local law before diving.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Spanish galleon San José (revision 1377865431), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section and section(s) “Search and discovery”; condensed by selecting paragraphs and trimming at sentence boundaries; citations and formatting removed. No text added. This excerpt is available under the same licence.
Wreck facts from Wikidata (CC0).
Nearby wrecks
- USS Albany 1854 · 118 km
Browse more: South America wrecks · wrecks off Colombia · Caribbean Sea · Age of Sail