In one recent case, American salvagers reported finding the wreck of HMS Victory, which foundered in the English Channel in 1744. Documentary records indicate the ship was carrying around four tons of Portuguese gold at the time it went down.

In another case, an American perusing satellite imagery available online claimed to have pinpointed the location, in a Texas marsh, of a 19th-century barquentine thought to have more than NT$100 billion in treasure aboard.

In addition to having monetary value, such ships are treasure troves of archaeological data and invaluable cultural artifacts.

As an island people, Taiwanese like to say that their nation was founded on the seas. Do these same seas offer us the opportunity to discover old wrecks and rediscover our maritime culture?

Life on Earth originated in the oceans, but the secrets of ancient civilizations buried on the sea floor are in constant danger of being lost, effaced by the actions of time and tide. Fortunately, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization has established the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, which went into formal effect on January 2, 2009. The convention demands that every nation act to protect our collective underwater cultural heritage, in particular the nearly 3 million wrecks that rest on the ocean floor.

Once an integral part of the ancient "maritime Silk Road," the treacherous Taiwan Strait has sunk uncounted vessels over the years. According to Chen Jeng-horng, an associate professor with National Cheng Kung University's Department of Systems and Naval Mechatronics Engineering, historical documents show that 185 vessels went down in the waters around Taiwan during the Qing Dynasty alone, some 97 of them in the vicinity of Penghu (see table). Given that Taiwan and mainland China flank the strait, both have a responsibility to preserve and protect these cultural assets on the ocean floor.

But this raises an important question. The seas around a nation are part of its sovereign territory. Is Taiwan prepared for the disputes over maritime rights that are sure to be raised by its own and mainland China's underwater archaeological activities?

Whose ship? Whose salvage?

In March 2009, the Philippines repeated their claim to sovereignty over some of the Spratly Islands, prompting an immediate and forceful response from Beijing's Ministry of Foreign Affairs: "All sovereignty claims to the Spratly Islands by nations other than China are invalid." In Taiwan, Su Jun-pin, minister of the Government Information Office and spokesperson for the Taiwanese government, reiterated that the Republic of China maintains its view that it has sovereignty over the Spratlys. Almost overnight, the Spratlys were again a flashpoint for sovereignty disputes between mainland China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia. It turns out that oil isn't the only consideration-the area is also home to rich undersea cultural assets.

For example, on his 1992 and 1995 surveys of the Spratlys, Wang Hengjie, a professor in the Department of History at Minzu University of China, discovered wrecks and artifacts left behind by mainland sailors from time periods ranging from the Six Dynasties to the Qing Dynasty. When Chen Chung-yu, now retired from his position as a research fellow in the Academia Sinica's Institute of History and Philology, completed his own survey of Taiping Island (the largest of the Spratlys) in 1995, he found tombstones belonging to Qing-Dynasty sailors.

The Spratly Islands are located in the South China Sea about 870 nautical miles (1,610 kilometers) south of Kaohsiung and are one of the major groups of the South China Sea Islands. (The others are the Macclesfield Bank, the Paracel Islands, and the Pratas Islands.) Documents record the presence of numerous ancient vessels and artifacts in the seas in their vicinity.

Guangzhou was a major hub for Chinese maritime trade during the Six Dynasties, which resulted in the South China Sea Islands becoming part of the maritime Silk Road and repositories of numerous artifacts. Individuals from the mainland found a Han-Dynasty wuju coin on Pratas Island prior to 1949, and a mainland Chinese archaeological expedition unearthed artifacts dating to the Six Dynasties on the Paracel Islands in 1974. The presence of these items strongly suggests that ROC waters are rich in wrecks and ancient treasure.

Hu Nien-tsu, executive director of the Center for Marine Policy Studies at National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU), says that the recovery of artifacts and wrecks from the seafloor often gives rise to sovereignty disputes, and that Taiwan therefore must first establish a legal framework for conducting its underwater archaeology.

Responding to this year's entry into force of the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, the Council for Cultural Affairs has asked the Center for Marine Policy Studies to draft an Undersea Cultural Artifacts Preservation, Protection, and Management Act for the ROC. The act, which aims to adapt international law to Taiwan, may be sent to the Legislative Yuan for review as early as late 2009.

Treasures in foreign hands

Not long after Christie's February auction of a bronze rabbit and a bronze rat from Beijing's Old Summer Palace, Zhao Qizheng, the spokesperson for the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, drew on French author Victor Hugo to state that two thieves, the English and the French, had invaded the Old Summer Palace. "We hope that France will someday 'liberate' and 'cleanse' itself by returning the stolen items to China," said Zhao.

A bastion of nationalist sentiment, the mainland views foreign possession of its national treasures as a source of shame. This as true for artifacts found beneath the sea as for those found on dry land.

In the early 1980s, Michael Hatcher, a marine salvager from the UK, raised and auctioned a large amount of porcelain from an ancient Chinese sailing vessel salvaged off the coast of Indonesia. In 1985, he sailed to the South China Sea to try his luck again, and succeeded in raising gold, porcelain, and silver from the Geldermalsen, a vessel belonging to the Dutch East India Company. China was shocked when some 150,000 Chinese artifacts from the wreck were sold at an auction in Amsterdam the next year for US$20 million.

Incensed by the looting and sale of cultural artifacts found in the South China Sea, China became determined to develop its own underwater archaeological research capabilities. Yu Weichao, then head of the National Museum of Chinese History (now the National Museum of China), heard the call and took action.

A basket of artifacts from the General No. 1 makes its slow way to the surface from the bottom of the sea. Archaeologists are unearthing priceless bits of our cultural heritage buried beneath the sea for hundreds of years.

Doing underwater archaeology

The National Museum of Chinese History established its Underwater Archaeology Research Center in November 1987. Yu named Zhang Wei, a 32-year-old graduate of the Peking University Department of Archaeology, the center's director, a position Zhang holds to this day.

"We didn't know anything or have any staff back then. We didn't know what kind of procedures to use or anything substantial," said Zhang, recalling China's first forays into underwater archaeology in a television interview 20 years after the fact.

In 1989, mainland China and Japan began surveying the Nanhai No. 1, a vessel sitting under 20 meters of water off the coast of Yangjiang, Guangdong Province. Ten years later, they were still investigating and had raised pottery fired in Jiangsu's Jingdezhen, Fujian's Dehua and Jian'an, and Suzhou's Longchuan kilns. They had also found bronze coins marked "Zhenghe Currency" and "Shaoxing Currency," indicating that the vessel dated to the Southern Song Dynasty.

"We had reached the point at which Chinese underwater archaeology was ready to transition to actual excavation," said Zhang. "It was an important moment."

In 2005, China decided to raise the whole ship, which had been sitting on the seafloor for more than 800 years, preserve the site, and display the vessel in Yangjiang. The Guangdong provincial government has spent RMB160 million to build a Maritime Silk Road Museum to secure the 30-meter-long, 10-meter-wide, 4.5-meter-tall ship-the oldest, largest, best-preserved, and, with an estimated value of hundreds of millions of US dollars, most valuable Song vessel ever discovered. At 130,000 square meters in size, the museum is about eight times the size of the main structure in the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. Nanhai No. 1 was ensconced in the giant glass pool known as the Crystal Palace built for it at the museum on December 28, 2007, and is scheduled to be unveiled to the public in December 2012.

"Almost at the same time the mainland was investigating the Nanhai No. 1, there were suspicions that a wreck had been found off of Penghu. At that time, Taiwan and the mainland were in about the same place with regard to underwater archaeology. But we've idled away the 20 years since, and are now far behind," says Tsang Cheng-hwa, assistant director of the Academia Sinica's Institute of History and Philology.

"The mainland is doing underwater archaeology at Qingdao, Ningbo, and Fuzhou. What about us?"

Excavating the General No. 1

Sometime around 1990, the Taiwanese media began reporting that a Penghu fisherman named Huang Jiajin had discovered a sunken vessel. The news circulated in Taipei for five years (see "A Debt of Gratitude-The General No. 1 Expedition" on p. 102) before public opinion and pressure from legislators finally compelled the Ministry of Education, which was then in charge of national monuments, to have the National Museum of History conduct an investigation and undersea dig.

Huang Yung-chuan, now director of the museum, was the assistant director of the Penghu project. He says that because Taiwan was new to underwater archaeology, the team had no choice but to borrow techniques and tools from land-based digs and figure out how to apply them underwater.

After assembling a 14-member team in just four months, the museum expedition and 11 divers from the Chinese Undersea Technology Association set sail for the seas around Penghu on September 4, 1995. Guided by Huang Jiajin, they began their search in the area between Wang'an Island, Jiangjun Island, and the uninhabited Dawen Island.

After making a number of dives between September 4 and the morning of September 7 without discovering any sign of a wreck, the team began to wonder whether Huang Jiajin had led them to the right spot.

Then, on the afternoon of the seventh on their second dive, the divers found pieces of blue-and-white porcelain and neat rows of earthenware jars on the seafloor northwest of Dawen. When they went out again on the eighth, Huang Jiajin steered them northeast of Dawen and they resumed their search using GPS and side-scanning sonar. Diving at 12 N, 119 E they found a large amount of porcelain neatly arranged on the sandy seafloor in the shape of a ship just 4.5 meters from a reef and at a depth of 19 meters. The distance between the eastern- and westernmost rows was about five meters, suggesting a vessel about five meters in length and three meters across the beam.

Six days later, on September 13, Kuo Wei-fan, who was then minister of education, called a press conference on Penghu at which he dubbed the vessel the General No. 1 in honor of nearby Jiangjun ("General") Island.

The museum then picked up the pace of its work. It created a 150-meter by 80-meter grid centered around the ship's location, and divided it into search sections five meters on a side.

"We initially raised 82 pieces, mostly earthenware jars, bowls, and jugs. We also discovered white porcelain and blue-and-white porcelain that we guessed to be from the middle part of the Qing Dynasty," says Yang Shih-chao, an associate research fellow with the museum who served as the executive secretary of the Marine Archaeology Team.

But they hadn't yet discovered the ship itself, and made a second expedition the following year, 1996. This time, they narrowed the scope of their search to a 50-meter square of seafloor around the cargo, and shrank the sections to just 2.5 meters on a side. Finally, on September 14, 1996, they found pieces of wood from the hull of what they guessed was a flat-bottomed mid-Qing cargo vessel transporting tiles, construction materials, and pottery between Taiwan and Penghu. The vessel turned out to be 21 meters in length and 4.15 meters across the beam, with a displacement of about 350 tons.

In 1998, the museum organized a third dig on the General No. 1 site, the most important result of which was the discovery of copper coins marked "Qianlong Currency." This confirmed that the vessel did indeed date to sometime after the Qing Emperor Qianlong, or to about 150 years ago.

The three expeditions raised a total of 284 items from the General No. 1, all of which are currently in the care of the Penghu County Cultural Affairs Bureau. However, the wood from the ship itself is so fragile that raising it would destroy it. The team therefore brought up only a very few samples, leaving most of it "as is" on the seafloor.

The museum wrapped up its work on the ship and published a paper on it in 1998. It followed this in 2000 with a cross-strait underwater archaeology conference and General No. 1 exhibition on Penghu. When reports of another sunken vessel began to circulate in the harbor at Magong in 2002, the museum put together a proposal requesting permission from the Ministry of Education to carry out another undersea expedition. Unfortunately, that request was tabled. Though the academic community continued to hear occasional reports of sunken vessels around Penghu and the Pratas Islands, the MOE viewed underwater archaeology as extremely peripheral to its mission. As a result, Taiwan did virtually no formal underwater archaeological work for several years.

A basket of artifacts from the General No. 1 makes its slow way to the surface from the bottom of the sea. Archaeologists are unearthing priceless bits of our cultural heritage buried beneath the sea for hundreds of years.

Interruption and reemergence

In 2005, the legislature undertook a wholesale revision of the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act, one portion of which transferred the administration of cultural properties (including historic sites, historic buildings, villages, ruins, cultural vistas, traditional artworks, objects of folk culture, and antiquities) from the Ministries of Education, the Interior, and Economic Affairs to the Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA). This eliminated the problem of too many supervisory agencies, but also made it difficult to build on the National Museum of History's experience working on the General No. 1 (the museum remains an MOE institution.)

Another issue for Taiwan is that where the mainland has established a team, funding, and procedures specifically devoted to underwater archaeology and undersea digs, Taiwan is still carrying out such digs on an ad-hoc basis.

"Taiwan doesn't lack for divers," says Tsang Cheng-hwa. "What we lack are experts in archaeology and ocean exploration." In 2006, the CCA handed Tsang, a former director of the National Museum of Prehistory, Taiwan's underwater archaeology baton. Unfortunately, he's had to go back almost all the way to the starting blocks.

Tsang's three-year project has an annual budget of about NT$8 million. In its first year, it trained 21 underwater archaeologists, planting the seeds for future growth in the field. In the second year, it worked with the NSYSU College of Marine Sciences to search for more wrecks around Penghu by studying written records and the oral histories of Penghu residents. When the researchers discover the likely site of a maritime disaster, they search it using side-scanning sonar and other advanced devices. To date, they've found six likely "hot zones." This year, the project's third, they will select one or two hot zones for on-site undersea investigation.

Worried that treasure-hunting members of the public will rush to get there first, Tsang won't reveal the exact locations of the six hot zones, but he has indicated that his team has been exploring a 500-meter by 500-meter area between Penghu Island and Xiyu. "We've already locked on to several sunken vessels," says Tsang.

"But we won't be able to confirm the nature, date, or archaeological value of our targets until we get under the water and identify them," he adds, tempering expectations.

Having looked over the data, Chen Jeng-horng says that Tsang's hot zones are likely the sites of the greatest Qing-era maritime disasters in Taiwanese waters (see table).

While the Taiwanese and mainland teams began their underwater archaeology race at about the same time, Taiwan soon dropped its baton. When we finally picked it up again, we discovered that the mainland team had already gained a sizeable lead. At what point will the Taiwanese team discover another vessel like the General No. 1? Will our hot pursuit ever yield a prize to match the mainland's Nanhai No. 1?

"If we manage to thoroughly explore these six hot zones by the end of this three-year period, we'll have done pretty well," says Tsang. "This is a gradual process. At least we're back to doing underwater archaeology after our 10-year hiatus."

The reason that archaeological work is so slow and difficult is that three years, 10 years, or even 20 years is but a drop in the river of history. Rather than looking at timetables, perhaps we should be asking: does the Taiwanese team have the will and determination to keep passing on the baton and running in this underwater archaeological relay race?