Isn’t it odd that although the Spanish stole the gold, silver & gems from all over the world, but when their ships wrecked off the shores of these very same countries, the Spanish claim the treasures as their own. As if to say “we stole it fair and square, lost it and couldn’t be bothered to look for it” and once someone had spent decades and millions to locate it, it’s all of a sudden important for the Spanish to claim that they own it because they have papers to say they lost it… Okay Spain, where’s your receipts as to how you came to be in possession of this treasure? 😂
Couple with the first one: it's your ship, your gold, but our waters, so we're keeping it anyways? To quote Dread Pirate Roberts: No good. I've known too many Spaniards
@@TacitaSaturnia The "it's our waters" has more to do with current legislation. If the salvagers weren't doing it for profit by selling the recovered treasure to individual buyers, but were salvaging it to send it to museums (in this case from the UK) they would have greenlit it after getting the proper permits for the operation. Proof of that is that the position of the shipwreck is known, but no Spanish organizations have bothered to salvage it. In Spain it's illegal to salvage archaeological treasure for profit, as it's considered public patrimony.
French, Spanish, Italians, English, Germans....they've owned the world at some point. Some made them better places , others didn't and others exterminated. They all looted. The Spanish didn't exterminate.
The only "gold, silver & gems" that were stolen was at the start of the colonization (and not everything they got at that time can be regarded as "stolen", since some was gotten by trade). Let's not enter on the retroactivity of international law nor on what was common practice at the time. Most of the gold, silver and gems transported by ship were extracted from mines, then minted or turned into bullions (metals, most commonly the first) or polished and cut (gems), all done in what was legally Spanish soil by paid labourers (better or worse paid, who knows, since it was the past, but at least the miners had their workdays legally capped at 8 hours and Sunday was a rest day), since during the time slavery was legal, slaves worked mostly in plantations or as househelp. So yes, they do have the receipts for most of that. Calling that "stealing" means that any company doing mining in a foreign country is stealing too. And that's not to mention that at least one of the spanish ships covered in the video sank in Europe.
Modern grave robbers act without permits and disturb hundred year old resting places: Hey, since you stole it first, hundreds of years ago without any historical context, so can we now!
Technically, the only viable Spanish ownership claimant should be descendants of the Spanish royal family, of which there are none. The post monarchy government didn't exist yet, so they really have no viable claims on anything predation their constitution.
These countries that are failing to negotiate fairly with salvagers don't seem to understand that they are incentivising the salvagers to not report the finds.
For real. If I was the owner of the company that had the lawsuit with Spain I would have returned every single nugget of treasure back to the ocean floor. If they tried to do anything I would have said "You said I couldn't have it so I put it back like a good boy."
@@GrumpyIan the message i am getting is that you think its ok to stamp your feet and have a tantrum like a child when you do not get your way, is that the message you are trying to send?
@@MrMoralHighgroundI'd these governments cared they would have found the lost treasure themselves. But, as usual, parasitic governments profiteering off others hard work.
It's not just ships it's anything. When I was 11 we found 500 bucks in 20s rolled up in a rubber band on the play ground. Of course I couldn't keep my mouth shut and it was taken by a teacher. I was told I'd get it back if no one claimed it. I guess some one did cause I never seen that 500 bucks again
Seriously, even if you have to melt everything down, it’s better than nothing. The shortsighted governments are going to ensure this happens or no one bothers to look anymore.
The best job I've had, and the only time I was a paid actor; I got to portray one of the crew of the Whydah Gally at the Milwaukee Public Museum. While the exhibit was in town I got to be Richard Noland, noted pirate and quartermaster to Black Sam Bellamy. Noland didn't go north with the rest. I like to think he escaped the rope and retired to Bermuda where he opened a tavern, the Green Monkey.
I've always been fascinated by shipwrecks I mean the ancient artifacts they have left behind its such a wonderful view into the past and the items that people used from back in those times its basically a time warp
So, what have all these stories taught us, class? That's right! If you find sunken treasure, some nation will claim it as theirs (regardless of the circumstances), and snake it out from under you. And you will be stuck with the costs of salvaging the wreck.
There are similar laws relating to prospecting for gold here in the UK. With permission of the land owner you can pan for gold, but any gold found legally belongs to 'The Crown'. Not much incentive to tell them that you found anything!
8 million... You would have to be completely delusional to believe that 8 million people were killed in a gold mine over 500 years ago when the worlds population was only about 500 million.
Right?! The fact that they have the audacity to claim it as their own goes to show you this world hasn’t changed at all. Millions died and they’re like “yeah that’s ours, we did all the work by enslaving millions to mine gold for us, so it’s ours”
@@alexanderbrambila8274 The argument against that is the lack of legality in insuring stolen goods. That insurance company should have had zero legitimate claim.
no but a salvage of a British vessel on Spains territorial water can not be started without the consent of Spain. the same way Sweden cant go and dig up half on Manhattan in Archeological reasons without the consent of the State of New york and the Nation of U.S.A
That's why they salvaged many of the geman wrecks in Scarpa Flow. Ironically most of the high grade steel was sold to Nazi Germany and ended up in the Bismarck and Tirpitz!😂
@@fus149hammer5 i swear i read comments of people who really think stuff like this is just 2 or 3 meters down in the sea 😂. This dude is probably joking, but some are serious about It lol. People are dumb af😅
Went to Cartagena de Indias last month. Baru is so close of Cartagena where the naval base is located. The oceanographic vessel is stationed there. You can go in jet ski and pass somewhat near all navy vessels there. The San Jose is very very secured. Wish they could lift the galleon for display, but well, retrieving these trasures for the public to enjoy as part of History is the main thing. Also, by Colombian law, 30 yr old, these wreckagea belong to the State and are cultural patrimony of the nation. I suppose most countries have similar laws to this. Nothing of finders keepers fantasies :v
Tommy Thompson, the man who discovered the SS Central America..was an absolute rare genius! Greedy American lawyers,insurance companies & a powerful family destroyed him…broke his spirit. He’s now rotting in prison because of others greed.. not his own. I believe he refuses to give up the location of the remaining gold purely out of spite.
If you ever find lost treasure tell no one. Get a lawyer and a trustworthy auction house . Some jerk will try to claim it without spending a nickel of time or effort on it and leave you broke ....
😂 ah yes cause you can, by accident, discover a ship wreck and than scuba diving a couple of Times with a bag and take the gold right? How the f do you use your brain? Did you not listen to how much that company had to pay just for the tech to be able to salvage something from down there? You muppet.
The salvage companies have invested millions in equipment and the missions. They deserve at least some reward for that. Most of the governments themselves didn't invest in searching for the ships or salvaging them. Salvage firms shouldn't be robbing wrecks but there should be some form of agreement.
So did I. I got the impression that away from the camera they weren't strictly legit. Just going through the motions of being interested in marine history but they were really after profit. They have lost a few cases in the courts over their plans to raise valuables and sell them on the open market.
I lived and worked in Key West and met several of the people who went after the Atocha! The photo you used of Mel Fisher was taken by a friend of mine! Mel Fisher's salvaging company claims the entire shipwreck and if you just happen upon a piece of it, you are made to turn it over to the museum! Besides gold, they've recovered LOTS of other booty, including swords, pistols and cannon. It's pretty cool to go through the Mel Fisher Museum in Key West and even cooler to go behind the scenes to see the recovery and reclaiming operation! If you ever get to Key West, go see all the gold!!!
Think the last time I watched a special on the Atocha, the narrator mentioned the debris field was somewhere around 7 miles or so and vastly unmapped. The Fisher family is still searching in 2024 which is pretty neat.
That'll be the Chinese for you. Entire WW2 battleships have vanished from the seabed (including the remains of the crews) leaving just depressions on the ocean floor. All that metal ripped up for scrap.
@@fus149hammer5metal smelted before the atomic tests is very valuable and useful for very sensitive medical and scientific equipment so I'd be surprised if it was just scrapped though my knowledge of the subject is cursory at best. Edit - i see you've said as much in another comment.
I KNOW A THING! The Whydah Gally was the ship of possibly the youngest pirate known by name to history. John King was aboard a ship Black Sam took, and opted to join the crew. He was only 10 or 11 when the Whydah sank. His shoe, along with part of his leg bone, was among the recovered remains.
Many a comment about salvage operations being carried out discreetly. Believe me if we could we would. It takes months of hovering over a wreck with a very big conspicuous salvage vessel to break into a ship. The investors who finance the operation want the contract watertight too.
No it doesn't. They turn up armed with massive grabbers that rip tons of steel up at a time. They can remove an entire battleship in a few days. Scrap metal in their target and if there's anything else of value it's a bonus.
@@fus149hammer5 yeh, that's scrap bulk steel, CHINESE operators. I sail with a specialist salvage company and its far slower. Otherwise gold, silver, jewels would be scattered, missed or lost. Spend most of our shifts blowing with jets and dredging.
@@PlumSack-f7p u've probably have seen this many times, but I was out fishing and got fairly close to where they found La Salle's ship in the Gulf of Mexico.... they had walls down to the seabed, and pumped all the water out. It was crazy to see, what is essentially a massive hole, in the middle of the gulf.
Fun fact. The coins from the SS Central America were called Double Eagles, and if you took them to a bank you would be given their face value of $20 even today. Because as legal US currency, that’s what they’re worth. Obviously to the numismatic community of collectors they’re worth much more.
I'd still like to recommend two Sideprojects, one on precious metals and the other on gemstones rarer or more valuable than diamonds, of which there are many.
Insane how much money oddessey spent and lost just so some greedy country can claim it’s theirs when they lost it in the first place. They should have taken that treasure to the Marianas trench and dumped it. Get it yourself
oddessey was in the wrong and has been judged to be so in a multitude of diffrent courts. What they did could be conisdered as the same as someone digging up someone elses grandparents graves and then taking their jewlry that they were buried with. Then they come to the deceased distant relatives and asks for a finding fee.
@danielkarlsson9326 courts don't decide what's wrong and what's right: they decide what's legal and what's not, even when the two concepts are in complete opposite of each other.
@@danielkarlsson9326 Fuck Spain and the courts. Spain shouldn't have gotten one cent of that treasure. If anyone had a legal claim to it, it would be the countries where it was looted from.
Shut ur trap, this could have been a very clever patriotic act to ensure the Spanish country has financial leverage... Or some people are just the spunk of satan
National Geographic's 2021 film, 'Battle for the Black Swan', written and directed by Christopher Riley, tells the story of the discovery of the wreck, the salvage, and subsequent dispute. It won a gold medal for History and Society at the 2022 New York Festivals TV & Film Awards.
"San Jose was lost at sea, Part of a Spanish Company, Her powder caught under fierce attack, The king never got his emeralds back, Their downed, downed and drowned, downed and drowned and never found." - The Longest Johns
The Prince Kuhio. North of the Hawaiian islands. Its longitude and latitude where it sank are known but the ship has never been found. A vast treasure is said to be there
Can you imagine you spend months loading a ship, you wave them good bye and before youve gone 3 feet from the dock " eh hi again, we're back,so em yeah, it sank" 😑🤦😅
Most ships riches,sunk before 1870, have been taken by Captain Nemo, to support oppressed people "you know, Professor...The oceans supply me with all i need... on the surface, the mighty ones can fight their wars.... but a few feet below, their power ends!" (Prince Dakkar of Bhundelkhand, A.K.A. Captain Nemo)
People can still invest in the salvage of the Atocha and Marguerita, and, if scuba certified, can dive the wreck and search for treasure. Fun stuff. Contact the Mel Fisher treasure museum in Key West. Today's the day!
With the absolute legal mess these cases are, personally I would never look for a shipwreck myself if it isn't affordable to recover all the items privately. After which if there was gold I would melt it all down, fence, and launder the money.
Never underestimate the greed of governments after you make a big treasure find. You invest in the salvage operations at great expense, then after the govy swoops in and takes it all for themselves. Pretty sweet deal...for them.
I would have thought that a bog standard coffee cup from the wreck of the Titanic would sell for ten's of thousands of pounds making it the most expensive shipwreck in the world. Oh surprised you didn't mention the RMS Laurentic , it's full of gold and authorities won't let anyone get near it.
Well, There was that one guy who gave most of his finding to museums. Also: I think there's still a lot of adventure seeking in those people who do the actual treasure hunting & salvaging. People who are driven only by greed tend to be incredibly boring and frankly cowardly. That's why the daily life of big business would probably bore most people to death.
Spain: We want the gold and treasure we stole back you can’t find something we weren’t looking for in international waters and expect to keep it. USA: we would be happy to make them give it back but my friend wants his art collection back and we want it in writing if we accidentally drop another nuclear weapon that has the firing mechanisms removed so it wont explode in a nuclear explosion but that will still have conventional explosives on it but still makes an extremely big hole in the ground on you that you don’t give us too much trouble in the news and international courts. We learned one big lesson from this video. These nations who think they can make some money off a wreak they had no clue of where was nor had any interest in looking for it will take you to court for it pretty much immediately after you tell anyone you have it.
Everyone talking about Spain and not enough about Tommy Gregory. Imagine managing to evade having the money taken off you by the goverment, getting to keep 92% despite numerous insurance companies claiming against you, then deciding the smart choice is to try and smuggle the money away and become a felon 😂. Bro should have just paid the investors and come away with like $90m for himself, talk about greedy haha
How about the Russian cruiser damaged by the Japanese navy in the Battle of Tsushima and sunk by her own crew in 1905 to prevent capture. This ship is rumored to carry billions worth of treasure. But others say its just a rumor spread by a (now bankrupt?) company involved in the salvage operations to increase it stock value.
You always post interesting subjects which I find it very hard to watch because there's virtually no pause in your narration. Tons of information is delivered @ 100mph drowned and saturated. No room for breathing. Every now and then I check whether you've finally noticed but see no improvement
There was that was full of gold , that sunk in 1699 near the island terschelling Holland. Even the location was known from the start, not all gold have been found up to this day, and took more human life that where looking for this gold. It was the lutine
Regarding the Sussex, aren't military vessels considered property of the government that operated them upon their sinking? What claim does Spain have outside of wanting money?
Maybe Spain acted at the behest of UK government. I haven't seen anything in the video suggesting Spain claims it, just that they stopped salvage operations in their teritorial waters.
Then you'll continue to be poor because these centuries old gold coins are worthless unless you can sell them. Even on the antiquities black market, ppl find out and are liable to turn you in in exchange for a small cut...then you're poor and in jail!
I mean if I found it in Britain or British waters I'd declare it. You're legally entitled to get a fair price on it based on the value of the metal if its more than it's historical value. The price is decided by an independent body and you'll get a fair deal far easier than trying to hide it and sell it risking losing the lot if caught. Never mind the history you'll lose if you try and excavate it you try and bring it up yourself.
Yes, but I think those who sank the San Jose were not treated well by the Admiralty as they were sent to capture the San Jose because the Admiralty knew what was on board and the UK was strapped for cash.
I dont understand how countries that stole riches centuries ago can now claim the ownership. How does this work legaly? How can an American state claim ownership over a sunken treasure from spain?
Wait wait so they can't find the stern section of ship witch would have been huge. But then they find a single emerald ring far away from the sites of sinking I call bs hahaha 😆
Bottom line, if you find a Spanish or any other country's ship that claims 100% ownership... Tell them about it's general location and then tell them to piss off about salvaging it.
11:34 I find it curious, to say the least, that you manage to avoid all the english-speaking traps in the name "Nuestra Señora de Atocha", yet fail espectacularly the moment you reach the "ch", which should be pronounced as in "reach" or "church". 12:24 a slave? The technology used for Nuestra Señora de Atocha, with which part of the treasure could be salvaged, was invented by one Pedro de Ledesma, who left constance of that system (and several others) in a manuscript from 1623, and that consisted on a labourer (not a slave) wearing a diving suit with a brass helmet connected to the surface through a tube (I believe leather), who put whatever he found in baskets that were lifted by people in boats (they could spend 3 to 4 hours straight under the sea at a time). They even had ways to bring the shipwreck back up (at least three), but those were indeed unsuitable for the depth of that particular one (in fact, the Atocha wrecked alongside another one called La Margarita, which was lifted using one of those methods). Diving bells were indeed an existing technology, but not what was used in this shipwreck, and definitely not manned by "disposable slaves", not to mention that slaves were regarded as valuable at the time, to the point that galleons were manned by both slaves (muslims caught during battles or bought after being caught during battles, the exact same way muslims caught christians as slaves during battles at the time) and penal labourers, but only the second group could be sentenced to death for breaking the rules (the slaves only got lashes); after all, besides their monetary value, they could be used as exchange for captive christians. Black African slaves were not used for that purpose (and they were still valuable) and there were no native slaves at the time (technically, there never were, even if they were treated _de facto_ like that for a couple decades, but only in the "work for free for me and I treat you like I want" sense, as they couldn't be bought or sold and, once that couple of decades after 1492 passed, they received rights and citizenship, although not the same, because it was an aristocratic society centuries before the Enlightment and the concept of universal rights).
They might be historically priceless, but if I ever find a shipwreck full of gold coins…I’m telling no one and melting those coins down into a blob and selling it off with no one the wiser.
@@addicted2monster88if there's anything Reddit taught me you off load in small batches across the country. It's unlikely that companies are going to track how much you're selling a day if you're going from Florida to Kentucky to Oklahoma. Etc...
Isn’t it odd that although the Spanish stole the gold, silver & gems from all over the world, but when their ships wrecked off the shores of these very same countries, the Spanish claim the treasures as their own.
As if to say “we stole it fair and square, lost it and couldn’t be bothered to look for it” and once someone had spent decades and millions to locate it, it’s all of a sudden important for the Spanish to claim that they own it because they have papers to say they lost it… Okay Spain, where’s your receipts as to how you came to be in possession of this treasure? 😂
Couple with the first one: it's your ship, your gold, but our waters, so we're keeping it anyways?
To quote Dread Pirate Roberts: No good. I've known too many Spaniards
Reminds me of the Texans trying to keep out Mexicans 😂
@@TacitaSaturnia The "it's our waters" has more to do with current legislation. If the salvagers weren't doing it for profit by selling the recovered treasure to individual buyers, but were salvaging it to send it to museums (in this case from the UK) they would have greenlit it after getting the proper permits for the operation. Proof of that is that the position of the shipwreck is known, but no Spanish organizations have bothered to salvage it.
In Spain it's illegal to salvage archaeological treasure for profit, as it's considered public patrimony.
French, Spanish, Italians, English, Germans....they've owned the world at some point. Some made them better places , others didn't and others exterminated. They all looted. The Spanish didn't exterminate.
The only "gold, silver & gems" that were stolen was at the start of the colonization (and not everything they got at that time can be regarded as "stolen", since some was gotten by trade). Let's not enter on the retroactivity of international law nor on what was common practice at the time.
Most of the gold, silver and gems transported by ship were extracted from mines, then minted or turned into bullions (metals, most commonly the first) or polished and cut (gems), all done in what was legally Spanish soil by paid labourers (better or worse paid, who knows, since it was the past, but at least the miners had their workdays legally capped at 8 hours and Sunday was a rest day), since during the time slavery was legal, slaves worked mostly in plantations or as househelp. So yes, they do have the receipts for most of that. Calling that "stealing" means that any company doing mining in a foreign country is stealing too.
And that's not to mention that at least one of the spanish ships covered in the video sank in Europe.
Salvagers steal gold from a shipwreck. Spanish government: Hey, we stole that first!
Modern grave robbers act without permits and disturb hundred year old resting places: Hey, since you stole it first, hundreds of years ago without any historical context, so can we now!
@@PandyBong lol. Grave robbers? But it's OK as long as you have a piece of paper?
Technically, the only viable Spanish ownership claimant should be descendants of the Spanish royal family, of which there are none. The post monarchy government didn't exist yet, so they really have no viable claims on anything predation their constitution.
These countries that are failing to negotiate fairly with salvagers don't seem to understand that they are incentivising the salvagers to not report the finds.
Nobody takes 15th century gold coins anymore so even if salvaging undetected was possible, the treasure is worthless unless you can sell it
For real. If I was the owner of the company that had the lawsuit with Spain I would have returned every single nugget of treasure back to the ocean floor. If they tried to do anything I would have said "You said I couldn't have it so I put it back like a good boy."
Impossible. These centuries old coins are worthless unless you can sell them and that means others find out
@@GrumpyIan the message i am getting is that you think its ok to stamp your feet and have a tantrum like a child when you do not get your way, is that the message you are trying to send?
@@MrMoralHighgroundI'd these governments cared they would have found the lost treasure themselves. But, as usual, parasitic governments profiteering off others hard work.
Be careful Simon, Spain might claim your monetization of this video😀
Priceless
🤫 Shush! Don't give them any ideas! 😂
Conclusion: If you find a lost ship laden with doubloons, keep yer mouth shut!
Only if you're good with the risk of being sued and/or arrested. Lol
It's not just ships it's anything. When I was 11 we found 500 bucks in 20s rolled up in a rubber band on the play ground. Of course I couldn't keep my mouth shut and it was taken by a teacher. I was told I'd get it back if no one claimed it. I guess some one did cause I never seen that 500 bucks again
Yuppers 😂
@@robertstone9988
100% chance the teacher kept it. They don't make much money.
Seriously, even if you have to melt everything down, it’s better than nothing. The shortsighted governments are going to ensure this happens or no one bothers to look anymore.
Spain is constantly claiming " Mine" like a bunch of seagulls. No matter where " Mine , mine , mine , mine ".
With the Spanish government, it did end up in museums. Americans just would have sold it privately.
Apparently salvage rights ain't worth shit.
The best job I've had, and the only time I was a paid actor; I got to portray one of the crew of the Whydah Gally at the Milwaukee Public Museum. While the exhibit was in town I got to be Richard Noland, noted pirate and quartermaster to Black Sam Bellamy. Noland didn't go north with the rest. I like to think he escaped the rope and retired to Bermuda where he opened a tavern, the Green Monkey.
I've always been fascinated by shipwrecks I mean the ancient artifacts they have left behind its such a wonderful view into the past and the items that people used from back in those times its basically a time warp
The past frozen in time...just waiting for you. So cool.
🖤🖤🖤
So, what have all these stories taught us, class?
That's right! If you find sunken treasure, some nation will claim it as theirs (regardless of the circumstances), and snake it out from under you. And you will be stuck with the costs of salvaging the wreck.
There are similar laws relating to prospecting for gold here in the UK. With permission of the land owner you can pan for gold, but any gold found legally belongs to 'The Crown'. Not much incentive to tell them that you found anything!
Spain claiming gold they were stealing from the South Americans is crazy. Over 8 million died in the mines in Peru alone.
8 million... You would have to be completely delusional to believe that 8 million people were killed in a gold mine over 500 years ago when the worlds population was only about 500 million.
Right?! The fact that they have the audacity to claim it as their own goes to show you this world hasn’t changed at all. Millions died and they’re like “yeah that’s ours, we did all the work by enslaving millions to mine gold for us, so it’s ours”
The problem isn't with who robbed who but that some Spanish insurance law firm that paid out for the loss has the rights to it first
@@alexanderbrambila8274 The argument against that is the lack of legality in insuring stolen goods. That insurance company should have had zero legitimate claim.
@derekstein6193 that argument has never mattered in courts when possession is nine-tenths the law.
So a Spanish ship outside Spanish waters is owned by Spain, but a British ship outside British waters is also owned by Spain?
no but a salvage of a British vessel on Spains territorial water can not be started without the consent of Spain.
the same way Sweden cant go and dig up half on Manhattan in Archeological reasons without the consent of the State of New york and the Nation of U.S.A
Not forgetting the highly prized pre atom bomb shipwreck steel.
That's why they salvaged many of the geman wrecks in Scarpa Flow.
Ironically most of the high grade steel was sold to Nazi Germany and ended up in the Bismarck and Tirpitz!😂
There are people destroying the war graves and shipwrecks in the Pacific for this reason! Absolute disgrace!
I got to see the Atocha traveling exhibit at a jewelry store in Florida. Fascinating and beautiful!
My mom got an authentic silver coin from the wreck for selling Avon in the 90s.
Thank you !! I love this. The thought of all that just sitting there, tons of it. btw, the "ch" in Atocha is pronounced as the "ch" in Chevrolet.
0:55 - Chapter 1 - HMS Sussex
3:15 - Chapter 2 - Black swan project
5:50 - Chapter 3 - Whydah gally
8:35 - Chapter 4 - San Jose
10:40 - Chapter 5 - Nuestra senora de atocha
14:00 - Chapter 6 - SS central america
i need to learn to dive im not greedy ill just grab a bit
To dive most of the wrecks that have anything worth real value you are going to need a bit more than a SCUBA set!😂
@@fus149hammer5 i swear i read comments of people who really think stuff like this is just 2 or 3 meters down in the sea 😂. This dude is probably joking, but some are serious about It lol. People are dumb af😅
Went to Cartagena de Indias last month. Baru is so close of Cartagena where the naval base is located. The oceanographic vessel is stationed there. You can go in jet ski and pass somewhat near all navy vessels there. The San Jose is very very secured. Wish they could lift the galleon for display, but well, retrieving these trasures for the public to enjoy as part of History is the main thing. Also, by Colombian law, 30 yr old, these wreckagea belong to the State and are cultural patrimony of the nation. I suppose most countries have similar laws to this. Nothing of finders keepers fantasies :v
Tommy Thompson, the man who discovered the SS Central America..was an absolute rare genius! Greedy American lawyers,insurance companies & a powerful family destroyed him…broke his spirit. He’s now rotting in prison because of others greed.. not his own. I believe he refuses to give up the location of the remaining gold purely out of spite.
If you ever find lost treasure tell no one. Get a lawyer and a trustworthy auction house . Some jerk will try to claim it without spending a nickel of time or effort on it and leave you broke ....
😂 ah yes cause you can, by accident, discover a ship wreck and than scuba diving a couple of Times with a bag and take the gold right? How the f do you use your brain? Did you not listen to how much that company had to pay just for the tech to be able to salvage something from down there? You muppet.
Auction houses won't auction historical atrifacts without the proper authorisations. Once they are published the will be siezed.
The Whydah Gally wreck was plundered and looted quite a bit right after the sinking, and like you said, refound and looted again.
The salvage companies have invested millions in equipment and the missions. They deserve at least some reward for that. Most of the governments themselves didn't invest in searching for the ships or salvaging them. Salvage firms shouldn't be robbing wrecks but there should be some form of agreement.
I remember watching the show with the Odyssey in the early 2000s.
So did I. I got the impression that away from the camera they weren't strictly legit. Just going through the motions of being interested in marine history but they were really after profit. They have lost a few cases in the courts over their plans to raise valuables and sell them on the open market.
I lived and worked in Key West and met several of the people who went after the Atocha! The photo you used of Mel Fisher was taken by a friend of mine! Mel Fisher's salvaging company claims the entire shipwreck and if you just happen upon a piece of it, you are made to turn it over to the museum! Besides gold, they've recovered LOTS of other booty, including swords, pistols and cannon. It's pretty cool to go through the Mel Fisher Museum in Key West and even cooler to go behind the scenes to see the recovery and reclaiming operation! If you ever get to Key West, go see all the gold!!!
Think the last time I watched a special on the Atocha, the narrator mentioned the debris field was somewhere around 7 miles or so and vastly unmapped. The Fisher family is still searching in 2024 which is pretty neat.
I'm sure by the end of the century, all these mentioned shipwrecks will be licked clean of their treasures.
That'll be the Chinese for you. Entire WW2 battleships have vanished from the seabed (including the remains of the crews) leaving just depressions on the ocean floor. All that metal ripped up for scrap.
@@fus149hammer5metal smelted before the atomic tests is very valuable and useful for very sensitive medical and scientific equipment so I'd be surprised if it was just scrapped though my knowledge of the subject is cursory at best.
Edit - i see you've said as much in another comment.
I KNOW A THING! The Whydah Gally was the ship of possibly the youngest pirate known by name to history. John King was aboard a ship Black Sam took, and opted to join the crew. He was only 10 or 11 when the Whydah sank. His shoe, along with part of his leg bone, was among the recovered remains.
Awesome video, love it and thank you!
According to the FXAs updated Rules of Acquisition it's permitted to tax shipwreck windfalls at a rate 5% higher than normal income.
Many a comment about salvage operations being carried out discreetly. Believe me if we could we would. It takes months of hovering over a wreck with a very big conspicuous salvage vessel to break into a ship. The investors who finance the operation want the contract watertight too.
Watertight....was that a pun?
No it doesn't. They turn up armed with massive grabbers that rip tons of steel up at a time. They can remove an entire battleship in a few days. Scrap metal in their target and if there's anything else of value it's a bonus.
@@fus149hammer5 yeh, that's scrap bulk steel, CHINESE operators. I sail with a specialist salvage company and its far slower. Otherwise gold, silver, jewels would be scattered, missed or lost. Spend most of our shifts blowing with jets and dredging.
@@fus149hammer5 a battleship is what 10-70 thousand tons. No one is moving that in days. I think you mean a generic war wreck of a few hundred tons.
@@PlumSack-f7p u've probably have seen this many times, but I was out fishing and got fairly close to where they found La Salle's ship in the Gulf of Mexico.... they had walls down to the seabed, and pumped all the water out. It was crazy to see, what is essentially a massive hole, in the middle of the gulf.
good and amusing
From this we learn that claims never go away. Also, it was absurdly risky transporting treasure.
Fun fact. The coins from the SS Central America were called Double Eagles, and if you took them to a bank you would be given their face value of $20 even today. Because as legal US currency, that’s what they’re worth.
Obviously to the numismatic community of collectors they’re worth much more.
I'd still like to recommend two Sideprojects, one on precious metals and the other on gemstones rarer or more valuable than diamonds, of which there are many.
They are also valuable for any recoverable lead ingots. pb-210 free lead is very valuable.
Insane how much money oddessey spent and lost just so some greedy country can claim it’s theirs when they lost it in the first place. They should have taken that treasure to the Marianas trench and dumped it. Get it yourself
oddessey was in the wrong and has been judged to be so in a multitude of diffrent courts.
What they did could be conisdered as the same as someone digging up someone elses grandparents graves and then taking their jewlry that they were buried with.
Then they come to the deceased distant relatives and asks for a finding fee.
@danielkarlsson9326 courts don't decide what's wrong and what's right: they decide what's legal and what's not, even when the two concepts are in complete opposite of each other.
@@danielkarlsson9326 Fuck Spain and the courts. Spain shouldn't have gotten one cent of that treasure. If anyone had a legal claim to it, it would be the countries where it was looted from.
Shut ur trap, this could have been a very clever patriotic act to ensure the Spanish country has financial leverage... Or some people are just the spunk of satan
@@danielkarlsson9326TLDR kiss me
National Geographic's 2021 film, 'Battle for the Black Swan', written and directed by Christopher Riley, tells the story of the discovery of the wreck, the salvage, and subsequent dispute. It won a gold medal for History and Society at the 2022 New York Festivals TV & Film Awards.
Spain claim that gold medal too?
"San Jose was lost at sea,
Part of a Spanish Company,
Her powder caught under fierce attack,
The king never got his emeralds back,
Their downed, downed and drowned, downed and drowned and never found."
- The Longest Johns
The ship off the coast of Cartagena. 1 billion estimated and if it exists the Holy Chalice might be on that ship
The Prince Kuhio. North of the Hawaiian islands. Its longitude and latitude where it sank are known but the ship has never been found. A vast treasure is said to be there
Release the Kraken 🦑 🐙
Can you imagine you spend months loading a ship, you wave them good bye and before youve gone 3 feet from the dock " eh hi again, we're back,so em yeah, it sank" 😑🤦😅
Most ships riches,sunk before 1870, have been taken by Captain Nemo, to support oppressed people
"you know, Professor...The oceans supply me with all i need... on the surface, the mighty ones can fight their wars.... but a few feet below, their power ends!"
(Prince Dakkar of Bhundelkhand, A.K.A. Captain Nemo)
People can still invest in the salvage of the Atocha and Marguerita, and, if scuba certified, can dive the wreck and search for treasure. Fun stuff. Contact the Mel Fisher treasure museum in Key West. Today's the day!
With the absolute legal mess these cases are, personally I would never look for a shipwreck myself if it isn't affordable to recover all the items privately. After which if there was gold I would melt it all down, fence, and launder the money.
If I was Odyssey I would have chucked the gold back into the ocean and told them to fetch.
Yes! Fresh content ❤
I don't know what it is, but there's just something great about hearing Simon say treasure
Not much incentive to spend a lot of years and a lot of money looking for these ships if you get nothing from it
Never underestimate the greed of governments after you make a big treasure find. You invest in the salvage operations at great expense, then after the govy swoops in and takes it all for themselves. Pretty sweet deal...for them.
i did a few wreck dives years back.. was amazing
I would have thought that a bog standard coffee cup from the wreck of the Titanic would sell for ten's of thousands of pounds making it the most expensive shipwreck in the world. Oh surprised you didn't mention the RMS Laurentic , it's full of gold and authorities won't let anyone get near it.
I wonder how many 'treasures' have been recovered without the public knowing because the finders wanted to actually make a profit for once.
I’m fine with the government wanting to claim these salvages but they should pay them a fair price for it or go get it themselves
You say hurricane weird.
Init
Greed - Greed - Greed that's all that all parties are exhibiting.
Well, There was that one guy who gave most of his finding to museums.
Also: I think there's still a lot of adventure seeking in those people who do
the actual treasure hunting & salvaging. People who are driven only by greed tend
to be incredibly boring and frankly cowardly. That's why the daily life of big business would probably
bore most people to death.
Spain: We want the gold and treasure we stole back you can’t find something we weren’t looking for in international waters and expect to keep it.
USA: we would be happy to make them give it back but my friend wants his art collection back and we want it in writing if we accidentally drop another nuclear weapon that has the firing mechanisms removed so it wont explode in a nuclear explosion but that will still have conventional explosives on it but still makes an extremely big hole in the ground on you that you don’t give us too much trouble in the news and international courts.
We learned one big lesson from this video. These nations who think they can make some money off a wreak they had no clue of where was nor had any interest in looking for it will take you to court for it pretty much immediately after you tell anyone you have it.
What’s a pirates fav letter of the Alphabet?
You may say the C
But it’s the
Ahrrrrrrrrrrr
Nope, you need to leave!
Everyone talking about Spain and not enough about Tommy Gregory. Imagine managing to evade having the money taken off you by the goverment, getting to keep 92% despite numerous insurance companies claiming against you, then deciding the smart choice is to try and smuggle the money away and become a felon 😂. Bro should have just paid the investors and come away with like $90m for himself, talk about greedy haha
I would think that the dive ships will add a smelter at their next refit.
Melt the gold down to ingots and its yours!
Pt 2 of Simons lost treasure hunt.
I find it to be outrageously stupid / funny. That Spain won't let people have their own stuff back (The first shipwreck in this video)
How about the Russian cruiser damaged by the Japanese navy in the Battle of Tsushima and sunk by her own crew in 1905 to prevent capture. This ship is rumored to carry billions worth of treasure. But others say its just a rumor spread by a (now bankrupt?) company involved in the salvage operations to increase it stock value.
Wtf is going on at 11:31😆😆
It’s an old wooden ship.
An inexpensive 3D model/ animation clip you can buy as part of a stock package.
You always post interesting subjects which I find it very hard to watch because there's virtually no pause in your narration. Tons of information is delivered @ 100mph drowned and saturated. No room for breathing.
Every now and then I check whether you've finally noticed but see no improvement
There was that was full of gold , that sunk in 1699 near the island terschelling Holland.
Even the location was known from the start, not all gold have been found up to this day, and took more human life that where looking for this gold.
It was the lutine
Odessy are grave robbers
barry was a real one.
206 view, 206 in the house!
That last guy screwed over investors by keeping most of his money in a bank account on the Cook Islands Legend😅
Regarding the Sussex, aren't military vessels considered property of the government that operated them upon their sinking? What claim does Spain have outside of wanting money?
Maybe Spain acted at the behest of UK government. I haven't seen anything in the video suggesting Spain claims it, just that they stopped salvage operations in their teritorial waters.
Ah-Toe-Cha Simon. We'll forgive you cuz you're a Brit. Hello from Az where spanish is our second language.
I don't think he cares lol
472 checking in
If I had spent millions to recover the treasure then the government tried to steal it from me, I would dump the treasure back in the ocean.
Greed got the last guy, but he still made out
11:30 Why is the ship sail doing that?
Guy finds buried treasure like a pirate and then proceeds to become a pirate
I have a coin from the Atocha!
spain would claim a sunken ship in Australia
Spain would claim a sunken ship in Austria! So would D. Trump!
Stealing other peoples work is what democrats do
moral of the treasure hunting story: You DO NOT talk about the treasure hunting story!
So if you find treasure, DONT TELL THE GOVERNMENT!!
Then you'll continue to be poor because these centuries old gold coins are worthless unless you can sell them. Even on the antiquities black market, ppl find out and are liable to turn you in in exchange for a small cut...then you're poor and in jail!
I mean if I found it in Britain or British waters I'd declare it. You're legally entitled to get a fair price on it based on the value of the metal if its more than it's historical value. The price is decided by an independent body and you'll get a fair deal far easier than trying to hide it and sell it risking losing the lot if caught. Never mind the history you'll lose if you try and excavate it you try and bring it up yourself.
I need to learn how to dive. Not greedy just needy
Yes, but I think those who sank the San Jose were not treated well by the Admiralty as they were sent to capture the San Jose because the Admiralty knew what was on board and the UK was strapped for cash.
im confused if its sunken and they didnt recover it that means its Salvage........
Its funny how countries are so rich they can risk such amounts of valuable and just right if off
They couldn't get it transported another way and they couldn't get it back.
What about the great treasure of the Flor de La Mar? Sank in 1511?
I dont understand how countries that stole riches centuries ago can now claim the ownership. How does this work legaly? How can an American state claim ownership over a sunken treasure from spain?
Shiver me timbers
Wait wait so they can't find the stern section of ship witch would have been huge. But then they find a single emerald ring far away from the sites of sinking I call bs hahaha 😆
Dead Men tell no tales.
Bottom line, if you find a Spanish or any other country's ship that claims 100% ownership... Tell them about it's general location and then tell them to piss off about salvaging it.
the moral of these stories never make an announcement just sell it off quietly!!!
11:34 I find it curious, to say the least, that you manage to avoid all the english-speaking traps in the name "Nuestra Señora de Atocha", yet fail espectacularly the moment you reach the "ch", which should be pronounced as in "reach" or "church".
12:24 a slave? The technology used for Nuestra Señora de Atocha, with which part of the treasure could be salvaged, was invented by one Pedro de Ledesma, who left constance of that system (and several others) in a manuscript from 1623, and that consisted on a labourer (not a slave) wearing a diving suit with a brass helmet connected to the surface through a tube (I believe leather), who put whatever he found in baskets that were lifted by people in boats (they could spend 3 to 4 hours straight under the sea at a time). They even had ways to bring the shipwreck back up (at least three), but those were indeed unsuitable for the depth of that particular one (in fact, the Atocha wrecked alongside another one called La Margarita, which was lifted using one of those methods).
Diving bells were indeed an existing technology, but not what was used in this shipwreck, and definitely not manned by "disposable slaves", not to mention that slaves were regarded as valuable at the time, to the point that galleons were manned by both slaves (muslims caught during battles or bought after being caught during battles, the exact same way muslims caught christians as slaves during battles at the time) and penal labourers, but only the second group could be sentenced to death for breaking the rules (the slaves only got lashes); after all, besides their monetary value, they could be used as exchange for captive christians. Black African slaves were not used for that purpose (and they were still valuable) and there were no native slaves at the time (technically, there never were, even if they were treated _de facto_ like that for a couple decades, but only in the "work for free for me and I treat you like I want" sense, as they couldn't be bought or sold and, once that couple of decades after 1492 passed, they received rights and citizenship, although not the same, because it was an aristocratic society centuries before the Enlightment and the concept of universal rights).
Unreal
I'm from Ohio and I've never heard of this guy😅. But the state attorney general was being investigated around that time
I would of tossed it back into the sea and make the countries find it considering it’s their treasure
I find treasure no one will know it will get melted before I give it all up to some government.
They might be historically priceless, but if I ever find a shipwreck full of gold coins…I’m telling no one and melting those coins down into a blob and selling it off with no one the wiser.
Except the question of where it came from lmao. You can't even turn in a bunch of copper wire without a good reason for having.
@@addicted2monster88 true
@@addicted2monster88
you can't get market price. you can sell copper wire to any construction company.
It’s gold you’ll be able to move it at close to market value no questions asked. It’s GOLD
@@addicted2monster88if there's anything Reddit taught me you off load in small batches across the country. It's unlikely that companies are going to track how much you're selling a day if you're going from Florida to Kentucky to Oklahoma. Etc...
Looters despise it if you appear to be looting them. 😉
How much money did the Spanish give the judges involved there to get that ruling?