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Sunken treasure from treasure ships are legend.
In recent years
more and more get recovered by using modern
sonar systems. This are sound waves beamed into
the sea to make contours at the sea bed visible. |
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Finding
underwater
ships
wreck is
some
kind of
archeology
using
modern
technology,
actually
sonar
systems
where
invented
in the
WW2 to
detect
submarines.
Adding
massive
computer
power in
recent
times
makes
all kind
of items
visible
including
fishes.
Sunken treasures with plenty of treasure
artifact are still somewhere in the Sea and
there are probably thousands of sunken vessel
and wrecks with some kind of treasure and the new
scuba diving and underwater exploration
techniques make them reachable.
It is
necessary to point to the difference to define
the treasure. There are ships like the Chinese
trade vessels or Junks which carried Chinese goods
and especially Chinese ceramics to harbors in Asia and south east Asia. At that
time, from the 15th. to the 18th century Chinese
ceramics were trading items, today they are
sunken treasures.
The interesting thing is among the Chinese
sunken treasure recovered at
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various places in Asia, there are
always plenty of treasures made in Thailand and
Vietnam among the. This sunken treasures are
mainly ceramics, pottery, coins, metal items and
others.
Modern underwater archaeology uses all
kind of new technology and
technical diving
or commercial to located sunken wrecks
with sunken treasure. There are sonar
equipments, magnetometer and other advanced
techniques. And there are modern submersible
capable of diving down at treasure hunt
exploration. The probably most successful
treasure hunt and underwater archeology company
today is
here. To do modern underwater
treasure hunt, techniques from oil and gas
exploration is mainly used aside of conventional
scuba diving. This underwater exploration
devices are sonar, magnetometer and aerial
mapping.
Since the usual
magnetometer mostly wont work for this
kind of operation some
new type are used, like cesium
magnetometer. The conventional magnetometers are
tuned to find iron or steel but the old sunken
treasure vessels contain almost no iron, the
contain mostly bronze items like cannons and
coins.
The
marine archeology museum in
Kuala
Lumpur Malaysia
is a good example
how to get those sunken treasures up and make it
visible to the public.
Trading Goods
around Asia and south east Asia started
long time ago. Already at Neolithic ages goods
have been traded via the Sea around today
China,
Malaysia,
Thailand, Vietnam,
Taiwan and the Philippines.
Traded objects such as cowries
found in many places and they
had to come from somewhere.
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After, goods for trading expanded to
metal axes, bells, drums, bronze,
etc. With the time several states emerged and
trade was increasing. Ceramics, cloth, forest
products, weapons and spices such as pepper,
mace, clover, and other items such as tin,
ivory, turtle shell and silver were traded.
Traders from China, India, Europe -mainly Dutch
and Portuguese-, Middle East and other countries
brought in goods on demand.
Chinese merchant vessels
where on the forefront
of sea trading.
For many of this trading ship the
journey ended fatal in a storm or for other
reason. The ships sunk took all the
treasures with them, now treasure hunting is on
with sophisticated high tech machinery and the
treasure hunter are very successful. They find
Chinese vessels,
Portuguese galleons,
Dutch sail ships and vessels of the British
East India Company. All just a couple of
kilometers off the east and west coast. |
Old Dutch Ship
at Malacca |
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of
Malaysia.
From the 16.th.the colonial western
powers like the Portuguese, Dutch and British
brought modern armory, decorative items and
plenty of other goods and took spices, tin ore,
ceramics and rubber for export to Europe.
From
time to time one of the ships sunk and
became a treasure ship a few
hundred years later.
The straits of
Malacca or today Melaka.
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was and still is a
water highway between east and west.
Ships from the west came in via
Phuket
and
Penang,
sailing south to Malacca and Indonesia. The Sri Vijaya kingdom situated on the both
shores of the Straits of Melaka means today
Indonesia and Malaysia started this business
already in the 1400 Century. During the early
part of the Yuan Dynasty (1280-1368) in China
potters at Jingdezhen in China succeeded in
decorating whitish local clay with blue cobalt
oxide under a clear glaze, overcoming technical
difficulties related to the color and the glaze.
The date of this major breakthrough in ceramic
history could have been around A.D. 1300.
Production of blue and white porcelain grow
rapidly during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)All
this gave a tremendous push to the Sea trade
in Asia since this newly developed Chinese
porcelain became a instant export hit the Asian
countries and Europe.
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Blue and
white Chinese porcelain. |
Sunken
treasure ships off the west coast of
Malaysia. |
Sunken treasure ships and
treasure wreck are around those trading
routes and the
treasure hunt
is on.
Treasure
ship wrecks
in this area are less loaded with gold, silver
and precious stones items like the
Spanish galleons discovered in
Philippine water and the Caribbean.
But today the value of a
recovered load of Chinese porcelain,
ceramics,
pottery and other
items have a very high value since in
every sunken ship the treasure was
several thousands of ceramic and
porcelain items with a high value today.
Ok get your scuba diving gear out and
have a look, but its not as easy.
There
are other treasure artifacts and sunken treasure.
Like a old treasure chest
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with
valuables like
precious stones and gold among the
recovered merchandize, but rather on a small
scale. Usually all treasure hunting
in this waters always has the government
as partner. The
sunken vessels are quite close to the
shores. The involvement of the government
creates problems from time to time, but on the
other hand makes sure that certain basic rules
of underwater archaeological methods for
treasure
wreck diving are
considered and applied.
On top of it the
governments usual put their share of the
bounty from the treasure wreck
on display to the public, as it is done
here in the Kuala Lumpur Marine
Archeological Museum. This museum is
beside the Malaysian National Museum.
A mysterious treasure ship has been
discovered in the South Atlantic.
With ten
tons of gold and silver on board the
"Polar Mist" treasure ship sunk in
January 2009 close to the Argentinean
coast and had since disappeared. A search expedition has
discovered the vessel.
But because no submersible is available
the question remains: Where is the
Treasure?
Nobody knows what happen in the final
hours of the "Polar Mist", a small
fishing vessel with the registration
number 7946289. The ship left the port
of Punta Quilla in southern Argentina on
14 January with the direction Punta
Arenas in Chile. The fishing vessel run
into a severe storm and the eight crew
members were rescued by helicopter and a
ship of the coast guard.
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But what happen afterwards with the
1980 built "Polar Mist" is not quite
clear. When the crew left the vessel
in the Strait of Magellan with running
engines they put her on a and circular
drive. After approximately a days the
Chilean tug "Beagle" reached the ship
and after a failed rescue maneuvers 40
kilometers off the coast the treasure
ship sank, the details are not clear
yet.
Now the
story of the small ship turned treasure
ship gets interesting since there
were a ton of gold and eight tons of
silver on board belonging to the mining
company Minera Cerro Vanguardia and
Triton with a total value from 16 to 22
million dollar and where is the cargo
now ?
The
treasure ship
vanished for about a month
and has been located after at about 22
miles off Cabo Vírgenes. An
inspection of the treasure ship wreck
could reveal information about what
happen with the precious treasure on
board. The metals |
Sunken
treasure,
sunken treasure ship, sunken
treasures,
sunken vessel,
sunken
wreck,
sunken wrecks, the sunken treasure,
treasure, treasure artifacts,
treasure hunt. |
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where bound
for Santiago de Chile for refining and
to be sold to Switzerland.
Already in April
there was an initial
attempt to salvage the treasure ship.
However, because of disputes with the
crews of several rescue ships about
payment to the crew it was canceled. A renewed search for the sunken
treasure ship cargo was then
approved by the insurance company Lloyds
has been initiated, the precious cargo
insurance. For the managers of Lloyds in
London the whole thing starts to smell
fishy there is suspicion that the failed
rescue operation was in fact fabricated.
Nothing has been found yet.
Now, with a submersible or Remotely
Operated Vehicle (ROV) robot from the
salvage vessel "C-Sailor ' the
sunken treasure has been found, about
9.6 tones of gold and silver have been
looks like no hanky panky
business was involved.
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