Treasure Is Finally Rising From the ‘Holy Grail of Shipwrecks.’ Someone May Have Gotten There First.

The hauling up of the world’s most valuable shipwreck had to start somewhere. So crews brought to the surface three small gold and bronze coins from the 1700s, pulled from the Spanish galleon the San José, considered the Holy Grail of all shipwrecks. But there’s plenty more still sitting 1,970 feet below the ocean’s surface off the coast of Colombia—as much as $17 billion worth.

And now, nearly a year after those first pieces broke the surface, more questions than answers are emerging from the wreck. The biggest one is: has somebody been down there already?

The San José, sunk by the British Royal Navy in the Caribbean during the War of Spanish Succession in 1708, was full of value. The ship was laden with 10 years’ worth of gold, silver, and gems—tribute from Spanish colonies in Latin America headed back to the Spanish king. The Colombian Ministry of Culture, Arts, and Knowledge used a robotic underwater vehicle to secure the first samples of that cargo in late 2025, picking up three coins, a bronze cannon (along with fragments of wood, rope, and sediment), and two porcelain cups—each with a different style—without disturbing the structure of the galleon itself.

Earlier this year, a Colombian oversight group dedicated to the country’s submerged cultural heritage issued an open letter to the nation’s attorney general, alleging looting and unauthorized interventions at the wreck site in 2016 and 2022—and claiming the site’s coordinates, officially a state secret since the government announced its discovery in 2015, have been disclosed. The group’s suspicions trace partly to an analysis by a University of Southampton deep-sea archaeology expert, who compared imagery of the wreck from 2015 and 2016 and found “selective areas with sediment removal.” Even the rope fragment recovered with the cannon sparked a fight: the watchdog’s director called it “most likely modern,” while the research team countered that rope has survived on far older wrecks, including a 12th-century Viking vessel. ICANH has repeatedly denied any looting.

Other experts questioned why the extraction happened at all. One Colombian archaeologist who has challenged the recovery plan since 2018 said “no scientific reasons were given” for pulling up the artifacts, while the research team maintains the objects help determine the site’s conservation through physicochemical studies.

Then there’s the custody battle—or battles, really. Current estimates of the on-board value have ranged from $10 billion to $17 billion in today’s currency, sparking competing claims from the Spanish government, which considers the galleon a sovereign warship and war grave, and Bolivia’s Indigenous Qhara Qhara nation, whose ancestors mined much of the silver aboard. The biggest legal fight is happening at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, where U.S.-based salvage company Sea Search Armada—which claims it located the galleon back in the early 1980s—is seeking $10 billion, roughly half the cargo’s value. Colombia disputes that the company ever found the real site. A ruling against Colombia could mean the most expensive treasure recovery in history will end up costing the country more than it winds up getting from the wreck.

But whoever gets custody of the San José probably won’t come up totally empty-handed. It’s estimated that 200 tons of gold, silver, and uncut gemstones were aboard the ship, the result of 10 years of taxation saved up before the fleet’s planned voyage back to Spain. The macuquinas—known as cobs in English—were the main currency in the Americas at the time, typically cut from gold or silver ingots, and were the primary way the Spanish transported large volumes of wealth from the Americas to Europe. These coin hoards likely formed part of the royal treasure dispatched from Peru.

But when the fleet of 18 ships left Cartagena bound for Spain on June 8, 1708, it was attacked by five British warships. The cannon battle resulted in the explosion of the San José’s gunpowder stores, sinking the 150-foot-long ship and nearly 600 sailors with it.

The shipwreck—and its treasured cargo—was thought to have sat untouched on the ocean floor ever since. Now, bit by bit, what’s left of it is reaching the surface once more. But as the legal fight over its ownership rises faster than the artifacts themselves, the real tragedy may be that the world’s greatest sunken treasure has already been plundered.