00:00A Portuguese archaeologist just discovered a bunch of sunken ships filled with gold,
00:06including a Spanish galleon with 22 tons of gold and silver.
00:11This much gold today is worth about $2 billion, and this is the money from one ship alone.
00:20Archaeologist Alexandre Monteiro made this discovery almost by accident.
00:25He was studying some documents when he found some information about a ship that went missing
00:29in 1615, and he decided he wanted to find it.
00:34After many years, Alexandre found not just this specific ship.
00:38He actually discovered 8,620 shipwrecks in the waters of Portugal alone.
00:46Out of this number, 250 are gold-filled shipwrecks, a discovery that would make any Jack Sparrow
00:52shake in his boots.
00:54Most of these ships went down for boring reasons like the weather, but sometimes they were
00:59destroyed in battles, which may or may not have been super epic.
01:04They were carrying gold and other treasures from the New World to Europe, and of course,
01:09everyone wanted a share.
01:12Alexandre had been studying historical shipwrecks for 30 years now, so he has discovered many
01:17ships that went down in somewhat glorious ways.
01:21In 1816, for example, a ship of one of the richest men in Portugal sank in Australia,
01:27with an insane amount of 66,000 silver coins.
01:32This was the first ship from Portugal to ever plunge in the waters of Australia.
01:37The bad news is that these ancient sunken vessels, filled with riches and epic stories,
01:42are not so easy to reach.
01:45They're deep down in the ocean and covered by sand.
01:48You could still try, but that would be stealing part of a country's history, and you wouldn't
01:52want to be that person, would you?
01:55Naturally, Portugal was not the only country that explored the seas back then.
02:00The coast of Europe is packed with sunken ships filled with gold.
02:05In fact, there are about a million historical shipwrecks underwater right now, and the treasures
02:10abandoned under the sea might be worth around $60 billion.
02:16It's an insane amount of money, but let me tell you that these gold-filled sunken ships
02:20aren't really worth the hassle.
02:23There are many stories of maritime treasure discoveries that turned into insane lawsuits
02:28and even long jail time.
02:32Our first story starts in 1746, when a violent storm crashed a ship called Prince de Conti
02:39near an island in Britain.
02:41The ship was filled with tea, ceramics, and 100 gold ingots.
02:47Of course, the owners of the ship tried to save the loot, but if it's not easy now,
02:51imagine how it was back in the 18th century.
02:55It took more than 200 years for the vessel to be found.
02:59It finally happened in 1975, when a group of French men discovered it and decided to
03:04take pretty much every valuable thing they could find.
03:07Now, I said these things were not worth the trouble for a reason.
03:12In France, if you find anything that can be historical, you must declare it to the local
03:16authorities within 48 hours.
03:19If you fail to comply, then you will be committing something known as a crime.
03:25To be fair, our French friends here did declare their findings, but only the corroded cannons
03:29from the ship.
03:31And the gold?
03:32Well, they sold it, obviously because each gold bar is worth between $125,000 to $231,000.
03:42It took French authorities almost 50 years to retrieve the stolen gold, and they didn't
03:47retrieve all of it.
03:49Part of it was bought by an elderly couple living in Florida, and the crime is so serious,
03:54they were charged for connection with money laundering, organized crime, and the trafficking
03:58of cultural goods.
04:00The poachers also sold some gold ingots to the British Museum collection.
04:05Now, let's go back to the 1850s, when a steamer called SS Central America traveled
04:12from Panama to California and back again.
04:16This was during the Californian Gold Rush, a time when 300,000 people moved to California
04:22to dig for gold.
04:24Because the travel route was not easy breezy, people needed to carry their gold around on
04:28big ships.
04:29This is where our friend SS Central America comes in.
04:34In 1857, the ship had 578 people on board and about 10 tons of gold.
04:40Very few survived, and around $100 to $150 million in gold went down with the ship.
04:48All of this explains why in 1988, a group of investors from Columbus decided to finance
04:54a research project to find this ship.
04:57The research was led by a guy named Tommy Thompson.
05:01Tommy was really crazy about the idea of finding this sunken ship filled with gold.
05:06It took him years to find the exact location of the SS Central America, especially because
05:12the ship was 7,500 feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean and retrieving it required
05:18a lot of fancy tech.
05:21A group of 161 investors paid for his adventure, but it goes without saying that they were
05:27not doing this out of love from their hearts.
05:30They invested $12.5 million in this project because they were expecting to earn at least
05:3610 times more.
05:38But since life is not all sunshine and rainbows, 39 insurance companies sued the research team
05:44as soon as they retrieved the gold.
05:47Back when the ship was up and running, these companies insured the cargo of the SS Central
05:51America.
05:52And when the cargo was finally retrieved, more than 100 years later, they wanted to
05:57be compensated.
05:59They said it was not their job to retrieve it, but that doesn't mean they abandoned
06:03it.
06:04But this crazy talk didn't stick, and 92% of the gold was given to the research team.
06:10The plot thickened when the investors were scammed by none other than Tommy Thompson,
06:14who fled with $4.16 million.
06:18He also had 500 gold coins, but he's not telling a soul where they are.
06:25Nonsense like this is the reason why most countries have rules to protect cultural properties.
06:30And yes, sometimes shipwrecks can be a cultural property.
06:35Obviously, there are many maritime treasure discoveries that happen without breaking any
06:40laws.
06:41The SS City of Cairo, for example, was a steamship that submerged in 1929 with 2,000 boxes of
06:48silver coins weighing 122 tons.
06:52A company called Deep Ocean Search retrieved the coins from a depth of 17,000 feet, which
06:59is 4,500 feet lower than the Titanic.
07:03£34 million went to the UK Treasury, and the Deep Ocean Search also got a share.
07:11The good news here is that some of the coins can be bought by collectors, legally.
07:16Paying for a treasure is probably the closest you can get to an underwater archaeology find.
07:23I know all I did was destroy your piracy dreams, but while raiding gold-filled shipwrecks may
07:28be a crime in most countries, or just financially impossible for us mere mortals, not all hope
07:34is lost.
07:36There is about $771 trillion worth of gold lying on the ocean floor, and it doesn't
07:42have an owner.
07:43It's like an underwater gold mine, except the gold is IN the water!
07:49You know how the water of the ocean is salty?
07:52Well, the gold gets mixed with the minerals in the water, so it's not like you stumble
07:56upon a gold nugget on the beach.
07:59Each litre of ocean water has 13 billionths of a gram of gold, and it's very difficult
08:05to extract such tiny particles of gold from the water.
08:09But that doesn't mean people haven't tried, and of course, there's been a scam here too.
08:16In the 1890s, a guy claimed he had invented a thing that would suck gold from the seawater.
08:23When he got enough money, he fled the country with the cash.
08:27If you really want to get some gold, you can try to extract it from the Earth's core,
08:32which has 1.6 quadrillion tons of gold.
08:36There's 16 times more gold in the Earth's core than what humans have mined in the whole
08:41of history.
08:42No hoax involved here, because nobody has dared to go down there yet.
08:48With archaeologists discovering gold-filled sunken ships out and about, maybe we can make
08:53our own maritime treasure discoveries!
08:56Or at least save enough money to buy some silver coins!
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