Many of these amazing finds were discovered by accident. So the next time you're at the beach, keep an eye out!
The San José
Called the “holy grail of shipwrecks,” the Spanish galleon San José was carrying a treasure of silver, gold, and emeralds worth billions of dollars today. The galleon sunk after a battle with British ships off the coast of Cartagena, Colombia, in 1708. Three hundred years later, in 2015, the wreck was discovered on the ocean floor. Details about the find were made public in May 2018. Using an underwater vehicle called REMUS 6000, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution helped identify the ship by its distinctive cannons, and recovery is ongoing. Want to find your own cache? Keep on the lookout for these real-life hidden treasures that haven’t been found yet.
Caesarea treasure
Imagine you’re floating along enjoying a scuba diving trip when you happen across some gold coins you think are child’s play money. Then you realize that they are actually valuable coins—more than 2,000 of them—and they’re over 1,000 years old. That’s exactly what happened to members of a diving club who found the treasure in the ancient harbor of Caesarea, Israel, in 2015. The collection, the largest gold treasure ever found in that country, was then recovered by the Israel Antiquities Authority. An investigation into the coins’ origin and why they were at the bottom of the sea is ongoing.
The Titanic
Sometimes the shipwreck itself is the treasure. Everyone knows the story of how the “unsinkable” Titanic struck an iceberg on her maiden voyage on April 15, 1912, and unfathomably sunk in the North Atlantic. But the exact location of the wreck was unknown for over 70 years until it was found in 1985 by oceanographer Robert Ballard on the ocean floor two and a half miles below the surface. And the Titanic‘s mysteries are still unfolding: It was recently revealed that Ballard was actually on a secret mission to find two sunken Cold War submarines when he discovered the sunken ship. Here are more fascinating facts you never knew about the Titanic.