Nervous Wrecks

The waters surrounding Indonesia are traversed by an incredible amount of traffic every day. The Straits of Malacca alone see 800 ships a day and over half the total amount of freight in the world passes through them each year. This is not a new phenomenon; vessels have travelled through Indonesian waters—the shortest nautical route between India and China—in great numbers for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. And they have also been sinking in these waters for centuries—due to uncharted reefs, treacherous currents and trade wars between battling world powers.

This is not news to underwater treasure hunters. One particular group has recently run into trouble with the Indonesian authorities while trying to salvage the cargo of a Chinese ship that sunk over a thousand years ago in what are currently Indonesian territorial waters. The wreck, located 130 nautical miles from Jakarta, rests 54 metres below the surface. The cargo is highly valuable, containing ceramics from China’s Five Dynasties period (907-960 AD) as well as Egyptian artefacts. These were scheduled to be auctioned by Christie’s during 2006 and 2007. The auction house has valued the cargo at several million dollars.



However, the dive team—including people from Britain, France, Australia and Germany—were taken from the site of the wreck and detained in November 2004 by Indonesian authorities, who now maintain that the work the divers were performing was illegal. The divers, forbidden to leave Jakarta, say the Indonesian navy boarded their diving platform and detained them, despite—they say—the project having all the right permits. They also claim that all the salvage work and diving was performed in the presence of government officials. According to Project Director, Luc Heymans, the official agreement between the Indonesian government and the project specifies that Indonesia will receive 50% of the proceeds when the cargo is eventually sold. As a result of the salvage operation being halted, only 60,000 of the estimated 160,000 pieces have been brought to the surface; these are currently being held in Jakarta.

Indonesia’s Agency for the Protection of Underwater Heritage has issued a report claiming the divers on the project were working illegally. The team, however, claims it attracted attention because it only used official, rather than ‘corrupt’, channels to obtain permission. In fact, much of the reporting on this matter has accused the Indonesian government of having unscrupulous motives for stopping the divers, without questioning the motivations and methods used by the treasure-seekers or even the legalities of the matter.

While submerged wrecks in Indonesia are big revenue-raisers and important attractions for the scuba diving industry, this would not be the first time foreign wreck-hunters have made large profits from sunken treasures found in Indonesian waters. In 1985, Michael Hatcher, while searching for the Geldermalsen (a Dutch East Indies Company ship that sank in 1752), came across the wreck of a 17th century Chinese junk. The cargo turned out to be Ming porcelain, valued at two million pounds sterling. Hatcher also found the Geldermalsen later that year, in a site he claimed was just outside Indonesian territorial waters. Dubbed ‘the Nanking Cargo’, it also contained porcelain— perfectly preserved because it had been protected by a load of tea. It earned Hatcher ten million pounds sterling when it went to auction at Christie’s in Amsterdam; the auction house came under criticism for the haste with which the pieces were sold.



The Indonesian government and several marine researchers also challenged Hatcher’s claim that the Geldermalsen was found outside Indonesian waters. Paul Martino, a diver working on the wreck site, was arrested by the Indonesian navy in 1988 and held for several months on Bintan Island before being released. One of the Indonesian investigators drowned in a diving accident at the site while attempting to verify the claims. The Indonesian government eventually dropped the enquiry and, following this dispute, made the Coordinating Minister for Security and Political Affairs responsible for the issue of wreck salvaging, to ensure that Indonesia would receive its due share of any future discovery. In 1989, Indonesia awarded two-year contracts to three companies (all connected in some way to the Suharto family), to hunt for an estimated 40 sunken treasure ships lying at the bottom of the sea around the archipelago, with the proviso that 50% of the proceeds would go to the Indonesian government.

Wreck-hunting has not only been problematic in domestic politics; it has also become an international relations issue. Southeast Asian maritime boundaries are still heavily disputed, which leads to arguments about ownership rights once a wreck is found. Does the wreck belong to the home-country of the ship, or to the country that produced the cargo? Or does it belong to the country in whose waters it sank? There are few, if any, domestic or international laws regulating treasure-hunting. The 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea barely mentions underwater treasure. UNESCO has drawn up a convention that would ban all commercial use of underwater wrecks, but the world’s major maritime powers—the United States, Britain, France and Japan—have refused to sign, citing the tradition that warships forever belong to the country that launched them, even if they are four centuries old.



Treasure-hunting is also of great concern to archaeologists, who fear that with the profit-driven exploration of wrecks and the immediate sale of their contents at auction, their historical significance will be lost. The Geldermalsen is an oft-quoted example of how the haste to obtain profit compromised the wreck’s archaeological or historical value. There are still many wrecks that remain lost, submerged somewhere in Indonesian waters. Many have cargoes as valuable as the ones already found and yet, without clear legislation regarding who has the right to the cargo, it is doubtless that conflicts between private companies and the Indonesian government will re-emerge.