Shipwrecks

The Vung Tau Cargo

1690

The Vung Tau Wreck was discovered by fishermen off the islands of Con Dao in the south of Vietnam.

Sverker Hallstrom obtained the license to excavate the wreck after the Vietnam Salvage Corporation

(Visal) had carried out preliminary excavation. The starboard side of the hull, from the keel to the

waterline, remained in good condition. It was found to be the hull of a lorcha, a ship of combined

Eastern and Western influence, and the first ever found. The wreck has been dated to ca. 1690.

From an analysis of the cargo it seems that the ship was bound from China to Batavia where the

bulk of the ceramics would have been transhipped to a Dutch East India Company (VOC) vessel

for the onward voyage to Holland.

The porcelain was destined for a port where it would have been transhipped onto a VOC vessel for the

onward voyage to Holland. The other goods were to supply the Chinese community at the same port.

That port was Batavia.

Christie's auctioned the porcelain cargo in Amsterdam April 1992.

Ca Mau Cargo

1725

The wreck was discovered by fisherman working off the Ca Mau peninsular when their nets snagged on it. When they realised the porcelain was saleable they began dredging up as much as possible. Once the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture and Information realised what was happening they moved in quickly to secure the wreck site.

The excavation was lead by the Curator of The National Museum of Vietnamese culture. As you can see by the underside of the piece, not only does it have the Sotheby’s auction sticker but the reference numbers of the Vietnamese conservators. In all, 130,000 pieces were recovered and 76,000 of the finer condition pieces were selected to be sold by Sotheby’s

The ship was a Chinese ocean going junk, almost certainly en route from Canton (now Kuangzhou) to the Dutch trading port of Batavia (now Jakarta). Disaster struck off the Ca Mau peninsular, there was a fire on board so severe that some of the porcelain was fused together. There were a few wine cups recovered bearing the mark of the Emperor Yangzheng who reigned from 1723 to 1735. By this time tea and coffee was the rage throughout Europe and the principal traders were the East India Company and the VOC of Amsterdam. With the demand for tea came demand for porcelain by which to drink it and so most of what they imported in these year was tea wares.

Sotheby's auctioned the porcelain cargo in Amsterdam January 2007.

(courtesy: Rodger Bradbury Antiques)

The Nanking Cargo

1752

The V.O.C. ship "De Geldermalsen" was one of six ships commissioned in 1746 by the Zeeland Chamber,

the second most powerful of the six chambers of the VOC. The ships were merchant vessels which the

V.O.C. used for long-distance trade to the West Indies, and the Far East round the Cape to Batavia,

Canton and South Chinese waters. 

On January 3, 1752, while on its way back to The Netherlands with cargoes of Chinese goods loaded

in Canton, it hit a coral reef and sank in the South China Sea.

Captain Michael Hatcher and his team discovered the wreck and in 1985 its porcelain cargo was sold

by Christie's Amsterdam as "The Nanking Cargo" two hundred and thirty five years later.

The Diana Cargo

1817

''The Diana'' was owned by Palmer and Co. a powerful Calcutta ship owner and was liscenced

by the English East India Company to sail from Calcutta or Madras to Canton, carrying cotton

 and of course, opium, which was extremely lucrative. The ship would then return to India from

China, laden with silks, tea, preserved fruits and thousands of pieces of beautiful blue and white

porcelain.

Unfortunately The Diana was on one of these voyages when, on the 14th of March 1817, she hit

some rocks off the Straits of Malacca and sank. The wreck was identified and recovered in 1994

by Dorian Ball of Malaysian Historical Salvors. Christie's auctioned the porcelain cargo in Amsterdam 

in March 1995.