QUOTE
Bounty from the deep
By TAN CHENG LI
A ship set sail from China some 1,000 years ago, laden with a cargo of ceramics. But it never reached its destined port. Off the coast of Sabah, the ship struck a reef and went down. There, it lay submerged until last year, when excavation work retrieved some of its buried artefacts. TAN CHENG LI reports.
<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>Sten Sjostrand and ceramics salvaged from
the wreckage dubbed Royal Nanhai, believed
to have sunk in the waters off Rompin, Sabah,
in the 1460s.
CERAMIC collector and salvor Sten Sjostrand was browsing around an antique shop in Kota Kinabalu, early last year when something unusual caught his eye – Sung dynasty ceramics. Dating back some 800 to 1,000 years, such ware is hard to come by and yet a wide variety of it was displayed at the shop.
Instincts honed from over 20 years of studying ceramics and 15 years excavating shipwrecks told Sjostrand that something was up. The Swede could hardly contain his excitement when he learnt that the pieces were plucked from waters off Sabah.
It did not take Sjostrand long to contact the Department of Sabah Museum and in April last year, armed with a search permit, divers from his salvage firm Nanhai Marine Archaeology started scouring the sea off north-west Sabah.
...</span>
By TAN CHENG LI
A ship set sail from China some 1,000 years ago, laden with a cargo of ceramics. But it never reached its destined port. Off the coast of Sabah, the ship struck a reef and went down. There, it lay submerged until last year, when excavation work retrieved some of its buried artefacts. TAN CHENG LI reports.
<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>Sten Sjostrand and ceramics salvaged from
the wreckage dubbed Royal Nanhai, believed
to have sunk in the waters off Rompin, Sabah,
in the 1460s.
CERAMIC collector and salvor Sten Sjostrand was browsing around an antique shop in Kota Kinabalu, early last year when something unusual caught his eye – Sung dynasty ceramics. Dating back some 800 to 1,000 years, such ware is hard to come by and yet a wide variety of it was displayed at the shop.
Instincts honed from over 20 years of studying ceramics and 15 years excavating shipwrecks told Sjostrand that something was up. The Swede could hardly contain his excitement when he learnt that the pieces were plucked from waters off Sabah.
It did not take Sjostrand long to contact the Department of Sabah Museum and in April last year, armed with a search permit, divers from his salvage firm Nanhai Marine Archaeology started scouring the sea off north-west Sabah.
...</span>