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Dateline: Woking, 28th December 2023.Wager’s Action off Cartagena, 28 May 1708 (Royal Museums Greenwich).The San José was a 62-gun, three-masted galleon that was sunk by the British with 600 people on board during the War of Spanish Succession (1701-1714). The British were at the time trying to prevent Spanish galleons from returning to Europe loaded with bullion and jewels that could be to fund the war. The San José was sailing from Portobelo, Panama as the flagship of a treasure fleet of 14 merchant vessels and three warships. It was tracked near Cartagena by the English Commodore (later Admiral) Charles Wager and attacked on 8th June 1708. Wager intended to capture the ship and the loot, but the galleon’s gunpowder supplies blew up and it sank in deep water, where is remained untouched for more than 300 years.ShareDavy Jones CyberlockerThe story of the San José fascinates me. A few years ago the Colombian navy discovered the wreck, thanks in part to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), which used its REMUS 6000 autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) to locate the remains at a depth of about 2,000 feet. They were not doing this purely out of curiosity, because the San José was carrying a couple of hundred tons of gold, silver, emeralds and such like that are worth an estimated $17 billion in today’s money. Yep, that’s not a misprint. It is the world’s richest shipwreck. Right now there are billions of dollars worth of 18th-century Latin American fungible tokens laying…Dive! Dive! Dive!