Belitung shipwreck

830

Arab dhow, Java Sea, sixty thousand Tang treasures Location: Gelasa Strait, off Belitung Island, Indonesia · Coordinates: 2.80°S 107.70°E · Casualties: unknown · Survivors: unknown · Depth: 17 m · Cause: grounding — Wrecked on a reef in the Gelasa Strait in the early ninth century while en route home from Tang China to Abbasid Arabia. The sewn-plank dhow hull broke up but the cargo settled in shallow sand. Discovered by Indonesian fishermen in 1998. · Fate: commercially salvaged · cargo at Singapore ACM · Type: merchantman · Arab dhow · Tonnage: ~25 tons · Flag: Abbasid Caliphate Arab dhow, early ninth century, lost on the reefs of Belitung Island in the Java Sea. Sewn together with coconut fibre rather than iron nails, she was the first ancient Arab vessel ever recovered. Her cargo held 60,000 Tang dynasty ceramics plus a single gold cup, the largest Tang hoard ever found outside China and definitive proof of direct sea trade between Tang China and Abbasid Arabia. Discovered by Indonesian fishermen in 1998; the salvage remains controversial because the hold was emptied commercially rather than scientifically excavated. The Vessel The Belitung shipwreck was an Arabian dhow of the late Tang dynasty period, built in the Persian Gulf or along the Arabian coast sometime around 820 AD and lost in the Java Sea off the Indonesian island of Belitung around 830 AD. She was approximately 18 metres long and 6.4 metres in beam, a single-masted lateen-rigged merchant vessel of the kind that worked the Indian Ocean trade routes between the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, and the ports of southern China. Her hull construction identified her unambiguously as an Arabian vessel rather than a Chinese one. She was built by the sewn-plank technique characteristic of medieval Indian Ocean shipbuilding: the hull planks were lashed together with coconut-fibre cordage through drilled holes along the plank edges, rather than being joined by iron nails or wooden treenails. The caulking material between the planks was a mixture of lime, fish oil, and coconut-fibre fibre. No iron fastenings were used anywhere in her hull. Her home port was almost certainly Siraf, on the Persian Gulf coast of what is now Iran, the principal Arabian port for the China trade in the ninth century. Her captain and crew on the final voyage were Arab and Persian merchants operating under the commercial protections established by the Abbasid caliphate's diplomatic relationship with Tang China. The Belitung ship is the only documented archaeological example of a ninth-century Arabian dhow recovered anywhere in the world. The Disaster The specific cause of the Belitung ship's loss is not certain and cannot be fully reconstructed from the wreck site. She sank in shallow water (approximately 17 metres) on the Gaspar Strait between the Indonesian islands of Belitung and Bangka, a notorious shipping hazard known to medieval Arab and Chinese navigators as a site of numerous shipwrecks. The Gaspar Strait is characterised by a series of submerged coral reefs and strong tidal currents; a ship that drifted onto a reef in poor weather or at night could be holed and sunk very quickly. The archaeological evidence suggests that the Belitung ship struck a coral reef (a substantial area of reef damage is visible on the seabed adjacent to the wreck site) and sank without catastrophic destruction. The hull settled onto the shallow seabed substantially intact, with the cargo still in its original stowage arrangement. The stowage pattern, painstakingly recorded during the excavation, showed that the Changsha bowls had been packed inside large storage jars for transit, a standard medieval Chinese export technique; the larger elite ceramics had been stowed separately in the after hold. The Belitung ship sank in approximately 17 metres of water on the Gaspar Strait in or around 830 AD, on a voyage estimated to be 1,900 kilometres from Guangzhou with approximately 9,100 kilometres yet to run to Siraf. The fate of her Arab and Persian crew is unknown; they may have survived by reaching the nearby Indonesian coast, or they may hav