More than three hundred years have passed since British and Spanish vessels clashed off the northern coast of South America. A fight over treasure sent to the ocean floor there, estimated to be worth billions of dollars, has turned into an epic legal battle that pits a salvage company against lawyers for the Republic of Colombia.
Since the late 1980s, Sea Search Armada has pressed an ownership claim to gold and silver cargo of the Spanish galleon San Jose, arguing in Colombia and later in U.S. district court in Washington that it is entitled to at least some of the bounty resting 1,000 feet below the surface.
