Chapter 24
UNDERSEA TREASURE TROVE
Joe picked him up at the hotel and they left for a visit to the Brunei Museum a few kilometres outside of Bandar along the Brunei River. It was known for its unique collection of Islamic Art, a private collection of elaborately gilded Koran, glassware and carpets. However, what interested Ennis most was its extraordinary collection of ceramics, and especially those recovered from a wreck that had been discovered a couple of years previously by a French oil exploration team off the Brunei coast.
John Ennis was only too familiar with the stories of sunken treasure ships, not laden with gold and silver, but valuable antique porcelain. The discovery of a wreck, in the spring of 1997, some forty kilometres off the coast of Brunei, by a French oil company, had made headlines in the regional press.
Undersea cameras had spotted an unusual small mound on the sea bed sixty metres below the surface. Closer inspection had shown it to be the wreck of a Chinese junk whose cargo of pottery had tumbled out over the surrounding seabed. The oil company informed the Brunian authorities who agreed to an investigation by a team of French undersea archaeologists, which resulted in a full scale excavation the wreck.
It had been the kind of discovery many a potential adventurer had imagined in their dreams. Now, he, John Ennis, hoped to negotiate an agreement with the National Brunei Museum to excavate a similar such a wreck.
The history of wrecks in the region was long. Over the centuries merchant ships had plied their wares through a vast trading network that covered the rim of the South China Sea. Traders bartered porcelain from China, jars from Vietnam or Thailand in exchange for the exotic produce of the tropical lands that included the regional Empire of Brunei, which reached its apogee during the reign of Sultan Bolkiah, from 1485 to 1524.
Goods had been transported in huge ocean-going junks whose cargos often consisted of jars and pots that were bartered for gold, silver, exotic oils, spices, tropical wood and camphor. Many of the pots and jars returned to China as containers filled with the precious goods the merchants had found on those foreign shores.
They returned to Joe’s offices, where, after collecting his messages and making a couple of calls, he invited Ennis to lunch in a nearby and very plain Chinese restaurant, and in spite of the very short distance Joe insisted on driving. It was crowded and very noisy, though Ennis grugingly conceded that the curried fish Joe ordered was delicious.
Once again the discussion seemed aimless and Ennis was slowly reconciled to the way of doing business in Brunei. After lunch as they headed back to Ang’s, Joe suggested taking time to visit the bar of the Sheraton, where he said it would be quiet with few people in the early afternoon. After settling into a corner Joe ordered two espresso coffees, it really was quiet and Ennis’s thoughts wandered back to the previous evening, and Harrisons’ girl. He could not help feeling a certain emptiness.
‘Cheer up John!’ Joe interrupted his thoughts, laying his hand on Ennis, in a friendly manner. ‘Well I’ve thought over the idea of representing you in Brunei, and I’ve decided to accept your proposal.’
Ennis came down to earth quickly, he was more than a little surprised, as he did not remember going as far as making such a proposal to Joe, but he held back and listened.
‘I have spoken to the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Culture, he’s a good friend, married to a cousin. He has fixed up a meeting for us with the Minister later this afternoon. I can now tell you he has given me favourable opinion concerning the public auction for part of the ceramic collection.’
He noted the reference to public auctions, which Joe had not mentioned earlier. It meant that he would have to put in an option with a pre-bid, it did not displease him, and for the first time he felt relaxed as the coffee set off the chilled air in the bar.
‘Do you play polo?’ said Joe.
‘Polo!’
‘Never mind, but it’s a popular sport in this country!’ he paused and then added ‘In certain circles!’
‘As I mentioned to you the other day, there are plenty of other wrecks out there John,’ he said slyly. ‘Dozens of other ships, full of antique treasure, lying at the bottom of the sea waiting to be discovered…even fishermen find them, they are well guarded secrets.’
‘Oh,’ said Ennis feigning surprised, he of course knew that such ships existed or had been found and plundered.
‘The ministry people know about these and are willing to give me, that is you and I, an exploration permit…’
‘An exploration permit! So what’s the catch?’
‘There is no catch, I mean there is a price for the permit, and certain conditions, such as preserving and studying the wreck, as evidence of our ancient civilization that has flourished here for centuries.’
‘I don’t understand, Brunei is rich? Why do you want to give this over to a commercial operation?’
‘Brunei is rich, but are oil and gas resources are declining, the state doesn’t have sufficient money to finance every archaeological operation or build lots of museums. So the ministry is ready to privatise archaeology if you like and share the results.’
‘I see.’
‘But we’re not about to go bankrupt,’ he said laughing. “We are still very very rich with vast natural gas reserves and our small population, so the Minister has informed me that the Museum, under the patronage of the royal family, would graciously participate in part of the expedition’s costs.
‘That’s good to hear. So…the price for the permit?’
‘In fact John, let me be frank, I mean my services, they have a cost, the permit is a just formality, but there are also of one or two of my friends who have to be cared for and who are necessary for cutting through red tape.’
Ennis understood and they shook hands on a commission for Joe to be calculated on the receipts of the objects sold after the completion of the excavation and salvage work.
Early that evening back at the hotel he felt tired but elated, Joe’s connections were indeed good. The meeting with the Minister had been beyond all his expectations, two people from the National Museum had been introduced to the meeting after the Minister had agreed to the principal of signing a Memorandum of Understand, permitting Ennis to prepare a project for the exploration and excavation of a wreck that had been recently discovered down the coast from the capital. The men from the museum were archaeologists and had handed Ennis the copy of a report on the initial investigations concerning the wreck.
The Minister had described the policy of the government, which foresaw the disposal of surplus items of recovered treasure on the private art market as a means of saving it for posterity at the same time spreading the knowledge and reputation of Brunei as a historical centre to the outside world. The treasure from the wreck excavated by the French was an example, though it was only possible to display a small part of the treasure in the Brunei Museum at Kota Batu.
First he thought of telephoning to HG in Kota Kinabulu and then to Aris in Jakarta, but on second thoughts he decided maybe that it would be unwise, he felt that Brunei’s telephone system might be a little bit too public.
He picked up the report and started to read it.
The wreck was exceptionally large; it was calculated to be over fifty meters long and fourteen meters wide with an estimated cargo of around two thousand cubic meters of cargo space. The cargo had no doubt been carefully distributed over the junks length and breadth to ensure the stability of the vessel. However, the report explained that the heavily laden had either foundered in a storm or had sunk for some other disastrous event such as an attack by pirates. The junk had then lain undisturbed for more than four hundred years just a short distance off the coast of Brunei.
First inspection indicated that the cargo had been destined for every day use by the local population and was not of the kind valued by kings and princes that had survived the ages safely stored in palaces. It was porcelain that told something of the daily lives and necessities of the p
eople of Borneo in the late fifteenth century - lives that had left little other trace.
The items that had been recovered appeared to be the products of the kilns in the southeast China along the southern bank of the Yangtze River. They had been mass produced by skilled potters and artists but bore an extraordinary wealth of decorative designs made by each individual craftsman.
Ennis was very familiar with the history of China and recalled that in the fourteenth century Chinese goods such as silks and porcelain had been in great demand in places as far away from China as East Africa and the Middle East, attracting many foreign merchants to Chinese ports. As the result of the expansion in trade at the end of the 14th century, China’s southern ports became major trading centres.
Blue and White porcelain from the Ming dynasty was exported when China was at the summit of its maritime power, with the largest fleet on earth at that time composed of more than three hundred seagoing ships. The Emperor appointed a Muslim eunuch, Admiral Zheng He, as commander of his fleet, to undertake a series of expeditions to spread the power of China and to seek trading partners.
Admiral Zheng embarked on the first of his seven voyages in 1405 his fleet carrying rich cargos of silks and porcelain on huge sailing junks and consisted in total of sixty ocean-going vessels with nearly 27,000 men. The flag ship was more than one hundred metres long, and thirty wide with nine masts, in comparison the Santa Maria of Christopher Columbus was a mere twenty-five metres long. These junks with their valuable cargos were escorted by war ships and support vessels loaded with food and animals.
In 1433, exploration suddenly ceased as the Mongol threats from the north and the cost of the expeditions caused the imperial court to turn towards more pressing affairs at home. Thus the official naval expeditions to foreign lands came to an end, and a policy of isolationism was established with multi-masted ships banned from leaving China. International trade was then left to private Chinese traders who were willing to run the risks of going against the imperial ban. Trade nevertheless continued to expand and ships as large as 1,000 tons navigated in Asian waters, dwarfing the small European ships that had just started to venture into the region.
At the end of the 15th century all trade was officially carried out by foreigners trading in Chinese ports where merchants dealt directly with bureaucratic Chinese officials for the products that were in such great demand in foreign markets.
The first of the large jars that had been recovered from the wreck by the Museums specialists were made of stoneware, a kind of pottery fired in a hot kiln, which is hard, non-porous, and durable. The great strength of stoneware made this type of jar, ideal for storing and transporting solids and liquids a highly valued storage vessel since there were no comparable vessel having the same qualities in that period.
The few items of porcelain that had been brought to the surface were identified as coming from Jiangxi province, a major porcelain-making centre from the 14th century onwards. The blue and white porcelain was painted with cobalt covered with a transparent glaze.
The manufacture of porcelain had been discovered in China with the use of special clays containing feldspar, found in the south of the country. The decoration of the porcelain with cobalt blue was used as an underglaze as it was the only type of pigment available at that time that did not burn off in the process of firing the kilns at the high temperatures needed to give porcelain its unique strength.
At the outset porcelain and stoneware were destined for use by the nobility but mass production introduced these products to a broader market during the 15th century and the production of porcelain became a large industry producing all kinds of vessels and products for the home and export markets.
The hard, translucent, white porcelain was considered by the peoples of Southeast Asia as healthier, cleaner and more pleasant to eat off than the traditional earthen ware vessels that had been made in many regions for thousands of years. The smoothness, colour and brightness of porcelain were highly valued.
The most valued was the extraordinarily beautiful porcelain made for the Imperial court, though plain everyday storage vessels and kitchen ware valued by the ordinary people.
The people of Southeast Asian people not only ate from the porcelain plates and bowls, or used jars to store liquid and grain, they also associated with them religion, as porcelain produced a ring when struck and was linked to their magic and religious beliefs.
Ennis had long sought for his gallery the Martabans and other jars that had arrived in Borneo in large quantities over the centuries; these had been much more than simple containers. They were considered by the local populations to have mystical properties. Most jars were bought for everyday usage but others were employed for religious purposes. Certain of these jars had great value and were traded for as many as twenty-five buffalo and were handed down from generation to generation as revered possessions. Some tribes including the Iban even used them for keeping their dead.
He put down the report it was late and he soon fell asleep, but it was irregular as thoughts of Harrison’s girl, mingled with Joe, and images of the Sultanate resurfaced.
His opinion of the Sultante as a rich but dreary backwater, which apart from a few modern edifices was in reality a throwback to the last century, had changed for the better and he knew he would be back much sooner than he had previously anticipated.