Michael Hatcher (born 1940) is a British explorer and marine salvor.
He has specialised in work in the South China Sea. In 1981 he was involved in investigating the wreck of Dutch submarine K XVII.
He is especially known for his recovery of large quantities of Chinese porcelain from the VOC ship Geldermalsen (known as the "Nanking cargo") which was sold at auction by Christie's in Amsterdam in 1986. [1]
In 1999, he discovered the Tek Sing shipwreck and retrieved 360,000 pieces of porcelain, most of it in impeccable condition, making this the greatest porcelain treasure that has ever been recovered.[ citation needed ] The cargo originates from the Tek Sing, a junk whose history British shipping researcher Nigel Pickford was able to reconstruct in unprecedented detail. The porcelain was stowed in the tower cargo holds of the ship, where it also served as ballast to stabilize the enormous ship. Most of the porcelain was blue-white porcelain manufactured in the Chinese city of Dehua in the 18th and early 19th century. The greater part of the find is everyday Chinese porcelain utensils intended for export to other countries inside Asia and thus rarely found in the Western hemisphere. As the merchandise had not been made for the European markets, shapes and patterns were not adapted to European taste, but were genuinely Chinese. Other categories of porcelain from different periods were also found, dating back as far the 15th century. The cargo contained a remarkable amount of porcelain of different shapes and sizes, but with identical decoration. It gave buyers in the 21st century the opportunity to compose complete dinner sets with Qing porcelain. Further items such as mercury, sextants, pocket watches, cannons, coins and other merchandise were also salvaged. The recovery was the largest in salvage history.[ citation needed ]
It is the story of an incredible shipping disaster with more than 1600 dead (and was consequently entitled the “Titanic of the East” by Spiegel news magazine), involving economic difficulties and mass emigration in the early 19th century. The porcelain itself was robust and survived almost 200 years in the sea. Never before have experts been able to examine Chinese export porcelain intended for the South East Asian market on this scale.
The catalogue itself broke new ground, becoming a valuable reference work on porcelain in professional circles. It also served as an auction catalogue in conjunction with the auction list featuring all the individual lots.
Hatcher already had two important finds of Chinese porcelain to his name: the Hatcher Collection (from an unidentified Chinese junk) and the Nanking cargo from the Dutch Geldermalsen that sank in 1752. Both cargoes were successfully auctioned in Europe in the 1980s. Hatcher chose Nagel Auktionen, the leading auction company for Asian art on the European continent, to release the items to the market.
The importance of the discovery and the auction was emphasized by the commissioning of a special book on the history of the Tek Sing and its cargo. Harper Collins published a book about Mike Hatcher's life written by Hugh Edward and Nigel Pickford and titled Treasures of the Deep. The book The Legacy of the Tek Sing contains an account of the story behind the shipwreck, a tale of treachery and heroism, arrogance and greed, all played out against a background of opium smuggling, piracy and mass emigration. It gives details about the salvage as well as the historical background.
A number of controversies surround the salvaging of historic wreck cargo undertaken by Michael Hatcher. The salvaging of both the Tek Sing and the Geldermalsen have been heavily criticized by archaeologists for stripping archaeological sites of valuable artefacts without recording any context and destroying the less economically valuable parts of the assemblage, such as the ships themselves. [2] [3]
The Indonesian government tried to stop the sale of the recovered Tek Sing cargo, while seven containers of it were seized by Australian authorities pursuant to their Protection of Movable Cultural Heritage Act 1986 as the Indonesian government had confirmed that they had been illegally exported from its territory. [4] This confirmation came too late for much of the cargo however, and it was able to continue its journey and be sold at auction in Germany. On 12 September 2001, the 71 939 seized ceramics were returned by Australia to Indonesia.
Hatcher has been declared unwelcome in Thailand by its government after he attempted to salvage a shipwreck in its territorial waters. [2]
Wrecking is the practice of taking valuables from a shipwreck which has foundered or run aground close to shore. Often an unregulated activity of opportunity in coastal communities, wrecking has been subjected to increasing regulation and evolved into what is now known as marine salvage.
A shipwreck is the wreckage of a ship that is located either beached on land or sunken to the bottom of a body of water. Shipwrecking may be intentional or unintentional. There were approximately three million shipwrecks worldwide as of January 1999, according to Angela Croome, a science writer and author who specialized in the history of underwater archaeology.
Nuestra Señora de Atocha was a Spanish treasure galleon and the most widely known vessel of a fleet of ships that sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622. At the time of her sinking, Nuestra Señora de Atocha was heavily laden with copper, silver, gold, tobacco, gems, and indigo from Spanish ports at Cartagena and Porto Bello in New Granada and Havana, bound for Spain. The Nuestra Señora de Atocha was named for the Basilica of Nuestra Señora de Atocha in Madrid, Spain. It was a heavily armed Spanish galleon that served as the almirante for the Spanish fleet. It would trail behind the other ships in the flotilla to prevent an attack from the rear.
The Spanish treasure fleet, or West Indies Fleet, was a convoy system of sea routes organized by the Spanish Empire from 1566 to 1790, which linked Spain with its territories in the Americas across the Atlantic. The convoys were general purpose cargo fleets used for transporting a wide variety of items, including agricultural goods, lumber, various metal resources such as silver and gold, gems, pearls, spices, sugar, tobacco, silk, and other exotic goods from the overseas territories of the Spanish Empire to the Spanish mainland. Spanish goods such as oil, wine, textiles, books and tools were transported in the opposite direction.
Chinese export porcelain includes a wide range of Chinese porcelain that was made (almost) exclusively for export to Europe and later to North America between the 16th and the 20th century. Whether wares made for non-Western markets are covered by the term depends on context. Chinese ceramics made mainly for export go back to the Tang dynasty if not earlier, though initially they may not be regarded as porcelain.
Vrouw Maria was a Dutch wooden two-masted merchant ship carrying a valuable cargo of art objects, captained by Raymund Lourens, that sank on 9 October 1771 in the outer archipelago of the municipality of Nagu, Finland, 11 kilometers south-east of the island of Jurmo. In 1999, the ship was discovered by the members of Pro Vrouw Maria, led by Rauno Koivusaari. A dispute between the discoverers and the authorities was later resolved. The ship was in good condition when it was discovered, but only six objects from the deck of the ship have been salvaged. The cargo holds have not been disturbed, so the condition of any art on board remains unknown. The Finnish National Board of Antiquities is responsible for the ship and all recovery efforts.
Treasure hunting is the physical search for treasure. For example, treasure hunters try to find sunken shipwrecks and retrieve artifacts with market value. This industry is generally fueled by the market for antiquities.
The Antikythera wreck is a Roman-era shipwreck dating from the second quarter of the first century BC.
The Vũng Tàu shipwreck is a shipwreck that was found in the South China Sea off the islands of Côn Đảo about 100 nautical miles from Vũng Tàu, Vietnam. The wreck was of a lorcha boat—a vessel with Cantonese/Chinese and Portuguese/European influences that has been dated to about 1690. It was found by a fisherman who had picked up numerous pieces of porcelain from the wreck while fishing. Sverker Hallstrom identified the wreck and its cargo in 1990. Australian diver Michael Flecker took charge of the archaeological aspect of the excavation. An analysis of its cargo deduced that the ship was bound from China to Jakarta, Indonesia, where the porcelain would have been purchased by the Dutch East India Company for trans-shipment to Holland.
The Hội An wreck lies in the South China Sea 22 nautical miles off the coast of central Vietnam at approximately 16.04°N 108.6°E approximately. It was discovered by fishermen in the early 1990s. The Vietnamese government made several attempts to organise an investigation of the site but its efforts initially were confounded by the water depth of 230 feet (70 m). Between 1996 and 1999, the team, which included the Vietnamese National Salvage Corporation and Oxford University’s Marine Archaeology Research Division, recovered nearly 300,000 artifacts.
The Gaspar Strait is a strait separating the Indonesian islands Belitung and Bangka. It connects the Java Sea with the South China Sea.
Dehua porcelain, more traditionally known in the West as Blanc de Chine, is a type of white Chinese porcelain, made at Dehua in the Fujian province. It has been produced from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) to the present day. Large quantities arrived in Europe as Chinese export porcelain in the early 18th century and it was copied at Meissen and elsewhere. It was also exported to Japan in large quantities. In 2021, the kilns of Dehua were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List along with many other sites near Quanzhou for their importance for medieval maritime trade and the exchange of cultures and ideas around the world.
The Tek Sing was a large three-masted Chinese ocean-going junk which sank on 6 February 1822, in an area of the South China Sea known as the Belvidere Shoals. The vessel was 50 meters in length, 10 meters wide and had a burden of about 800–900 tons. Its tallest mast was estimated to be 27 metres (90 ft) in height. The ship was manned by a crew of 200 and carried approximately 1,600 passengers. It is one of the few "Asian vessels discovered in Southeast Asia [whose name is known]"; generally, neither the name nor the date is known. The Tek Sing is an exception." Generally, shipwrecks are named either after a landmark or location near which they or the cargo they held were found.
The Belitung shipwreck is the wreck of an Arabian dhow that sank around 830 AD. The ship completed its outward journey from Arabia to China but sank on the return voyage from China, approximately 1.6 kilometres (1 mi) off the coast of Belitung Island, Indonesia. The reason the ship was south of the typical trade route when it sank remains unclear. Belitung lies southeast of the Singapore Strait, approximately 610 kilometres (380 mi) away, a secondary route that was more common for ships traveling between China and the Java Sea, which is south of Belitung Island.
SS Egypt was a P&O ocean liner. She sank after a collision with Seine on 20 May 1922 in the Celtic Sea. 252 people were rescued from the 338 passengers and crew aboard at the time. A subsequent salvage operation recovered most of the cargo of gold and silver.
San Esteban was a Spanish cargo ship that was wrecked in a storm in the Gulf of Mexico on what is now the Padre Island National Seashore in southern Texas on 29 April 1554.
El Nuevo Constante was a Spanish merchant ship that was run aground on the coast of Louisiana, U.S., after serious leaks had been incurred during a hurricane in September 1766. Much of the cargo was salvaged at the time by the Spanish working into November after burning the part of the ship that was above the water line, but then the wreck was abandoned and forgotten. It was rediscovered in 1979, making it the first historic shipwreck found off that state's coast. Excavation of the wreck and its well-preserved artifacts has revealed details of the construction of this British-made vessel, and of life aboard ship and of the cargo carried. These details have been augmented by considerable documentary material such as the ship's manifest and cargo list. The excavation of the ship was concluded in 1981.
Libelle was a 650-ton iron-hulled barque, built in the Free City of Bremen in 1864. The ship was transporting quicksilver and passengers when she wrecked on the eastern reef of Wake Island in 1866. After three weeks they set out in a longboat and Gig they sailed to Guam, with only 22 in the longboat making it. In the years that followed many made expeditions to search cargo of the Libelle, to make dives to recover the quicksilver flasks. The anchor remains on Peale island, and was rediscovered in the 1930s when Wake became seaplane port with a hotel.
The SS Atlanta was a wooden hulled Great Lakes steamer that sank in Lake Michigan off the coast of Cedar Grove, Wisconsin, United States, after a failed attempt of her being towed to shore ultimately killing 5 out of her 7 crew members on board. Her wreckage still remains at the bottom of the lake, and on November 6, 2017, the wreck of the Atlanta was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The Cirebon shipwreck is a late 9th to 10th-century shipwreck discovered in 2003, in the Java Sea offshore of Cirebon, West Java, Indonesia. The shipwreck contains a large amount of Chinese Yue ware, and is notable as important marine archaeology evidence of the Maritime Silk Road trading activity in Maritime Southeast Asia.
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