Robot sub finds 'holy grail of shipwrecks' with treasure worth billions
A more than 300-year-old Spanish shipwreck carrying treasure that might be worth up to $17 billion was discovered with the help of an underwater robot. It's called the Remus 6000 and it can dive nearly four miles and is loaded with sensors and cameras.
Bronze cannons confirmed "the holy grail of shipwrecks" had been found at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea. They are engraved with dolphins — a telltale sign they belong to the Spanish galleon San Jose, lost more than 300 years ago.
"I just sat there for about 10 minutes and smiled," said Jeff Kaeli, a research engineer with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Kaeli was alone in his bunk on the search vessel when he spotted the cannons.
"I'm not a marine archaeologist, but ... I know what a cannon looks like. So in that moment, I guess I was the only person in the world who knew we'd found the shipwreck," he said.
The exact location of the wreckage is still a secret, but it was discovered in November 2015 off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia. Its cargo of gold, silver, and emeralds could be worth as much as $17 billion.
The Remus 6000, operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, found the ship almost 2,000 feet below the surface. The underwater robot scanned the sea floor using long-range sonar then went back and took pictures of any objects that seemed out of the ordinary.
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It's powder magazine was hit during a battle with the English navy and it blew into shrapnel and sank off a small island.
They've always known where it was just not exactly, the government of Columbia never allowed it to be searched for until now it seems.
The "Atocha" found by Mel Fisher had a known treasure of 4 million pesos on board when it went down.
The "San Jose" had a treasure of 11 million pesos on board, they had kept all the treasure they were taking from South America in Cartegenia for years due to the English Navy taking it from their ships at sea.
Years of booty were loaded on to a number of ships in an attempt to run the British gauntlet but they were waiting outside.
Man I can't wait to see pics of the wreck, I've known about this ship for nearly fifty years now, another thing on my bucket list to see.
They took everything of gold and silver they could find, when they were done with that they went straight to the mines where it came from.
That's what they used people put into slavery for, to dig out the rest still in place, they even brought over mining engineers to get it all.
History isn't pretty.
