Already, more than 18.000 silver coins have been recovered– a number Nikolaus Count Sandizell never dreamed of achieving. Sandizell is head of the internationally-operated, Lisbon based Arqueonautas Worldwide S.A., a shareholder company and one of the top notch addresses when it comes to marine archaeology and finding treasures at the bottom of the ocean.

And the dream is not over yet: A crew of 14 men, under the leadership of Alejandro Mirabal, Arqueonautas’ Operations’ Manager as well as a highly skilled diver, is still busy excavating more silver coins: “We can’t believe what’s going on. It seems as if the ship carried much more than the cargo lists say”, affirms an enthusiastic Mirabal. At present, the treasure could be worth around 800.000 Euros – and that number could grow.

Finding the coins off the isolated and lonely coast of the East African country, a former Portuguese colony, however, was no walk in the park. As early as 2003, Sandizell and Mirabal, researched the history of the São José. The ship was part of a fleet intended to accompany the future Viceroy of India, great grand son of the famous Vasco da Gama, to Goa. This port city on India’s western coast served as capital for the Portuguese East Asian empire, the so called “Estado da Índia”. The governors based in India ruled as viceroys – rich, powerful, and well-respected.
On the ship transporting him to India, Viceroy da Gama brought nine chests, each filled with 2000 coins handed over to him by King Philip – 18,000 coins in total, much of which Sandizell and Mirabel have recovered. In 1622, British and Dutch were already beginning to interfere with the Portuguese sea routes, threatening to establish a presence in the Indian Ocean and challenge the Portuguese trade monopoly, and the Sao Jose presented the Dutch and English with an easy target.

With stunning visuals, Lost off Mozambique tells the increasingly rare story of a successful treasure hunt, a feat that Sandizell and his team have been working at for the last two years:
We follow the team from the project’s humble beginnings in Lisbon archives to the wreck sight in exotic and beautiful Mozambique, where the crew perform the survey, reconnaissance and final recovery.
Combining HD, shot re-enactment, ambitious graphics, interviews with renown experts and  material from Goa, the documentary finds its balance between the contextual framework of historical narrative and the fast-paced entertainment of a high-energy treasure hunt.