It was at the port of Amoy that the Tek Sing – or True Star – a large junk, was moored. Bound for Jakarta, she was loaded with precious cargo: porcelain, silks, spices, and medicines. There was so much cargo that some was even strapped to the outside of the ship’s hull. The Tek Sing (which means “True Star” in Chinese) was a large Chinese junk, which sank on 6th February 1822 in an area off the South China Sea, known as the “Belvidere Shoals”. Undertaking its attempted journey from Amoy to Jakarta were 1600 emigrants and an enormous cargo, which included 350,000 pieces of Chinese porcelain. The junk would never arrive, sinking into the depths of the sea. On May 12, 1999, Michael Hatcher discovered the wreck of the Tek Sing in an area of the South China sea, north of Java. His crew raised the ship’s cargo in what is described as the largest sunken cache of Chinese porcelain ever recovered. Antique porcelain from a wreck can be worth more than its weight in gold, so the treasure hunters were keen to have the haul examined by experts. They were surprised to find that the porcelain originated from many different places and dates. Some pieces must have been around 100 years old when they were loaded. Tek Sing’s porcelain cargo had been packed so tightly that even after nearly two hundred years under the silt and coral, many examples were in almost pristine condition.
To discover more about the Tek Sing shipwreck, please visit our relevant post: The Tek Sing Shipwreck.
