‘Holy Grail’ of shipwrecks found off Colombian coast
Source: Euronews
05/12 18:47 CET
Colombia claims to have discovered what’s been described as the ‘holy grail’ of shipwrecks of the coast of Cartagena.
The San Jose is documented has having been carrying one of the richest cargoes of treasure ever to have been lost at sea
It was sunk by a British warship in 1708 on its way from South America to Spain, ruled by King Philip V at the time. 600 lives were lost.
The treasure that went down with it is estimated to be worth between around three-and-a-half to fifteen-and-a-half billion euros.
“It constitutes one of the biggest – if not the biggest, as some say, discoveries of sunken treasure in the history of mankind, “
Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos told a press conference.
Read more: http://www.euronews.com/2015/12/05/holy-grail-of-shipwrecks-found-off-colombian-coast/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Another footnote - 600 lives were lost!
they can afford it. 
While everyone's going on and on about the treasure, I'm wondering just how big was this ship for 600+ lives to be lost? That's a lot of people and living quarters, in addition to the room they needed for all of that treasure.
I saw the link above with pictures, but the painting doesn't give me any kind of decent sense of scale, and certainly not layout. Any help here? 
Although I went to Wikipedia, and found just a little more info under the entry on "Wager's Action" as follows (I've had to assume the numbers in parenthesis mean the number of crew) :
San José (64) (Capitan Santillán)
San Joaquín (64) (Capitan Villanueva)
Santa Cruz (44) (Capitan de la Rosa)
The gold and silver was concentrated on the 3 largest vessels. The San José had 7 to 11 million pesos on board, and the San Joaquin 5 million. The Santa Cruz had the rest, only a fraction of the other two ships.
*****************
The Expedition attacked the San José and approached the vessel with the clear intention of boarding the ship. Around 7 p.m., after an hour and a half of fierce fighting and with only 60 meters between the two ships, suddenly the San José blew up. The ship sank immediately, taking its precious cargo and almost the entire crew to the bottom of the sea. There were only 11 survivors out of the 600 crew and passengers on board.
Still nothing about the overall size of the ship. We can only assume it was huge!
And it was. I just found this painting that shows it in much better detail, if only from the rear:
?resize=615%2C397