SUNKEN BILLIONS

The Spanish galleon found with £15bn treasure is just one of many gold-laden wrecks on seabed... but getting to them is not for the faint-hearted

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TREASURE trove of gold coins, Chinese porcelain and emeralds and pearls worth £15billion has been discovered at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea on sunken Spanish galleon the San Jose.

Images of the “holy grail” of shipwrecks were taken by salvage investigators this week.

The warship was ambushed by the British Navy in 1708 and adventurers have dreamed of finding its loot - including 200 tons of gold, silver and gems destined for Panama - ever since.

The San Jose is just one of millions of shipwrecks lurking in our oceans.

And treasure seekers go to extraordinary lengths to find them - often in controversial circumstances.

The frigate Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes was sunk by the British off the coast of Portugal in 1804, taking with it millions of silver pieces of eight, and gold coins, worth £370million.

US treasure hunter Odyssey Marine Exploration scoured the seabed in 2007 and recovered almost 500,000 of them, taking them back to America.

An ensuing legal battle resulted in the treasure being returned to Spain, where it is now on display in a museum in the city of Cartagena.

In 1988, wreck hunter Tommy Thompson fought to get his hands on riches from the Californian gold rush that went down with the SS Central America off the coast of South Carolina in 1857, claiming 425 lives.

The “ship of gold” was carrying 21 tons of nuggets, ingots, dust and coins when it was hit by a hurricane as it sailed from Panama to New York City.

Thompson used sonar to bring up thousands of gold bars and coins, worth £220million. But he was jailed in 2015 after failing to disclose the whereabouts of the loot.

While a judge agreed to end his sentence earlier this year, saying he was no longer convinced “further incarceration is likely to coerce compliance”, Thompson began a two-year sentence for a related criminal contempt charge.