The crew of the
Colombian Navy ship
ARC Caribe is getting ready to undertake the largest underwater archeology mission in the recent history of Latin America.
The objective is to recover the first pieces of the galleon
San José
, the Spanish crown ship sunk by English pirates off the coast of Cartagena de Indias in June 1708. The extraction of the objects will be a scientific test to analyze how they react in the surface after having been more than three centuries 600 meters under the sea.
The Minister of Culture, Juan David Correa, announced this Friday that the exploration of the ship will begin between April and May of this year.
“We are going to extract, without modifying and without attacking the wreck, some things that are there in the bed,” he said.
The idea of Gustavo Petro's Government, explained the minister, is to lay the institutional, legal and scientific foundations for Colombia to become an underwater research power.
During 2024 alone, the expedition will cost 17,962 million pesos, close to 4.5 million dollars.
Correa's statements come just in the same week in which an international litigation formally begins, in the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, between the American company Sea Search Armada and the Colombian State.
The treasure hunting company sued Colombia for 10 billion dollars, nearly 40 trillion pesos, its estimate of the value of half of the sunken treasure.
Sea Search relies on the Free Trade Agreement between Colombia and the United States and assures that it found the site of the shipwreck before the national authorities.
However, the director in charge of the National Legal Defense Agency of the State, Paula Robledo, explained from Cartagena that Colombia has the necessary arguments to protect its cultural heritage.
Although she cannot give details of the defense strategy, she gave a piece of reassurance: “The coordinates that the plaintiff gives are not the coordinates where the galleon is,” she said this Friday, at the conclusion of an international symposium on the
San José.
.
Control post of the ship ARC Caribe.CHELO CAMACHO
While the litigation is resolved (it may take up to two years, according to Robledo's calculations), the Government's order is to advance the scientific development of exploration.
For this reason, a technical table that defines matters related to the galleon, in which the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Knowledge, the Colombian Institute of Anthropology and History (Icanh), the General Maritime Directorate (Dimar) and The Navy has established an action plan for the coming months.
The director of Icanh, Alhena Caicedo, explains that the idea is that at the end of this year at least five objectives will have been achieved: a detailed characterization of the site where the galleon is, an inventory of what it contains, an archaeological management plan, the declaration of a protected archaeological area and, most importantly or most symbolically, the recovery of the first pieces.
“We hope to have results from the archaeological and conservation diagnosis.
In such a way that the galleon can be preserved from a scientific and legal point of view,” says Caicedo.
Hermann León, head of Maritime Interests of the Navy, explains in dialogue with EL PAÍS the scientific details of the campaign in which the first pieces will be extracted.
It will be a joint effort between a satellite, the
ARC Caribe
and the Lynx robot, which will do the immersion.
“The pressure at 600 meters deep is very intense on the teams.
In order to carry out an effective real-time expedition we need to connect the satellite to the ship, the ship to the robot, and the robot to the arm that simulates the archaeologist's hand,” says León.
And he concludes excitedly: “it will be a technological link from the sky to the deepest part of the sea.”
Remotely operated vehicle (ROV), on February 23, 2024.CHELO CAMACHO
If everything goes as planned, the robot will go down to the
San José
, commanded by specialized pilots who will be inside the ship, and will take physical, chemical and biological samples of the galleon's cargo.
“It is an operation managed by a
joystick
, similar to that of video games,” Rear Admiral León explains simply.
It is not known with certainty that it will finally reach the surface.
In the last images taken by the same robot in 2022, you can see almost intact Chinese tableware, a couple of gold ingots, hundreds of eight-real coins, several cannons made in Seville in 1665, swords, vessels, ceramics, suitcases and many other small treasures of the time.
Portuguese archaeologist Filipe Castro, a researcher at the University of Coimbra and one of the guests at the symposium, believes that the Colombian Government's decision to value the galleon as an archaeological and cultural heritage, not as a treasure, is the correct one.
“All the simple spirits in the world, including treasure hunters, begin to dream of taking out those pieces to buy a Maserati,” he says jokingly in conversation with EL PAÍS.
And he adds: “The important thing is that in the galleon are the keys to understanding a chapter of human history, crystallized 600 meters under the sea;
to better understand the relationship of the colony between Spaniards, English, and indigenous peoples.”
View of the ship ARC Caribe.CHELO CAMACHO
With this expedition, Colombia hopes to obtain answers to multiple questions about the history of maritime trade between America and Europe at the beginning of the 18th century: ”The signs of smuggling in the Caribbean, the shipbuilding technologies of the time, the instruments used in naval confrontations, maritime battlefields, the type of goods transported in the galleon, their origins, uses and materials (metals, ceramics, glass, etc...)”, reads a press report from the Ministry.
Roberto Junco, deputy director of underwater archeology at Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History, agrees that the galleon contains important information about daily life on board.
“The objects found will reflect the customs of the crew.”
Junco explains in conversation with EL PAÍS that the project is going to be a milestone for Colombia, because it will allow us to lay the legal and scientific bases to undertake the documentation of underwater heritage in the Pacific, in the Caribbean, in the lakes, in the rivers, and in lagoons.
According to the researcher, what is important in this process is not the
San José
itself, nor the gold or silver it may have, but the more than 200 galleons that are sunken in the country's continental seas.
“If this goes well, Colombia will position itself as a power in underwater archaeology.”
The Government knows that an important step to achieve the success of the expedition, in the midst of the litigation with Sea Search, is to maintain a cooperative relationship with the Government of Spain, which on several occasions has claimed ownership of the ship.
For this reason, at the end of the symposium, the director of Icahn reiterated the desire to work together: “The Colombian Government is willing to think of the
San José
galleon as a shared heritage with the Spanish Government.
We can translate that purpose into a scenario of cooperation, of exchange, that allows both states to manage the galleon as everyone's heritage."
One of the crew members of the
ARC Caribe
Ship tells EL PAÍS that everything is planned for President Gustavo Petro to land on the ship's heliport on the day the first pieces of the galleon are extracted.
Heliport of the ship ARC Caribe.CHELO CAMACHO
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