How Underwater Lost Treasures Are Creating a New Gold Rush | Sunken Eldorado | ENDEVR Documentary

[Music] humankind has been around for thousands and thousands of years and we've used ships to transport even to this day ninety percent of the commerce in the world is transported by by the oceans throughout the development of modern civilizations despite the dangers human beings have always crossed the oceans taking their lives into their own hands until the mid-20th century they didn't have very good ability to predict weather and as a result probably billions of dollars have been lost in the ocean just through shipping wealth on the oceans how many ships have disappeared and how much wealth has accumulated at the bottom of the ocean over the centuries the deep is an el dorado there's more gold and silver in the straits of bahamas than there is in the bank of madrid a new gold rush is emerging a race in which treasure hunters rub shoulders with investors constantly searching for new leads how many shipwrecks how many lost pages of our collective heritage this is a very important heritage for all of us do not commercialize it do not pillage it shipwrecks are becoming strategic and economic targets and politicians now enter the race we have not seen one case of a good treasure hunter and as treasure hunters and so-called guardians of history clash the shipwrecks themselves are in danger in a matter of a few generations the ancient hard drives of the past are being erased and the legacy for future generations will be a flat line [Music] [Music] whether they are due to human error a technical issue or to the weather conditions accidents and maritime transport go hand in hand [Music] [Music] a reality we only tend to address when an incident takes place near our shores or when a large cruise ship is affected the other accidents remain in the shadows international expert in underwater archaeology michelle luer is head of drasma the department of underwater archaeological research for the past four decades his missions have taken him to all of the planet's oceans foreign food fuel consumer goods and raw materials ninety percent of all we consume is transported by sea a fleet of sixty thousand ships the blood flow of global trade transporting goods on shipping lanes outlined over the centuries but how many vessels never made it to their destination it's really hard to predict precisely how much ships is lost in particular areas but you could get a sense of it if you start to think about who are the great colonial powers when you consider that ships have been sinking for over 2 000 years and if you say okay so is it reasonable to think about a thousand ships a year are lost i think it is [Music] recently in an initiative to map the entire ocean floor the 195 member states of unesco came together and published an estimation three million shipwrecks around the there world be many more there might also be less because it's very difficult to evaluate if they have actually survived you know i mean if there's still something there and many have gone down without having been ever noted down in any book so three million it's a good estimation but there can be more there can be less maybe more maybe less for many underwater archaeologists this number is a huge underestimate we come up with these great theories on blackboard since in conference sorts of three million shipwrecks but the truth is nobody knows really how many shipwrecks are down there we think we got 6 000 shipwrecks off the uk but we know historically at least 37 000 ships were lost throughout history so whatever figure we give you is going to be an understatement even though the oceans cover over seventy percent of our planet less than five percent have been explored so what's down there i mean humankind have been around for thousands and thousands of years so i would think that there's at least that many wrecks down there and perhaps a lot more we know nothing however the most shipwrecks in the world are still to be found in my opinion the most wrecks in the world lie in the south china sea a mythical crossing point between the pacific and the indian ocean the strait of malacca is the busiest shipping channel on the planet [Music] and the port of singapore is its nerve center if we go back in history everybody came here to trade this was the center of commerce where europe was still sleeping in the stone age it's here where british captain michael hatcher made his first dives as a treasure hunter [Music] i first came to singapore in 73 and that's when i did the first salvage or we could say treasure and then from that point on i've been hooked ever since [Music] hatcher recovered steel from shipwrecks dating back to the second world war which he sold by weight to make a living until one day he came across something other than steel [Music] i didn't know nothing about porcelain so i gathered up some pieces took it to christie's in amsterdam and christies are ringing me and ringing me so i eventually i go along and they pulled one cup up and they said to me you any idea how much this cost and i said oh maybe five dollars and they said what about five thousand and i can remember i said to them how many do you want and they said to me there is some more [Music] the diver had unwittingly discovered the nan king a boat that sunk in 1750 after colliding with a coral reef a veritable gold mine there'd never been this amount of porcelain ever ever discovered in amsterdam they've been queuing around the block for hours on end just a glimpse the nam king treasure was found 100 immediately what is now known as the hatcher porcelain creates a storm the volume and variety of porcelain up for sale is vast there are complete dinner services with place settings for as many as 144 and the nanking's cargo is auctioned off in amsterdam but i think we got 27 000 pieces and they're all saying it's too much it'll flood the market it'll destroy but it didn't it put interest in the market it opened up the history book of chinese porcelain the 27 000 pieces of chinese porcelain are sold in just a few days to buyers from all over the world a jackpot of nearly 10 million dollars for hatcher and his team i'm absolutely amazed yeah i can't believe it would i describe what i do as treasure hunting i think that's the romantic name for it i i look at it as cargo recovery whether they consider themselves treasure hunters or cargo recoverers many explorers enticed by hatcher's story set sail and headed for the ocean deep which according to experts still holds many surprises thousands of shipwrecks are going to turn up with incredibly rich cargos and what you get are clusters of wealth you want to talk about the biggest concentrations in the world you've got to go to havana cuba where the great spanish galleons used to converge and there's a saying that there's more gold and silver in the straits of bahamas than there is in the bank of madrid gold in spain the 16th century is fittingly named the golden age for more than 150 years the spanish pillaged gold from the new world even ransacking tombs in the process if you hold a gold bar a silver coin an emerald or a pearl you could say that actually you're just one degree of separation away from genocide all these things started life in mines in colombia in mexico in peru where thousands of slaves indians and africans were murdered for the sake of royal spanish riches these stolen treasures from the americas were loaded onto large ships and transported to the island of cuba the galleons then gathered in convoys in the port of havana to cross the atlantic together [Music] [Music] [Music] more than 3 000 shipwrecks are lying around the island but more than the sheer number of them it is the estimated value of their cargo that turns the treasure hunters heads is a great example of a country that probably has huge potential to realize values and you know we have a bunch of shipwrecks in our database that were lost in and around cuba that would have been transporting significant wealth which is likely has value in the hundreds of millions of dollars into an individual shipwreck [Music] four million tons of gold and silver shipped across the atlantic how can we know how much of this wealth is scattered along the ocean floors of some of the world's major shipping lanes according to experts the amount is dizzying we have a database of over 10 000 shipwrecks at least a hundred of those shipwrecks have a value of 50 million dollars or more some of those individually could be worth more than a billion dollars so you start to get a sense of how many riches were lost through accidents on the water over the past couple of thousand years that mankind has been transiting valuables over the sea you know based on the historic records and the data that i've seen at about a one-third of the gold silver and other precious mineral wealth of human beings has been lost at sea [Music] discovery of these shipwrecks represents the promise of a new vein estimated in billions something that has not escaped the nose of investors in precious metals gathered here in zurich [Music] shipwrecks filled with precious metals a gold mine perhaps but the job is far from over these shipwrecks still have to be located it is here in seville where archaeologists scientists and treasure hunters unite under one roof um [Music] the the general archives of the indies houses nine straight kilometers of valuable records listing all of the voyages of spanish ships ten percent of these ships sank but where exactly at the time gps systems did not exist many ships left the new world and came back laden with gold and silver and many sank but there was very poor navigation data and so for us we would not be very interested in a research file that said well the ship left havana in 1580 and somewhere between havana and spain it sank that's not going to be of interest to us so we have to have good navigation data to limit the size of the survey to make it cost effective while maps and registers found from the period were unclear technological advancements in recent years have now made it possible to fill in the gaps although a rather laborious task finding the needle in the haystack is now possible we develop a search box and then our survey vessel will go to that area and it will deploy our sonar gear where we tow it on a cable behind the boat and we just methodically map the seabed going back and forth until we either find the ship or we don't find it in recent times with the advents of autonomous underwater vehicles new robotic technology sensor technology the kind of stuff that we are building today it's making it easier and more cost effective for explorers at the sauna level we can see objects as small as in the centimeter level range and with the laser we can see things in the millimeter range photogrammetry now makes it possible to visually reconstruct the seabed as the tools get better and better technology keeps breaking down the barriers of the deep elements we can now virtually go anywhere at the bottom of the sea from 150 meters which is the bottom of the sea in the english channel to 4 800 meters in the atlantic that's a mile deeper than the titanic so the future has arrived the robots have arisen although the titanic lies 3 800 meters underwater the shipwreck was explored 20 years ago however far down shipwrecks are no longer out of reach of human greed and the massive wealth they harbor is wedding government's appetites which have also joined the treasure hunt finding the san jose a spanish galleon sunk in 1708 by the british navy off the coast of cartagena was a gamble taken by juan manuel santos then president of colombia in 2015 after years of research his team located the galleon 300 meters below the surface off the coast of colombia negligible colombian emeralds gold from the peruvian mines under the cannons and amphorae 17 billion dollars worth of cargo waiting patiently for the colombian government this is the largest treasure ever discovered today the san jose and its treasure are still 300 meters under the colombian government is unable to finance the recovery operations by itself it would have to appeal to private companies paying for their services by offering them a portion of the cargo a practice fiercely condemned by heritage protection organizations such as unesco i think those states will come around after a while and see that this is not a good solution we have not seen one case of a good treasure hunter in the best case he makes a lot of money in the worst case not even but he will finish with your heritage destroyed and certainly nothing in your hands the funding of operations to recover sunken cargo is a real dilemma a battle between on the one hand treasure hunters and their potential partners and on the other the guardians of maritime heritage digging the deep doesn't come cheap basically if you want a large research ship that can launch a remotely operated vehicle you're talking 35 000 a day perhaps if you want to go and salvage something like a world war ii ship in 4 000 meters add a zero to that [Music] this is an expensive operation when you're working in the deep ocean it can cost between one to three million dollars per month millions of dollars this is the price of joining the treasure hunt a price that only companies such as odyssey marine exploration can afford this listed company based in tampa florida is one of the industry's heavyweights in the recovery of precious metals odyssey marine exploration has been in the ocean exploration business since 1994 and the focus for the first 15 or 20 years was almost exclusively to find shipwrecks that had valuable cargo that could be salvaged and monetized odyssey has already hit the jackpot in 2007 the corporation flew 17 tons of gold and silver in bars and coins into tampa airport the horde came from a spanish frigate named nuestra senora de las mercedes which had sunk in 1804 off the coast of portugal [Music] the cargo of the mercedes frigate is the greatest treasure ever surfaced there's something about gold especially when that sunlight hits the goal it took odyssey 10 years to locate the shipwreck and surface the treasure a feat of technical achievement and the start of an unprecedented legal battle [Music] press of florida what odyssey has done is morally and legally unacceptable the treasure hunters were required to return every single coin and other artifact they had taken spain finally claims the booty the authorities in madrid declare that the mercedes frigate is historical heritage referencing the boat's military character is [Music] after a five year long trial the us supreme court sentences odyssey to hand over the entire treasure to spain this decision is a first it is based on the sovereign immunity principle in united states law which considers that a military ship will always remain the property of whichever country's flag it flies [Music] this is historical heritage this is not to be sold this is to go to a museum but we have to fight against those who go and salvage [Music] is the 600 000 coins are entrusted to the national museum of cartagena in spain the museum puts some on display and stores the rest in a vault salvaged almost 600 000 coins which were essentially identical 600 000 of the same item keep a representative sample which we do photograph every single coin front and back so you have a permanent record high definition photograph the case of the mercedes frigate is symbolic of the war between those who recover the treasure aiming for profit and those wanting to preserve it [Music] that's not cultural heritage those are trade goods those are items that were made and intended to be used in trade and they're only not in the stream of commerce because they were lost by an accident make 590 000 of those six hundred thousand available to collectors who would buy them and then let the country enjoy the economic benefit that results from it efficient amigos [Music] if treasure hunters are the only ones able to access these shipwrecks how to ensure that they will not destroy objects with no commercial value in order to optimize their costs and recover as many valuable goods as possible in the least amount of time according to them the position taken by archaeologists and heritage protection organizations is unrealistic the academic community which oftentimes influences government policy is very opposed to a commercial model the preference is worldwide seems to be to leave things be the united nations unesco the group in the united nations that regulates this has a preference for leaving things in situ leave them there once they ended up there leave them there odyssey along with most other treasure hunting organizations base this belief on one paragraph of the unesco convention it is written in black and white that in-situ preservation must be a priority according to them this convention prevents any sort of exploitation the convention says leave the underwater culture heritage in place if you don't have a good plan what you actually want to do today recovering sunken cargo is possible but it must be carried out according to a preservation protocol supervised and controlled by unesco archaeologists and once brought to the surface nothing can be sold since people can actually go into the water that's not so long yet they have been looking for treasures and have been taking them out you know spreading them over the markets a lot of things have been lost to preserve this heritage for the future for everyone for humanity this is a very important heritage underwater culture heritage all the traces that humanity left in the oceans protect it preserve it do not commercialize it do not pillage it ethical principles the problem with that view is who's going to pay for that right are the taxpayers i mean everyone has bigger needs candidly everywhere in the world than going out and bringing this cultural heritage countries around the world have much more pressing issues that they have to fund than spending money on shipwreck recoveries where we're bringing cultural heritage back to the light of day but i really do think there's a model where there could be a commercial aspect to what happens and all of the archaeology all of the history and all of the academic knowledge can also simultaneously be preserved and presented another shipwreck recently discovered by odyssey showed that collaboration between private companies and the public sector could prove to be a win-win situation this is the case of the ss gersopa odyssey had a contract with the british government to recover silver from something called the ss guest sopa this was an english merchant vessel that was sailing in 1941 the guess oprah was traveling from india to the uk with some 110 tons of silver on it and it was going to the london mint because we were running out of coinage during wartime and it was desperately needing to prop up the war economy not far from the irish coast the ss garcoba ran out of fuel forced to abandon the convoy that was protecting it the ship was torpedoed and sunk by a german submarine on february 17 1941 [Music] the shipwreck was located in 2011 4 800 meters underwater thanks to an unprecedented technological feat odyssey commissioned by the british government managed to recover over 60 tons of silver the silver was found it was brought up from 4 800 meters deep that's a mile deeper than the titanic and it was melted down and the uk government got their split and odyssey got their percentage 3 000 silver bars worth a total of 210 million dollars the jackpot is shared between odyssey and the british treasury but the story doesn't end there but then towards the end of the project this sludge appeared up with the silver and i was approached and brought into the t and said what can we do with this so because they had the funds from the silver we could take the sludge to a laboratory get it conserved get it analyzed and out of this probable situation and from the darkness we now have 600 personal letters [Music] and christmas cards and business documents and checks being sent by mostly british army officers their wives missionaries teachers in the british raj being sent home at the end of 1940 to their loved ones [Music] it's kind of a cross-section a snapshot of the life of british india from the front line to the fireplace and so society will contribute it they'll learn the story the real story about the ss gear soaper and it gives you a kind of indication of the good that can be done if you allow a commercial angle potentially into thinking about how you're going to pay for this science there's only the fact that there was a commercial model that allowed us to roll out the science public and private cooperations have also proved successful in certain southeast asian countries such as indonesia and malaysia where treasure hunters traditionally share their findings with the government when i became involved in this work i was dealing with indonesia i was dealing with vietnam malaysia and all of those countries had the policy of working with a private company and then the rule was 50 went to the government 50 to the salvage company and they would keep representative collections for their museum but the bulk of it the multi duplicates could still go for sale [Music] these agreements allow governments to fund future shipwreck research and enrich their museums without incurring exploration costs although the process is risky for wreck hunters their share of the treasure allows them to finance these excavations so they've worked on a joint venture basis with private companies that are willing to spend the money and take the risk because the risks are very very high and one of those risks is a political risk you might have a nice contract with the government and you might bring up everything and do the conservation and then the government might say thank you very much and keep the whole lot that's not unheard of unfortunately due to some wreck hunters abusing these agreements accused of not declaring large portions of their treasure the indonesian government made the decision to stop issuing exploration licenses but alas this has had unexpected negative consequences so over time the policies have changed so in 2010 indonesia actually put a moratorium on giving out license now all that is done is just open the field to the looters so now there's a massive amount of looting going on [Music] for local fishermen recovering some porcelain plates and selling them for a handful of dollars has become just another source of income [Music] they're not exactly wealthy they need to feed their family so the temptation is remarkable they're going to go down there and loot the ship and they don't have a choice so what's happening all the shipwrecks are being blitzed and destroyed and dynamited by fishermen in the search for treasure and material to sell over just a few years the black market has developed and indonesia has become the world capital of underwater antiquities trafficking this smuggling has resulted in the destruction of hundreds of shipwrecks feeding money into criminal organizations these buy whatever the fishermen collect and then sell porcelain and other relics at high prices to unscrupulous collectors once on the market the origin of these items becomes undetectable protein is [Music] unesco has put protective measures in place in some archaeological sites but these measures do not make a lot of difference they only protect known shipwrecks whose cargo has already been emptied [Music] off sicily they're putting underwater video reconnaissance units on rome and punic shipwrecks so they can map and watch out patrollers coming into the area but that costs 150 000 euros to set up and 15 000 euros every year just for maintenance who's going to pay that while institutions and treasure hunters refuse to cooperate some shipwrecks are becoming the object of geopolitical battles in these cases the treasure is not so much what the wreck contains but where it is located for several decades canada funded the search for two shipwrecks the hms erebus and the hms terror both of which disappeared in 1845. the purpose of john franklin's expedition was to connect the atlantic to the pacific via northern canada the mission came to a halt when the two ships were crushed by the ice his shipwrecks went down nobody knew where they were there were various echoes and rumors from the local inuit tribes but recently in the last few years the canadians they found two of the most iconic shipwrecks hms erebus and hms terror and we had just passed uh right over top of this wrecked structure uh which just on uh uh i think we could tell exactly what it was uh in a few seconds it's definitely definitely a shipwreck what was the reaction like winning the stanley cup now that might sound like just great fun indiana jones kind of exploitation but prime minister harper made it one of his driving missions to find the remains of these noble shipwrecks it is about more than solving an age-old canadian british world mystery canada had already put an x marks a spot this is where the shipwrecks are and we own this area we are demonstrating our absolute sovereignty over this piece of iconic territory but sovereignty over this maritime area is not clear cut countries such as the united states consider this shipping lane as an international strait with open access yet the canadian government sees this strategic crossing as an integral part of its internal waters this is one of the two most important geopolitical hot spots in the world along with the south china sea now america and other countries they claim the northwest passage as an international waterway the discovery of these shipwrecks is now an additional point of contention for the canadian government by controlling this passage which reduces the distance between the north atlantic and the pacific ocean by one-third canada would have the right to impose its tariffs on all ships crossing the northwest passage canada says it's one of its own internal seas and it can control it and the freight and the cost of ships going all the way into the far east shaving weeks and months of sea voyages as global warming heats up the planet these icebergs are melting away and for the first time it's a practical reality that you will be able to sail and indeed it has been done through the northwest passage but at the same time it's going to open up the areas islands and these islands are incredibly rich there's an iron mine there which if it gets working will pump billions into the canadian economy billions of dollars not to mention the potential oil and natural gas reserves reserves that are practically unexploited accounting for 15 and 30 percent of the world's resources respectively so the search for the franklin expedition ends up not being just about underwater exploration but also being about huge business as well whether coveted for their cargo or for their strategic position shipwrecks are now a major prize these vestiges of the past lay nowadays at the heart of a deep water conflict and whilst the gap between the different sides widens far below the surface these shipwrecks are at the mercy of the passing of time over time everything that's sitting on the bottom of the ocean is going to degrade into nothing the artifacts the ship itself the cargos generally over time are going to be dissolved or degraded by the the ocean environment until there really is nothing there to discover ocean acidification the leading cause of the disappearance of coral reefs and numerous marine species is gradually eroding these shipwrecks and there is another threat fishing and in particular deep sea trawling i've argued the bottom trawling is the greatest threat to marine archaeology today [Music] some countries are campaigning to protect 30 percent of the world's oceans from industrial fishing through the creation of large marine reserves casinos every year fishing trawlers rake over sea beds the size of the congo india and brazil combined if a trawler goes through a shipwreck it's destroyed the damage is permanent it is forever nowadays deep sea trawling is a common global technique a year of deep sea fishing has 800 times more impact on the seabed than traditional fishing but how can we reduce the impact of an industry in such high demand fishing brings in some 93 billion dollars every year and employs 45 million people fishing is massive business when we look at this united nations law of the sea that they're protecting these shipwrecks now we have massive trawlers in maybe a hundred years time they'll all be destroyed because of the technicality advancement of the fishing vessel if we add to deep sea fishing the impact of offshore gas and oil exploration as well as the proliferation of underwater cables in 30 years all of the world's shipwrecks will have disappeared [Music] it's very important you know to protect and research this heritage but then also to give it to the public and say this is something that you should appreciate that is yours and uh you know protect it because it is yours who's going to pay that we have to be realistic we have to have robust models and i'm not saying the commercial model of selling fines is the right model but everything has to be on the table and we have to think creatively the only way that really it can be done is to work with the government which we are endeavoring to do and are doing that that pieces will be preserved it will go for all out for humanity for everyone if we just block it it's lost it's gonna be lost will we finally open our eyes and save the shipwrecks from their predicted disappearance will institutions such as unesco archaeologists and treasure hunters remain unshifting in their views or will they start talking to one another and work together to solve one of the greatest cultural challenges of this century [Music] you

Channel: ENDEVR

Views: 1,898,261

Keywords: Free documentary, documentaries, full documentary, hd documentary, documentary - topic, documentary (tv genre), Business Documentary, treasures, underwater treasure, sunken eldorado, gold, gold rush, goldrush

Id: JauzdvagHVI

Length: 52min 34sec (3154 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 21 2021