Danger -- Shipwreck Below!
by Diane Cole
The "Indiana Jones of the Deep" goes looking for sunken treasure.
A true-life story of a treasure hunt that seems made for the movies.
If you've ever dreamed of diving into pirate-infested seas in
search of sunken treasure of eye-popping historic and monetary
value, then stoke the fire, brew a cuppa and settle in with Dragon
Sea, Frank Pope's gripping true-life yarn of an expeditionary
quest to recover an exquisite hoard of 15th-century Vietnamese
porcelain buried in the hold of an ill-fated ship at the bottom
of the South China Sea.
The project got under way just before 2000 with an odd couple
at the helm. Heading the research and overseeing the logistics
of the salvage operation was Mensun Bound, a flamboyant Oxford
marine archaeologist whose previous underwater exploits had earned
him the nickname "Indiana Jones of the Deep." Meanwhile -- with
no academic backing to be had for a venture so ambitious and expensive
-- the bills were being paid by Ong Soo Hin, a successful businessman
whose motivations had less to do with scientific research than
with the possibility of making a financial killing in a record-setting
auction payoff from the rare antiquities the expedition promised
to recover.
It doesn't take long for their differing perspectives to erode
their trust, and for their personal feud to endanger the one goal
they do share: a successful outcome to the excavation. Pope --
who, as one of the project's leaders, was himself caught in the
middle of many of these clashes -- details the daily strains and
stresses of marine excavation: the physically grueling, death-defying
underwater dives; the labor-intensive sifting of mud and muck;
the painstaking cataloging and tedious conservation techniques.
Diving enthusiasts, art historians, collectors and would-be treasure-hunters
will all find much to savor here. The only thing missing, from
my point of view, are color illustrations of the bounty they sought
and eventually found.
Diane Cole is the author of After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges
and a contributing editor of U.S. News & World Report
