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Modern day pirates are as rare as great white sharks but if you want to chum for them this is the place. Unfortunately, a recent abduction of a Philippine journalist (by the Chinese) in the Spratley Islands "officially" put the Royal Captain (RC) Shoal out of bounds for the military, and we sailed without our marine escort. Note there is a simmering territorial dispute between China, Taiwan and the Philippines, but that is more to the East, and so the Royal Captain Shoal area should remain clear of trouble.
The boat feels like an old presidential yacht, complete with silver service (although your waiter may be unshaven and...... well... the rest can't be written down). This feels like an Indiana Jones movie set.
The RC shoal is absolutely deadly. We now know that it rises vertically at least a thousand feet in the middle of nowhere. It has collected four ships in the last 30 years, and who knows how many in the previous 300.
It is extremely difficult and very dangerous to anchor, but somehow we are tied along side now, having arrived Thursday (and spent the entire day anchoring). It is now Saturday. We will be leaving the RC for port on Monday morning.
On Thursday, we put a dive team in the water to try and relocate the cannon Franck found 10 years ago at 36 feet, and from there the ship's anchor at 160 ft. We were relieved to find both very quickly (within 1/2 hour). The cannon was even visible by eye via surface snorkeling. We launched the ROV that evening and again quickly found both the cannon and the anchor. With the ROV settled, we were starting to go down when a squall hit the boat and all hell broke loose. The rudder and screw was just a few feet off the reef. The ROV was safely recovered and the boat was undamaged. We motored off the reef Thursday night.
Friday after much fretting, we were again on the reef with the ROV in the water. This time, it took us awhile to find the anchor (which was our jumping off point to descend the reef wall which by now was looking extremely steep, ie vertical but we expected it to start sloping outwards at any time).
At 450 feet the wall was worse than vertical and disaster struck. All we saw was a loss of video and instrumentation telemetry. This was either a simple problem, or absolute worst case, an implosion of the camera housing. The worst case was fearful because it was the one thing we had no spares for (it's a long story) and could end the expedition there and then.
As the vehicle lifted out of the water, the remains of a shattered, smashed housing and camera hung below !! This was the low point about 11 am — a freak catastrophic failure of the glass pressure port had imploded smashing everything in its path.
Between what we could salvage and spares, we had everything to rebuild the housing EXCEPT a pressure port. Necessity being the mother of invention, between some still camera housing bits, a few hand tools and epoxy, we were somehow back in the water by 4 pm.
The makeshift housing worked, and in theory the port could hold out to 1500 ft (with no safety factor). My best guess was that it would hold to 1000Ft. We expected the vertical wall would end at 600ft, and there, if we were lucky, the Royal Captain would be. Note: So far, we had seen no signs that the Royal Captain had sank in the spot other that items we knew were jettisoned.
At 600 feet we were dismayed to see the reef wall was still vertical, and we inched down tensely because the camera could implode at any time (the port as built for a still camera was rated to 200 ft). At 700....800...900 ... the wall was still vertical, and nothing from the ship would have stayed there. So we edged on down close to 1000 ft. At 1000 feet we were pleased that the camera was holding, but dismayed that the wall continued down, (although it was showing signs of flaring out and was now at about 70 deg to the vertical). Not willing to risk the camera any deeper (at the moment) we explored the wall to the north.
Discussing what we hoped we could find, we decided the perfect find would be a chard of Chinese porcelain, then we would know for a certainty the Royal Captain had passed by. Two minutes later, something bright and man-made looking appeared, and we went up to look at it. When you see the tape you will see a perfect image of a chard of Chinese porcelain. Every one stared for an eternity at the object in absolute silence. Four years ago, we saw gold bars in every beer can, now disappointed a thousand times, it literally took minutes of staring in disbelief before we could admit what we were looking at was what we most wanted to see.
After that there was another and another — shards, and even a few intact pieces. We looked in great detail at porcelain with paintings of pagodas, boats, river scenes, etc.. Everything was so clear — the designs, the colors. Nothing was buried, but rather simply lying on the reef. Franck was most excited, having never before seen fine porcelain in such mint condition. The plates dishes and serving platters were absolutely clean, with the glaze reflecting back the camera lights. We also saw wood and iron in astonishingly good condition. We were in the debris field of the Royal Captain. We had found her... the ship and the bulk of the cargo lay immediately beneath or around us. We just didn't know how far, and we still could see no end to the reef at 1,096 feet. Not wanting to risk losing the camera and film, we decided to go no further this night, but rather go back the next day with the manipulator (to try and bring up some shards).
Friday night, with the weather calm, we lay on the reef. It is now 10 am Saturday. Brett, Dan and Bill are just fixing some minor problems with the ROV, and we should be clear to go down soon. We re-measured the port and re-calculated the depth, (this time with more confidence in the seating), and if necessary, we will push it to 1500FT today. It is now important that we find the actual wreck, and survey the site to plan for excavation next season (late February to late May is our window, and Franck estimates we will need 2 seasons, or 7 months to excavate fully).
On our first dive today, we located the anchor, and descended down to the scattered debris area we had found yesterday. At about 1,000 feet, we found wooden planking and close to this, the debris we were looking for. The cable is giving us problems, as it easily gets caught on the reef, or gets caught on itself due to too much slack. However, we continued to go down — only to find that one of the ROV thrusters wasn't functioning properly. We decided to find a nice shard to bring to the surface, and to check out the ROV 's thruster. With the manipulator, the ROV easily picked up a shard (about 1/2 a plate). When the ROV surfaced, and the plate shard was brought to the surface, we saw that it was in perfect condition. The picture was clear, the glaze was intact, and it looked as if it was made yesterday. There was very little growth on the shard, and what little there was came off easily as we wiped our hands across the surface. Franck said this piece was typical of the East India Companies and was a late 18th century piece. He said it was in perfect condition.
Upon inspection of the ROV, we discovered a piece of cloth caught in the thruster. This was easily removed, and the ROV was sent back down for another dive. We descended down to about 1000 feet (where the first signs of the shards were). On this dive, we found many shards, timbers, bottles, iron pieces, etc. We also found a cannon. The slope still had not leveled off, and we were below 1000 feet. There are lots of big boulders, with shard debris sticking on them.
We're still were having cable problems, so we decided to feed the cable from the dinghy (to keep it away from the reef). This seemed to work very well. As we continued on our dive, we rounded a big boulder, and came across a ledge with piles and piles of porcelain — many of which was intact. Cups, saucers, vases all stacked up on top of this ledge. We also saw large black patches on the sand, which Franck told us was tea, and it was very important to follow these black splotches, as the porcelain was packed under the tea. Nearby this site, we also found our second cannon of the day. Note: These two cannons were not jettisoned, but had fallen down the reef with the wreck.
While this debris site was the largest we have found yet, we still do not think we have found the main part of the wreck. We continued searching until 9pm, and decided to recover the ROV (as the cable was hopelessly caught) and to plan a thorough survey for tomorrow.
This morning (Sunday morning), we had an early morning meeting to plan our day. We will probably search the area for 24 hours, as we have to leave the site tomorrow, and so this is the last survey (of this season) we will be able to do. Our mission today is to define the parameters of the wreck site, and to find the rest of the cannons (because that is where the bulk of the wreck should lie). We also want to go to our maximum depth to see if we can understand for sure that the bulk of the shipwreck is NOT still somewhere below us. First, we will search in horizontal patterns above the debris we have found, to make sure we haven't missed the bulk of the wreck on a ledge above. We will map out the site on the computer, noting where the shards, cannons, and timbers lie. We hope to solve our cable problems by feeding the cable from the dinghy, thus not dragging the cable over the reef as we descend and fly about on our search.
At 10:00am, the ROV was put in the water. (It was first put in at 9:20, but we had trouble finding the reef, and had to re-surface). We went right down to (237 meters), and came onto a pile of wood. This looks like a new site, as we had not before seen wood at this depth. There are also lots of shards, and we came upon an old chain. We decided to follow this debris up the wall. We saw shards and something resembling a ship's instrument was found. We also saw intact bottles and intact beer mugs, lead sheeing and pipes. We're obviously following a stream of wreckage from the wreck. We also came across approximately 7 cannons and another anchor.
As we traversed the area at a depth of about 1100-1200 feet, we came across the pile of porcelain and tea that we saw yesterday. The site is very big, and after surveying it throughly, we realized that this is indeed THE WRECK SITE. It's approximately 150 cubic meters. The ship had come down onto rocks and most everything is in this one general area (except the cannons, anchors and miscellaneous shards we had seen). However, we know for sure that the bulk of the cargo is all in this place.
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