The famous shipwreck in history is 1643, which sank in the north of Santo Domingo. This sunken ship has attracted generations of explorers. It is said that it is still sleeping at the bottom of the sea between the northeast of Puerto Plata in Santo Domingo 163 nautical miles and the northeast of Turks and Caicos Islands 98 nautical miles.
William Phipps, an Englishman living in Boston, USA, first tried to salvage the sunken ship. 1685 initiated the establishment of shareholder companies such as "Adventure Gentleman" for the first time to raise relief funds. 1686, he found a sunken ship named "The Virgin of Concepcion" at the bottom of the Caribbean called "Silver Beach". He salvaged a treasure worth 200,000 pounds from the sunken ship and returned to London with 32 tons of gold. This was the most sensational event in the history of treasure hunting. William Phipps himself was promoted to nobility by the King of England, and was appointed as the governor of Massachusetts, becoming an outstanding figure at that time.
It is said that the place with the most underwater treasures is in the Caribbean Sea in northern Latin America. The Caribbean Sea is located between the Greater Andreas Islands and the Lesser andreas Islands in the southern North Atlantic and the Central and South American continents. It connects the Gulf of Mexico with the Yucatan Strait in the northwest, and connects the Pacific Ocean with the Panama Canal in the southwest. It is about 2,800 kilometers long from east to west, and 1.400 kilometers wide from north to south, with an area of 375 square kilometers and an average depth of 249 1 meter. The deepest Cayman trench is 7680 meters. Since Columbus crossed the Atlantic for the third time in 1498, thousands of ships loaded with gold, silver and jewels have been sunk by storms and pirates. In addition to the Caribbean, there are hundreds of sunken ships in the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, most of which are Dutch ships carrying treasures. The coastal areas of bass strait, Chile, Peru, Venezuela and Brazil between the Yellow Sea, the Australian mainland and Tasmania, as well as the southern coastal areas of Spain, Britain and the United States are also areas where shipwrecks are concentrated.
Francis Ma Erkai, a sailor nicknamed "Mast Sail", once told a member of the French Treasure Hunting Club a rumor: "I heard that there is a" treasure graveyard "at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean near the sargasso sea, in madero, Argentina and Puerto Plata, Dominica. Since15th century, thousands of Spanish ships have sailed here and never appeared again. The sargasso sea is a little-known mysterious sea area. People always say that there is a rocky roof under the sea. When a ship has an accident, it does not always sink directly into the bottom of the sea, but is often caught in the abyss by the vortex, thus making the wrecked ship far away from the scene of the accident and missing. It is said that110 of the gold on the earth sinks there, and the depth of seawater in some places is less than 30 meters. Another "treasure graveyard" is located in the southeast of Bermudez, Cuba. The third "Treasure Cemetery" is 250 nautical miles from Cape Corleone, Argentina. The fourth "Treasure Cemetery" is located near Chilo Island in Chile. The fifth "Treasure Cemetery" is located at the bottom (green corner) of Cape Verde, Senegal. Although no one can point out the exact location of the' treasure graveyard', it can be inferred that there must be a sunken ship full of ancient gold coins, silver coins and precious stones there or elsewhere ... "
The war archives of World War II can also broaden people's search horizons. It is precisely because of these files that it is possible to further determine the location of four boxes of 600 kilograms of gold "Romel Treasure" that sank in the northwest of Corsica. Thanks to these files, people found the exact location of the sunken ship "Apomaru". "Apomaru" is a Japanese cargo ship, full of treasures plundered by the Japanese in its occupied ports. It is said that this ship sunk by a torpedo in the Taiwan Province Strait contains 40 tons of gold, 40 boxes of art treasures and 6,543,800+5,000 carats of diamonds. In addition, during the Second World War, many German submarines that sank in the North Sea and the Skagrakir Strait (between Denmark and Norway) were loaded with precious items such as gold, silver and state secrets.
In William Phipps's time, people used local divers to look for sunken treasures. At present, people use sophisticated scientific and technological equipment, including sonar to measure the seabed topography through echoes, magnetometers to detect whether there are protons of metal objects, nozzles to dig mud, dredgers, underwater motorcycles and miniature positioning submarines.
Nowadays, as a treasure hunter, one must first become an experienced sailor and be good at consulting literature in the library. In order to browse the navigation archives of Spain, Britain or Holland easily, it takes several years to get familiar with ancient philology. It is said that these nautical files are stacked layer by layer, with a thickness of 23 meters! You should also learn to recognize Spanish Piaster (the name of ancient silver coin) among annoying flat pebbles, just like Cape Wagner in the United States found an ancient silver coin worth 20 million dollars at the bottom of Florida. Cape Wagner spent two years studying the history of navigation around the Gulf of Mexico from Seville to Jamaica, and then he found this treasure thousands of kilometers under the sea with an ordinary military mine detector.
Traditionally, after a sunken ship is discovered, the "treasure hunter" should report to the maritime administrative agency of the relevant country within 48 hours. The sunken ship belongs to the country within its territorial waters. According to the traditional method, the "declaration discoverer" can receive an article he found. In France, it is generally l/3. Some countries are divided. In other places, like Florida, 25% of the items are given to the discoverer. Some countries, such as Greece and Turkey, absolutely forbid people to salvage sunken treasure without permission. However, some countries, such as Nordic countries, are looking for divers to cooperate in salvaging the sunken treasure.
1950, the British Treasury reached an agreement with a domestic salvage company: 70 gold bricks were salvaged from a British freighter "Imperial Manor" that sank at the bottom of Newfoundland, Canada, 70% of the gold bricks were returned to the salvage company, and the rest were returned to the British Treasury. Before the salvage, the British government paid 25,000 pounds in advance as the preparation cost of the project. Although the conditions are favorable, the salvage company is faced with an arduous and complicated salvage task, because the sea conditions in this sea area are particularly bad, not only foggy and windy, but also cold and urgent submarine undercurrents and ice floes. After more than 20 years of efforts, until June 1973, all the sunken gold was finally fished out of the seabed.
An international legal plan to protect the cultural heritage of the seabed has been submitted to the World Conference on the Law of the Sea. However, it seems that there will be no results in the near future. Therefore, during this period, the sunken treasure on the seabed, like many other marine resources, will still be the object of your competition. For example, during the Russo-Japanese War, a Russian cruiser "Nakimov" was sunk by a Japanese gunboat off the coast of Chyi Chin, Ma Haixia on May 28th. 1905. It is said that the ship carried 16 white gold bullion, 18 gold bullion and 5,500 boxes of gold bullion, each worth 5,000 pounds. From 193 1 to 1937, Japan once fished, but only a few iron pieces were salvaged. Not long ago, the Japan Ship Promotion Association supported the salvage operation with huge sums of money, and by June 1980, 17 platinum bricks had been salvaged. After Japan fished out platinum, the Soviet agent in Japan immediately asked the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to claim the sunken ship Nakhimov and its treasure. Japan replied to the Soviets on the grounds that salvage has nothing to do with the government and needs to be studied.
During World War II, the British patrol ship Edinburgh was sunk by a German ship in the Barents Sea in late April of 1942 on its way from the Soviet Union to the United States. The cruiser is said to have loaded more than 5 tons of gold bars. Britain, the Soviet Union and Norway have been trying to salvage the gold in this sunken ship, but they can't do it because they haven't found the exact location of the sunken ship. In the early 1980s, news finally came from the British riston Pissler Salvage Company that they had found the sunken Edinburgh with gold nuggets. As a result, Soviet planes constantly carried out aerial reconnaissance over the salvage operation area, and Soviet submarines also came to supervise from time to time. It can be seen that the Soviet Union did not want Britain to swallow the treasure of the sunken Edinburgh.
In short, with the development of modern science and technology, human skills in ocean exploration, ocean diving and ocean salvage are also advancing by leaps and bounds. On the one hand, it can make people develop and utilize marine resources more effectively, on the other hand, it also provides convenience for all kinds of underwater treasure hunters, so that they can use advanced underwater technology to find underwater treasures. A race for treasure began in the quiet underwater world. As for how many treasures people can find and salvage, it is still unknown.