In 1987 we were searching for the wreck of the VOC ship Rhynsburg, which had sunk in a typhoon off the coast of  China.  The initial search produced one shipwreck and what Kevin Smith our Hydrographer described as a very small anomaly.  He discussed the find with the team leader Lyle Craigie-Halkett, who was also a Director of MER.   Lyle decided to hire a barge an inspect the target, after a months delay the barge arrived on site.  The intial recoveries included the porcelain shown below, together with lumps of corroded metal, coins and artefacts:  then a gold waist chain (clasp shown below).  The work ceased whilst the finds were dated.  The few items that the Chinese dated were from the Northern & Southern Sung Dynasties. The Southern Sung Dynasty lasted from 1127 to 1279, the Northern Sung was from 960 to 1127,   The oldest dated coin was from 1111AD.   The wreck is of great historical importance for several reasons, the wreck was then one of the oldest found in the open sea: unusally the arisings come from various  locations and from various periods.   The Southern Sung Emporer would not allow the export of silver, but an hours work on the wreck produced 130 kg; the gold chain was not of a known Chinese design .  We realised that this was a trading ship, but not nesessarily a Chinese one; other possibilities include Arab, Mongol or Persian..   The wreck has now been recovered and will be put in a specially built museum building.  
The only mention of our company was that an unspecified British salvage company was involved in the location - if we had recovered and auctioned the cargo they would have remembered our names well!





Signing the agreement 1987                                               COES Beijing photograph