With 70 guns and about 400 hands, HMS Expedition was exactly the kind of ship-of-the-line that formed the backbone of the 18th-century Royal Navy.
At about 7pm on June 8, 1708, she fired a broadside that not only sent a Spanish enemy carrying 600 people onboard to the bottom of the Caribbean Sea but, after the passage of more than three centuries, triggered a diplomatic and legal row that has suddenly escalated.
The dispute is over the wreckage of the San José, a galleon carrying a priceless hoard of gold, silver and emeralds from Panama to Colombia for onward travel to Spain.
And it involves the governments of Spain, Colombia and Peru, with indigenous groups and even an American salvage company.
The long-simmering row – which began in 2015, when a wreck first discovered off the coast of Colombia was claimed as the remains of the San José – reignited this week after researchers confirmed it was indeed the resting place of the vessel, often described as the “holy grail” of shipwrecks.
Most tantalisingly of all, the study published in Antiquity, a specialist journal in archaeology, reached this conclusion based on the glittering cargo photographed by underwater drones lying amid the wreckage on the Caribbean seabed.
In particular, the researchers identified coins, cannons and even Chinese porcelain dating from the period when San José fell prey to British guns, at the height of the War of the Spanish Succession. “This body of evidence substantiates the identification of the wreck as the San José galleon,” they concluded.
Earlier surveys conducted by drones suggest that the total value in today’s money of the hoard now lying at a depth of nearly 600m may be around £16 billion ($36b).
But who owns the treasure trove, which Commodore Charles Wager, the commander of the British squadron that sank San José, scattered beneath the ocean waves almost exactly 317 years ago?
There are at least four claimants, although experts predict the dispute will remain intractable. The blunt truth is that no international court can have jurisdiction unless the parties agree, leaving no realistic avenue for the argument to be settled.
The first claimant is Spain on the basis that San José was the property of the Spanish state, and the mines in Peru and Bolivia, which produced the treasure in her hold, were, at the time, located within Spanish sovereign territory.
The next party is Colombia for the simple reason that the wreck of San José lies inside its territorial waters in the Caribbean Sea, known at the time of the battle as the Spanish Main.
So sensitive is the subject that Colombia has made the exact location of San José a state secret, while the Government plans to raise what remains of the ship for display in a museum.
A third possible contender is Peru because the ship’s priceless cargo was derived from what was then its territory.
Finally, there are indigenous communities whose ancestors worked the mines, which produced the treasure that was loaded on board San José for passage to Spain. They claim to be the rightful heirs to the fortune thought to remain in the depths.
The gold and silver came from the legendary mines of Potosi, the single most glittering asset of the Spanish empire, located in what is now Bolivia. In the 18th century, however, Bolivia was known as Upper Peru and subject to the Spanish Viceroyalty in Lima.
From the 16th century onwards, galleons carrying the riches of Potosí crossed the Atlantic and kept the Spanish Empire afloat. By intercepting these vessels, Commodore Wager was following in a British tradition begun nearly two centuries earlier by Sir Francis Drake.
To make matters yet more complicated, an American salvage business, now known as Sea Search Armada (SSA), claims to have found the wreck as long ago as the 1980s – decades before Colombia said in 2015 that its navy had independently discovered the ship.
The company is now suing the Government of Colombia for allegedly breaking the terms of its contract by failing to pay for the discovery. SSA claims to have disclosed the location of the vessel to Colombian officials on the condition that it receive a share of its bounty.
This case, currently before the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, is a commercial wrangle which does not cover the vital question of the status and ownership of the wreck.
And today there is no realistic method by which that central dispute might be settled, explains Dr Michail Risvas, an expert in the law of the sea at Southampton University.
“There is no global court which can adjudicate because, as a general rule, there is no compulsory jurisdiction in international law,” he says.
The dispute between Spain and Colombia over the ownership of the wreck could only go before an international court if both parties were to agree – and there is no sign of that happening.
Spain has signed both the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the Unesco Convention on the Protection of Underwater Cultural Heritage, both of which provide for disputes to be resolved by international courts. But that does not hold out any hope because Colombia is not a party to either agreement.
In theory, Spain and Colombia could resolve the dispute bilaterally or agree to refer the matter to an international court. Britain and America successfully negotiated a bilateral agreement on the management of the Titanic after its discovery in 1985, giving both countries the right to issue licences to explore the wreck.
But even if Spain and Colombia were to settle their differences, this would still exclude the claims of Peru and the indigenous communities.
In theory, those parties could take their case to a domestic Peruvian court. But that would resolve nothing because any ruling would not be enforceable against Colombia or any other country.
The claims of indigenous peoples are perhaps the hardest to pursue because international courts are only open to states.
Does this mean that the dispute over San José is likely to remain unsolvable? “Yes, absolutely,” replies Dr Risvas simply. “And this is common in situations like this one when you have cultural objects in contested geographical areas.”
The shipwrecks of millennia are scattered beneath the world’s oceans, perhaps three million in all. Many believe that they should simply be left in place; after all, they represent the graves of human beings, and most are of no monetary value.
But the Atlantic shipping lanes joining Spain with its Empire in the Americas were for centuries the most valuable in the world, sailed by galleons laden with riches.
San José’s priceless cargo has been lying beneath the ocean for over 300 years. As the legal struggle over her bounty continues without any resolution in sight, her true home may turn out to be with countless other lost vessels on the Caribbean seabed.
Keir Starmer announced the move as he headed to Canada for G7 talks.