Shipwreck & Sunken Treasure

Introduction by Chris Langmaid, a member of the dive team that raised over 24,000 artifacts from the 1817 shipwreck 'Diana'. Chris learned to dive with the British Sub-Aqua Club, Brighton Branch 007 at the age of 14, and was a member fro 1985 until 1990 when he left the UK to work overseas as a Commercial Diver.

Introduction.

One thing that really interests me is shipwrecks.  This all started for me when I started diving in 1985 with the British Sub-Aqua Club in Brighton, England.  It was also about the time that three famous shipwrecks were found.  Each of these three wrecks are very different for different reasons.

The 'Titanic' in its time was "the largest moveable object built by the hand of man' and was reputably unsinkable.  Unfortunately, it was not unsinkable, and more unfortunate were the circumstances surrounding its sinking on April 14 1912, with such catastrophic loss of life, and on her maiden voyage.

'Nuestra Senora de Atocha', a Spanish almiranta (vice-flagship) sank in 1622 off the Florida Keys.  What makes this wreck interesting is the story of the 17 year search and later recovery by the late Mel Fisher and the enormous amount of treasure found during the excavation. 

The wreck that was to later change my interest in shipwrecks was the 'Geldermalson', a Dutch East Indiaman (VOC) that sank in the South China Sea in 1752.  It wasn't the gold or the enormous amounts of Ming Dynasty porcelain  that interested me, but one of the divers who was working on the project.  Dorian Ball, a diver working for Michael Hatcher had planes of his own.  He was to later go in search of his own wreck.

In early February 1994, I received a call from Dorian Ball, he had spent many years searching for a ship lost off the Mallaca coast in 1817.  December 21 1993 in the early hours of darkness, that search had come to an end when Dorian had found a few scattered plates on the seabed.  Now all he needed was a professional dive team.  Due to the sea conditions, near zero visibility, strong currents and the depth of the wreck, in 35 meters of water, it was too much of a risk using armature SCUBA divers.  What he needed was a dive team of professional oil-field divers, who were experienced in diving with surface orientated hose gear, for long hours for the many months it would to take to survey and recover the artifacts from the wreck of the Diana.  He had obtained a list of such divers, and I was on the list.  I hung up the phone and began packing my bags.  Within 30 minutes I was on my way to Mellaca.

 

The Diana Adventure

"This is the story of hopes and dreams and chasing treasure. It is a story of a desire to find and salvage a shipwreck and recover a cargo of importance. Starting without any money, without any special qualifications and without any special equipment. Just the dream."

- Dorian Ball

Malacca, 4th March 1817.

 It is sunset. From the hill-top dominating this sleepy tropical seaside town, haunting bugle notes echo out across the waters, as the flag of the Honorable East India Company, which was in effect the private ritual. A brisk land breeze plucks at the flag, and tosses the fronds of the coconut palms along the shore as the last notes die away.

The small military party disbands and Major Farquhar, Commandant of Malacca’s sepoy garrison, turns to say goodbye to his guest Captain Alexandra Lyell; for his companion’s vessel, the English ship DIANA, lies out in the deep-water moorings at the South end of the Straits of Malacca, the Malacca Roads, waiting to sail. She had arrived the morning from China, calling in to take on firewood; she is due to leave this evening for Madras, with a cargo of "China articles" for that Presidency, Lyell makes his way down to the landing stage where his longboat, manned by Lascars, is waiting to take him back to the ship. His crew are smiling and laughing, having enjoyed a day’s rest, and a feast of fresh fruits and meat, bought cheaply from the peddlers of the port, a welcome contrast from the rice and ghee on board a ‘Country’ ship. But Lyell is not laughing with them. He is suffering from dysentery contracted from the dirty river water in Canton and is in
great discomfort. He saw the surgeon while he was ashore but there was little which the man could do. Nonetheless, Lyell keeps his distress to himself, as the boat is sailed the two miles out to DIANA. As they make their way across the shallows of the offshore anchorage,
 the sun’s rim dips under the western horizons, and the full moon rises over the town. But it is not to be a moonlit night. This is March, the end of the monsoon season and the weather is unsettled; clouds scud across the sky, and the moon appears only infrequently between them. Good weather for plying the ‘Country’ trade to China from India, but less comfortable for an invalid.

The short twilight has already ended by the time Lyell arrives aboard and clatters down the companion way to his cabin. Summoning his two officers to supper, he barely touches his own food, as he explains to First Officer James Crichton the course to be followed up the Malacca Strait to Prince of Wales Island, their next port of call. Keep to the eastern shore, the Straits coast of present-day Malaysia, he advises; if you allow the ship to get too far over on the Sumatran side, the West of the Straits as you run north, you will not be able to regain the eastern shore and the most favorable of the prevailing winds. Crichton examines the Sailing Directions as Lyell plots their course on the chart before him.

Eight thirty p.m.: first bell, the First watch. Dungaree blossoms aloft as all sails are released on the yards and then sheeted home. The anchor is hoisted aboard and the ship is steered out to sea across the flooding tide to Fisher’s Island, where the helmsmen alter course to the northwest. A fresh breeze is shipping spray over the weather bow, and the ship is heeled over to port beating into the flood with yards braced diagonally across the masts. As soon as they are clear of the Roads, Lyell hands over the watch to Crichton and then leaves the deck. Tired and in pain, he retires immediately to his bunk. 
On deck in the pitch dark night, Crichton prays for a break in the clouds and a little moonlight to lead him. The tall masts hum in the wind, waves crash against the bow and hull creaks as it works in the waves. In the dim glow of the compass amp, two seacunnies fight the kick of the wheel, keeping the ship as much on course as they can. With an invisible rock-girt shore so close off the starboard bow, this is no night for a navigational error. Crichton is ill at ease as he strides from the rail to the compass and back, gazing out intently in the inky blackness for ant sign, and landmark to guide him. But there is nothing as they press on blindly to the northwest.

Up in the forward chains, the leadsman is casting ahead and calling out the water-depths. "By the deep 16". The water sixteen fathoms deep. A minute’s silence passes as he hauls in and coils the 29m of line, then swings the lead and casts ahead of the ship again. In that time the ship has covered 220m. "By the mark 15". Another minute, another 220m, then ominously "by the mark 13" followed a minute later by "by the mark 10". Shoaling water!
Desperately Crichton calls to the tindal whose lookouts peer vainly ahead: in the blackness, there is nothing to be seen. nothing visible; but lurking invisibly just beneath the water ahead of them is Karang Lintang, a submerged cordellera of granite boulders. He is still anxiously debating whether to wake the captain when DIANA crashes onto the rocks, sending him sprawling across the deck and dramatically ending his dilemma. Tumbled out of his bunk, Lyell comes rushing up on the deck but he is too late to save her. Heaved up and then dropped on the rocks by each passing swell, the ship soon bilges, a boulder punching in her bottom, and water starts pouring in. They tumbled the cannon overboard, bring down the topmasts, start the water casks, but they cannot get her off. Slowly filling with water, she settles by the stern but her bow is still fast aground. Thrice during the night they attempt to send a boat back to Malacca for assistance, but the tide has turned, and the ebb is too strong. After the boat has been driven back for the third time, Lyell orders them to abandon ship. Only ten men are still aboard when, at 4.30 a.m., she suddenly falls off the rock
 and floats free. He immediately gives orders to hoist all sail and steer for Malacca, but the ship is doomed. Waterlogged and with only half her sails set, she is crawling back to the southeast, settling deeper with every passing minute. Despairing of saving her, Lyell now orders her to be steered for the shore, but it is too late. Just as daybreak is beginning to lighten the eastern sky, she suddenly plunges under. And all aboard are left floundering for their lives in the water. The boats move into the rescue, but Captain Lyell and two Lascars have already gone down with the ship. Sodden and shocked, the survivors reach Malacca in the boats, around eight hours later.

THE SEABED SURVEY

176 years later, my company, Malaysian Historical Salvors (MHS), which had discovered records of the lost ship in library archives, was awarded a contract by the Malaysian Government to search for and salvage her. The seas around Malacca are still dangerous, and the water much murkier now. It took three years of persistent searching to locate DIANA. My colleagues and I searched 28 square miles of seabed, and located 11 wrecks, over a period of two years before finding her. The Christie’s video shows some of the problems we had to overcome, but finally we got a hopeful magnetic reading in the right vicinity. At 5 in the morning, four days before Christmas, I dived down to the seabed and, groping in the poor visibility, literally swam right into the first example of the porcelain cargo, exposed in shell-encrusted piles on the seabed. This auction catalogue contains the fruits of that anomalous reading in the seabed survey.


THE SHIP

DIANA had been a ‘Country’ ship, licensed to trade between the English East India Company (HEIC)-ruled India and Canton, carrying cotton and opium to the Chinese, and returning with assorted "China articles" to Calcutta and Madras. She made one round-trip a year; out with the late summer monsoon, and back with the early Spring one. Thanks to the (illegal) opium trade, it was a hugely lucrative business, and the Country ships returned every year with massive trade surpluses. These surpluses took the form either of bills drawn on the HEIC in London or were carried in cash in as Spanish silver dollars, minted in Mexico and freighted across the Pacific in Manila galleons. It was a thriving trade as the
Napoleonic Wars finished, and maritime business revived: a record number of 88 foreign ships came to the Whampoa anchorage, eight miles down-river from Canton, in autumn 1816.

In Canton, official foreign trade was in the hands of thirteen Hong merchants who bought up all the foreigners imports, and sourced all their return cargoes. Small tongkangs took the cargo down from Canton to the waiting vessels. When the bitter winter gales had begun to ease, the ships move down the Pearl river to the South China sea, and spread their sails before the northeast monsoon winds, driving the tea-laden merchant men South and Westwards to the scattered "Spice Islands" of the Indonesia archipelago, and to India, the Cape of Good Hope, and the established entreport ports of Western Europe. Around four weeks later, they arrived in the Hoogly River, unloading their cargoes into the Customs house in Calcutta. DIANA, although a Calcutta ship, was bound for Madras at the time she sank. She and another ship between them carried the annual consignment of ‘China articles’ for Madras, and her loss caused a grave shortage of these items until the next season.


THE SHIP OWNER

DIANA was one of twenty ships owned by Palmer & Co., a powerful Calcutta agency house with far-reaching financial interests, controlling banks and insurance companies and lending large sums of money to the Bengal Government and Indian rulers. Palmers also owned indigo, plantations, breweries, tanneries, distilleries, cotton mills, flour mills and sawmills. HEIC civil servants and officers in the military entrusted their funds to houses like Palmer & Co. which acted as investment bankers, distributing capital from those who had it, to those held need of it. They paid about 10% interest on deposits and as for their returns, well, in 1825 they paid dividends of 25%. Head of the firm was John Palmer, a man known as the "Prince of Merchants". Scion of an influential family, he rose to become that era’s greatest European mogul of India. Confidante of the Governor, advisor of the Cabinet, financier for the HEIC, Palmer epitomised the capitalist
aristocracy of Calcutta. His political and commercial contacts, his business success and personal charm had brought him the respect of admiration of his peers. He corresponded with leaders all over the Far East and exerted his own discreet influence over the course of Colonial history. Also known as the "Friend of the Poor", he seems to have a public-spirited and generous man. He lived sumptuously in a mansion, in Lall Bazaar and entertained lavishly, his liberal wide startling society guests with her habit of smoking a hookah after dinner. Palmer’s business empire however, was the first to fail in the great Calcutta collapse of the 1830’s, going under with debts of five million sterling. John Palmer himself died a poor man; the unavoidable fate, it was believed, of all those who involved themselves in the opium trade.


THE SALVAGE
During the first six months of 1994, DIANA was systematically identified, measured, mapped and excavated by a team of ten divers. Despite very poor underwater visibility, strong currents and deadly night-time storms called Sumatras, MHS managed to complete the recovery without accident. TV cameras and lights were mounted on the divers helmets, and the entire underwater excavation was recorded on video. Representatives from the Malaysian Marine Department, and Museums Department, monitored the operation, and a representative sample of both organic and inorganic recoveries was donated to the Maritime Museum in Malacca. MHS found part of the coir anchor cable of the ship, and many metal parts, but jarool wood of the hull was gone, consumed entirely by the insatiable teredo worm. From the cargo they recovered tutenague, alum rock, glass beads, green tea, ginger, rhubarb, ginseng, camphor, cassia, star anise, dried fish (now very wet), animal bones and straw. The ginger had been packed inside "ginger jars", still strapped and sealed as they had been in Canton in 1816.
Unlike the wood of the hull, the cedar planks of the chests containing the cargo were largely intact and many still carried the consignee’s marks. One chest in particular, bearing the words "GC & CO. MADRAS, NO.2", "Keep this side up", helped identify the ship.


THE CERAMICS

The bulk of the cargo was of course the porcelain. Over eleven tons of porcelain just under 24,000 intact individual pieces, were recovered from the wreck. Dinner plates, saucers, bowls, cups, bottles, tureens, serving dishes and jars, comprising in total over 200 different shapes or patterns, were brought ashore, washed, photographed, inventorised, and packed for shipment to Amsterdam.

For me, there were two great high-points in the salvage. One was finding the ship’s bell. Nothing is so evocative of life on board ship, for a mariner, or a ship’s historian, as the bell which regulated all the daily routines. The watches, the church services, the meal-times.But recovering the porcelain gave us all as much pleasure. The cargo contains porcelain from early 19th Century of a type very familiar to ceramicists. It marks the revival of the China Trade after the ending of war; old, established types of shape and pattern blend harmoniously with new innovations. Jingdezhen, China’s ‘porcelain city’ in Jiangxi Province, always contained conservative potters, producing wares are which they knew from long experience still remain in broad terms popular with western supercargoes in Canton. But there were new ingredients now, in the complex Asian maritime trade. Americans were coming to Canton directly, via California. 
This was a radical innovation after 1783, when the first Boston merchant by-passed the old English East India Company monopoly on Asian trade to the Colonies, and sent a ship laden with ginseng to bring ‘China goods’ straight back to the Eastern seaboard. Many American collections contain this sort of blue and white export porcelain; some of it with the ‘Fitzhugh’ pattern, much with the distinctive ‘rain-cloud’ border that evolves from the 18th Century rim patterns. The porcelain was clearly popular in India. Too; this was being imported for the cream of Madrassi society, the Anglo-Indian upper class which bought its fashionable China goods to use during the vast rounds of social events that marked the cool-weather ‘Season’.

The porcelain is slightly less familiar, however to Europeans than its predecessor before the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars. The European market changed at the end of the 18th Century. Technology played a large part in this. New improved ceramic ‘mixes’ – pioneered especially by Wedgwood, in England – enabled cheaper, stronger vessels to be potted, for export all over Europe and to ‘the colonies’. And accompanying this innovation of the 18th Century Industrial Revolution was another, the invention of ‘transfer-printing. This made it possible for potters, in Staffordshire and elsewhere, to manufacture much more cheaply long runs of identical pots; because the design, ‘transferred’ onto the undecorated pot from an engraved copper plate, rather than hand-painted, was almost infinitely reproducible to the same standard. This made manufacturing popular ceramics in Europe much cheaper, and largely eliminated the production-cost advantages of Chinese export porcelain, which had enabled it to maintain its huge share of the market in Europe as late as the 1770’s. So the ‘Diana Cargo’ marks a moment of transition in taste and demand; one of the areas where this ‘sealed time capsule’ will continue to provide information for decades.

This project was the culmination of a diver’s dream for me. From nothing, with nothing more than a dream to drive us, my wife and I spent ten years searching for the DIANA. We finally found her, and by doing so, we recovered from complete obscurity, the splendid cargo that being offered for sale, 178 years later to the day that she sank beneath the waters of the Straits of Malacca.