Colombian researchers have located the Spanish treasure ship San José, which sank in 1708 with jewels and precious metals that today could be worth as much as $14 billion, the South American country's president, Juan Manuel Santos, announced in a statement on Saturday.

The team from Colombia's Ministry of Culture found a wreck matching the vessel using sonar, underwater cameras and remotely-operated robots, the Washington Post reported. Their success marks "one of the biggest findings and identifications of underwater heritage in the history of humanity," the president beamed.

The "Holy Grail of shipwrecks," whose load should amount to at least $1 billion but will likely rise to many times that amount, contains, without doubt, the world's largest sunken treasure, the Associated Press reported. Autonomous underwater vehicles have taken photos of dolphin-stamped bronze cannons in a well-preserved state that leave no doubt to the galleon's identity, the government said.

The exact location of the ship, meanwhile, was a state secret that he would personally safeguard, Santos noted. The San José is believed to have sunk somewhere in the wide area off Colombia's Barú peninsula, south of Cartagena, during the evening hours of May 28, 1708.

That night, the galleon, supposedly carrying 11 million gold coins and jewels from Spanish-controlled colonies, was trying to outrun a fleet of British warships when it capsized with 600 people aboard. And Spain contends that even today, it has a rightful claim to the San José and its contents of emeralds, silver and gold, El País reported.

"Spain has signed the UNESCO convention, and international law must been followed, even though Colombia has not signed that convention," Spanish Culture Minister Íñigo Méndez de Vigo noted in reference to the 2001 Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage intended to protect "all traces of human existence having a cultural, historical or archaeological character."

"It's a state-owned ship -- a state ship, a warship, and not a private ship -- which is why the country whose flag the vessel carries has ownership" Spanish Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo agreed.