00:00A Portuguese archaeologist has just unearthed several gold-laden wreckages,
00:06including a Spanish galleon carrying 22 tons of gold and silver.
00:11This treasure alone is estimated to be worth around $2 billion today.
00:17Archaeologist Alexandre Monteiro made this discovery almost by chance.
00:22While he was examining the archives,
00:24he came across information about a ship that disappeared in 1615.
00:29Intrigued, he decided to go looking for it.
00:32After many years of work, Alexandre not only found this particular ship,
00:37he actually found 8,620 wreckages in the Portuguese waters alone.
00:44Among them, 250 gold-laden transporters,
00:47a discovery that would make Jack Sparrow's desire for gold disappear.
00:52If most of these ships sank for trivial reasons, like storms,
00:57some of them perished in battle, sometimes spectacularly.
01:02They sailed to Europe from the New World,
01:07striking all convoys.
01:09For three decades, Alexandre Monteiro has studied historical wreckages
01:14and thus identified several shipwrecks that occurred in remarkable circumstances.
01:19In 1816, for example, a ship belonging to one of Portugal's richest men
01:25sank off the coast of Australia with no less than 6,000 silver coins.
01:30It was the first Portuguese ship to have sunk in these waters.
01:35Unfortunately, these engulfed, treasure-rich and fascinating remains
01:40are far from being easily accessible.
01:42They rest at abyssal depths and are buried under the sand.
01:46Attempting to seize them would be a patrimonial looting,
01:49and no one would want to bear such a responsibility, would they?
01:53It goes without saying that Portugal was not the only country to sink the seas at that time.
01:58The European coasts were full of wreckage containing gold deposits.
02:02It is estimated that about a million historic ships are currently resting under the waters,
02:08and the value of these lost treasures could be close to 60 billion dollars.
02:13This sum is dizzying, but don't be fooled.
02:16These gold-encompassing wreckages do not justify the risks involved.
02:21The maritime history is full of examples where the discovery of a treasure
02:25resulted in endless trials, and even heavy prison sentences.
02:30One of these stories dates back to 1746,
02:33when a violent storm sank the Prince of Conti off the coast of Britain.
02:39This ship was carrying tea, ceramics, and a hundred gold ingots.
02:44The owners obviously tried to recover their precious cargo,
02:47but if the operation is to be considered complex today, imagine the difficulties in the 18th century.
02:53It took more than two centuries to locate the wreckage.
02:56It was only in 1975 that a group of Frenchmen set it afloat,
03:01immediately taking hold of everything that had the slightest value.
03:05However, there is a good reason why the game is not worth the candle.
03:09In France, any discovery of historical potential must be reported to the authorities within a period of 48 hours.
03:17Not respecting this obligation is purely and simply committing a crime.
03:23Of course, the discoverers did declare their discovery,
03:26but only the rusty guns of the ship.
03:29As for the gold ingots, they were found on the market,
03:33and of course, each bar was worth between 1,000-2,000, or 5,000-2,300 euros.
03:38It took nearly half a century for the French authorities to get their hands on some of the stolen gold,
03:44without being able to recover it in its entirety.
03:47A fraction of the treasure was acquired by an elderly couple living in Florida,
03:52which gave them chase for money laundering, organized crime and cultural goods trafficking.
03:58Other ingots were found, as for them, in the British Museum's collection.
04:04Let us now return to the 1850s,
04:07a time when the SS Central America steamer made the connection between Panama and California.
04:14It was the height of the gold rush,
04:16a period when 3,000 people floated in California in the hope of making a fortune.
04:21The journey being far from being a ciné-cure,
04:23travelers had no choice but to transport their gold aboard large ships.
04:28This is how the SS Central America entered the scene.
04:31In 1857, it carried 578 passengers, as well as a load of about 10 tons of gold.
04:38Very few survived the shipwreck, and between 100 and 150 million dollars in gold sank with it.
04:46It was precisely this gluttonous fortune that prompted, in 1988,
04:50a group of Colombian investors to fund research to locate the wreck.
04:55The operation was led by a certain Tommy Thompson,
04:59a man obsessed with the idea of finding this lost treasure.
05:03It took him years to determine the exact location of the SS Central America,
05:08especially since the ship sailed at 2,300 meters deep in the Atlantic,
05:13making any recovery extremely complex and requiring cutting-edge technology.
05:19This project was funded by 100 such investors,
05:23who, of course, did not do it for pure philanthropy.
05:27They had injected 12.5 million dollars into this company,
05:32hoping to get at least ten times as much.
05:35But as everything did not always go as planned,
05:37as soon as the gold was brought back to the surface,
05:40the research team was sued by 39 insurance companies.
05:44At the time, when the SS Central America was still sailing,
05:48these companies had covered the load,
05:50and despite the passing of the century, they demanded to be compensated when the treasure was recovered.
05:55They claimed that it did not belong to them to recover the load,
05:59which did not mean, however, that they had made a cross on it.
06:03This argument weighed heavily,
06:05and 92% of the gold was finally attributed to the research team.
06:09But history took a more rock'n'roll turn
06:12when Tommy Thompson swindled his investors before disappearing
06:16with 4.16 million dollars and 500 gold coins,
06:20of which he stubbornly refused to reveal the hiding place.
06:22This case illustrates perfectly why most countries have established laws
06:27aimed at protecting cultural assets.
06:30Because, yes, the losses can be considered as such.
06:33That said, all maritime discoveries do not involve infraction.
06:37Let's take the example of the SS City of Cairo,
06:40a steamboat that sank in 1929
06:43with 2,000 silver coins on board for a total of 122 tons of precious metal.
06:48A company called Deep Ocean Search
06:50managed to recover these coins
06:53at a depth of 5,200 meters,
06:56or 1,400 meters more than the Titanic wreck.
06:5934 million pounds of sterling were returned to the British treasury,
07:03while Deep Ocean Search also obtained its share of the loot.
07:07The good news is that some of these coins are legally accessible to collectors.
07:12Acquiring such a treasure is undoubtedly the simplest way
07:16to approach an underwater archaeological discovery.
07:19I know, I have just reduced your dreams of piracy to nothing.
07:23But even if looting gold-filled wreckages constitutes a crime in most countries,
07:28or simply an out-of-reach financial enterprise for the common man,
07:32there is still hope.
07:34It is estimated that about $ 707,000 billion in gold
07:38rests at the bottom of the seas, without an owner.
07:41It is a real underwater gold mine.
07:44Except that the gold is dissolved in the water.
07:46Do you know how salty the sea water is?
07:48Well, it is because it is loaded with minerals, including gold.
07:52Alas, this means that you will never fall on a nugget
07:56while strolling on the beach.
07:58Each liter of sea water contains about 13 billion grams of gold,
08:02an infinitesimal amount, making its extraction complex.
08:07But this did not prevent some from trying,
08:10and of course, a scam was born.
08:13In the 1890s, a man claimed to have developed
08:16a device capable of extracting gold from sea water.
08:20Once the funds were raised, it was discreetly merged with the cash register.
08:25If you are really determined to find gold,
08:28why not go directly to the Earth's core,
08:31which would contain about 1.6 billion tons of gold,
08:3516 times more than all that humanity has extracted since its inception?
08:39No risk of piracy here,
08:41since no one has yet had the audacity to try the expedition.
08:44With all these gold-filled wrecks that archaeologists exhume from all over the globe,
08:48who knows,
08:50maybe one day we will be able to make our own discoveries,
08:53or save enough to offer ourselves some silver coins.
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