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Our Books:
- How South Africa Built Six Atom Bombs
- Dive South Africa
- Wreck Hunt
- Mercenary Invasion of Seychelles
- Jack Malloch
- Deadline Africa
- Battles of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879
- Diving with Sharks
- Neall Ellis
- Barrel of a Gun
- South Africa's Border Wars
- The 'Coloured' People of South Africa and Apartheid
About our Authors:
Al J Venter
John H. Visser
Charles Shapiro
SITEMAP
WRECK HUNT: Salvaging the Ocean's Treasures (working title)
Due to be published 2009
A remarkable new book on shipwrecks and salvage. It covers much of the period of maritime discovery of the East by all the European Nations then active in the maritime realm.
This work will be a touchstone in the genre of underwater discovery. Hugely illustrated and in full colour throughout, it is to be published in several of the languages of the countries that historically traded with the Asia, from the 15th Century onwards.
Apart from American and British editions, Wreck Hunt will concurrently be published in Dutch, Portuguese, French, Danish, Swedish, German, Italian and Japanese language editions.
The book will centre on the two centuries that various East India Companies; Dutch, British, Danish and others - traded with India, present-day Malaysia, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), Batavia (Indonesia), China and Japan. The Dutch alone had 1,770 individual ships that sailed to the Indies making a total of 4,789 voyages out and 3,400 home. Of these, only a tiny proportion ended in disaster, namely 246.
There are few other salvage divers who have been as instrumental in discovering the locations of so many ancient shipwrecks in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, some of them three or four centuries old. Charles Shapiro has also worked on all that was left of the Portuguese carrack Santiago, that went onto the reef along the semi-submerged Bassas da India Atoll in 1585.
Its early remains - there were 60 survivors of 450 people onboard - was first uncovered by a German yachtsman who found a stash of silver coins while walking on the edge of Bassas Reef with his family.
All the ships that are dealt with by Shapiro were employed in Europe's vigorous quest to trade with the East, an ocean route that was first discovered by the Portuguese navigator Bartolomeu Diaz in 1488. Many of the ships that succumbed while traversing the then isolated - and often dangerous - ocean routes, went down the southern tip of Africa, either on outward or homeward legs. Others were lost in deep water, often in cyclones that beset much of the Indian Ocean each year.
Shapiro reckons that while he has discovered the locations of at least two dozen wrecks, he has work on many more. That includes a three-year salvage effort on the Royal Navy troop carrier H.M.S. Birkenhead that went down with the loss of hundreds on the South Cape coast. This venture involved two professional recovery diving groups as well as a couple of ocean-going tugs.
His most remarkable discovery was the wreck of the Dutch East Indiaman Brederode that struck an uncharted pinnacle off Cape Agulhas in 1785. After drifting for more than five hours, the Indiaman sank in deep water about 10 kilometres offshore. Shapiro spent years in various European maritime archives researching the location of this and other ships that foundered.
Although he recovered a small quantity of Qianlong Dynasty (1736 to 1795) porcelain, Shapiro - who works in cooperation with governments and museums in accordance with prevailing international conventions - declared his find and was granted permission to work the wreck. The matter has since been put on hold while South African Government wreck recovery policies are formalised.
Brederode cargo manifests - which he viewed at the Hague Archives where all original Dutch East India Company (VOC) documents are held, show that she was heading back to Europe with approximately 160,000 porcelain items onboard. It places the wreck in the same category as that of the Geldermalsen - better known as the Nanking Cargo - which was wrecked in 1752 in the South China Sea.
Price must still to be determined on the various language editions which are to be published. This tally will include 100 signed and numbered leather-bound copies.
The English-language edition will additionally have twelve specially-bound and boxed copies -again signed by the author and numbered. Each of these dozen 'super-presentation' volumes will include an original silver piece of eight (cob).
It is envisaged that they will be offered for auction by one of the international auction houses.
SOME OF THE SHIPS TO BE INCLUDED IN WRECK HUNT
Johanna 1682
Milagros 1686
Le Centaur 1750
Brederode 1785
Colebrooke 1778
Britannia 1826
Birkenhead 1852
Borderer 1878
HMS Sybille 1901
OTHER WRECKS ON THE BASSAS da INDIA AND THE SEYCHELLES:
Santiago 1585
Sussex 1738
Le Hereuse 1769
St Abbs 1855
JOHANNA(1682)
The Johanna was an English East Indiaman of 550 tons commanded by Captain Robert Brown and outward bound voyage from the Downs off south-east Kent, which she had left on the 27th February 1682. She left in the company of four other ships: the Williamson, Nathaniel, Welvaert and Samson, all bound for Bengal except the Johanna which was headed for Surat.
She was big three-deck ship for her time, mounting 36 heavy cannon, with only the great warships of the day like Duke of York's flagship, the Royal Charles (mounting 80 or more cannon) outgunning her.
The Johanna's principal cargo consisted of silver specie valued at 72,000 pounds (a Raja's ransom packed in 70 chests and consisting of pieces-of-eight and silver bullion intended for English factories in Bengal). There were 10 people that drowned, with 104 survivors who eventually reached Cape Town.
Rumours of treasure on board the ship caused the Dutch Governor of the Cape, Simon van der Stel to send a salvage party - headed by Ensign Olaf Bergh, a Dutch East India Company official - to assess the situation. Bergh found four bodies washed up which were buried. Besides bottles of brandy, casks of wine and beer, the group found more than 600 Spanish silver reals washed up on shore. This stimulated Bergh's efforts to make efforts to get out the wreck which lay in relatively shallow water several hundreds metres offshore.
He called for a carpenter as well as a slave called Pay Mina who was a trained pearl diver. Bergh returned to the Castle after a successful salvage of recovering coins which Dutch Archives tell us, were worth 28,302 gulden.
The Johanna then lay untouched for 300 years, until her remains were discovered under Shapiro's guidance in November 1982. The site was located on the outer reefs of 'Die Dam' east of Quoin Point. Most of what was left lay under sand and a prop-wash machine was acquired to excavate the site. These were boats with powerful column of water downdraft which were used to shift sand off potential wreck sites.
Altogether, more than 23,000 pieces of eight (cob coins) were recovered as well as a few hundred kilograms of silver bullion in the shape of disc ingots. Altogether more than 40 iron cannon were located on the site, but more are rumoured to have been seen on shore by older fisherman.
The Johanna was the second site to fall under the new National Monuments Council Act (today known as the South African Heritage Resources Agency SAHRA) regarding shipwrecks, the first being the "Arniston 1815" wrecked at Arniston.
NOSSA SENHORA DOS MILAGROS (1686)
The Milagros was a Portuguese vessel of 50 guns and 150 men commanded by Don Emmanuel Da Silva, a close friend of Pedro, the Portuguese king. On her way home from Goa (India) to Portugal, she carried gifts from King Phra Narai of Siam to the King of Portugal, Louis XIV of France as well as Charles II of England. Apart from her crew, she carried three Jesuit priests and three Siamese ambassadors as passengers, which one archival document states was roughly 500 souls.
This maritime loss remains one of the navigating tragedies of the epoch. Conditions were dead calm near Struisbaai when she struck, her captain believing he had already rounded Cape Agulhas, Africa's southernmost point. While everybody onboard managed to safely reach the shore, a large proportion of passengers and crew died on the relatively long haul back to Cape Town, an overland distance
When Governor Simon van der Stel heard of the ambassadors and other possible survivors, he sent a party of seven to search for them. Two of the Siamese were found (the other ambassador having died soon after reaching the shore) as well as some crewmembers.
Accepting that there was little hope of salvaging the wreck the Portuguese officers ceded their rights to the ship to the Dutch East India Company. Van der Stel immediately dispatched a salvage team to try and retrieve some of the treasure.
Not long after the return of the salvage party to Cape Town rumours circulated among local inhabitants that some valuable items had been taken off the wreck and not declared. It was then discovered that a valuable gold cross with eight diamonds, a silver filigree scent ball and a rosary had been sold to somebody in Cape Town by one of the salvagers, Company officials then unearthed a cache of ship's loot.
LE CENTAUR 1750
The Centaur was a French ship carrying 300 crew, 100 passengers and a cargo which consisted solely of "peppercorns". Commanded by Captain Monsieur de la Butte and bound from Mauritius to France, she ran aground a little west of Cape Agulhas in fine weather in January, 1750.
The following is an extract from notations made at the time and lodged in the Dutch Archives:
'All would have been well had the Captain kept his head, but a few hasty decisions led to faulty manoeuvres. Before he quite realised the risks he was incurring, his ship was caught in an inshore current and carried ashore, grounding gently on a sandy bottom, the succeeding waves pushing her in further, until she was so tightly held that the men labouring in the boats could not haul her off again. The order to abandon ship brought the 400 people, including several woman and children, crowding to the side. In an orderly fashion they jumped down, or were lifted down, to the beach in safety. They were several days trek from the Castle, but to attempt that heart-breaking journey was preferable to camping on the beach in the remote hope of eventual deliverance from the sea.
'Lines of seamen passed the bags and barrels in which provisions and water were taken from the ship to dump on the beach. As the last man leaped from the canting deck, the captain gathered the people and spoke of the ordeal before them and of the need for faith and courage so that at last they might arrive safely. He portioned out the supplies, each according to what he could carry.
'Thus burdened, the trekkers started hopefully, along a coast of precipitous cliffs, resounding river mouths and wide loose beaches, a distance of a few hundred miles that in the absence of even elementary footpaths became a torture of the damned even for tough seamen, let alone for the pitifully faltering women and children. So passed the days of agony, of bleeding feet, blistered heels and torn, weary limbs, days of depleted rations and little water, of hot sun and stinging wind, until finally there was nothing to eat and drink and the Cape still far away. The weak dropped out to die their lonely, neglected deaths on the bitter trail. But when at last news of the wreck reached the Castle, relief wagons were hurried out to pick up the survivors.'
Shapiro's undersea research group Aqua Exploration discovered the wrecksite of the Le Centaur in 1984 while searching for the Milagros.
Until positive identification could be established, they drew up a site plan and started with the excavation using their 'Blower' propwash boat for sand removal. Some of the principle artefacts for identification came in the form of a huge bell and a small corroded coin. After a couple of weeks a coin expert identified the currency to be a French 'Double Sol' which dated the wreck between 1738 and 1770. The bell apparently belonged to a Jesuit Priest.
As the propwash boat removed overburden, so huge quantities of peppercorns were exposed, together with a variety of other artefacts.
Shapiro: 'I looked up in my records and came across the French ship named Le Centaur and on doing further research, found out that her cargo consisted solely of peppercorns…
'Among other things brought up were complete wine "onion" bottles, a gold earring, parts of a pig's skeleton (which had parts of a wooden cage around it) and shards of thick porcelain.'
COLEBROOKE 1778
The Colebrooke was a beautiful three-deck English East Indiaman of 739 tons, 137 feet long and 35 feet wide and like the Johanna, a pride of London's fast-growing merchant fleet. Built by Perryard, she was launched in 1770 and she was on her third voyage when she ran onto the rocks in one of the brutal winter storms that often thunders in during winter in the Cape.
There were 212 people on board at the time, of which 7 drowned in the surf while trying to reach the shore.
He history, briefly - which is dealt with in detail in the book - is that the Colebrooke loaded a large number of lead ingots and some ships stores at Blackwall in the East India docks on the Thames early January, 1778. A month later she was moved to Gravesend to load shot, copper, stores, gunpowder, wine, guns, corn, livestock and military recruits and set sail on March 8 from the Downs in the company of three other vessels. These were the warship Asia, as well as the East Indiamen Gatton and the Royal Admiral.
Colebrook was tasked with a call at Madeira for 43 pipes of wine. On the 26th May she sailed from Madeira for Bombay and China.
Three months later, on rounding Cape Point, the Colebrooke struck hard on a submerged reef which is today listed on the charts as Anvil Rock. She took water rapidly and at the vessel ran ashore several hours later in Kogel Bay. The crew tried to jettison the cannon but the crew was unable to open the ports.
In 1984, more than two centuries later, the Colebrooke was relocated by the combined efforts of Charles Shapiro's Aqua Exploration and the Oceanic Recovery group. Principle clues as to her whereabouts came in the form of a series of photographs that Shapiro uncovered while doing research in the Dutch Archives.
BRITANNIA (1826)
The discovery of the Britannia was accomplished by husband and wife team Charles and Karen Shapiro and assisted by Britannia Bay locals Anton Kriel and Anet McLeod.
The Britannia, a ship of 460 tons wrecked in October 1826 while outward bound from England to Madeira, Table Bay, Mauritius and India. She had onboard passengers and a cargo of copper, Madeira wines, Hodgson's ale and Cognac brandy. She struck an uncharted reef (listed today as Britannia Reef), off St. Helena Bay.
After the ship struck, her captain immediately put her about and headed for the shore. He succeeded in running her aground and 16 passengers landed in safety.
Shapiro: 'Aqua Exploration began its search for the wreck in February 1997. In April we got a positive magnetometer reading in 2.5 metres of water in the surf zone on the more exposed side of Britannia Bay. Due to bad weather and dangerous seas we only managed to open and positively identify the sand covered site almost a year later.
'Altogether, we recovered more than a hundred different types of artefacts off the wreck. These consisted of various bottles of wine, ale, beer, cognac, black ink, olives, capers, medicines and various stoneware jars containing jellies, jams, pickled fish and other preservatives.
'Other artefacts found were wine glasses, porcelain crockery, a teapot, teacup, wooden pulley block, material, as well as cutlery parts. We also recovered some copper sheeting, lead ingots and found a few pieces of complete blue, white and gold, stone china porcelain by Hicks & Meigh and soup plates made by Stevenson & Williams of England.
BIRKENHEAD 1852
The Birkenhead was a British iron, paddle-wheel frigate of 1400 tons being used as a troopship in the Cape. Originally built in 1845 by Laird and converted she had changed her name from Vulcan to Birkenhead.
She left Simon's Town on the morning of the 25th February 1852 in the command of Captain Robert Salmond after loading 350 tons of coal and provisions. She had 638 people on board, consisting of 20 women and children, 138 ship's officers and crew and 480 army officers and drafted men to aid Lieutenant -General Sir Harry Smith in the Eighth Frontier War being waged at the Cape (East London).
Just after midnight she struck a submerged rock off Danger Point and the lower deck quickly flooded , drowning many unfortunate men in their bunks. All surviving men, officers, women and children went up on deck. Lieutenant -Colonel Seton of the 74th Foot Regiment took charge of all the military personnel. The men were commanded to stand drawn up in line and to await orders, while about 60 men were sent to man the pumps.
The Captain then made the mistake in ordering the Birkenhead to be put astern, which caused the hull to rip open, further. The sudden inrush of water swamped her boilers and the vessel began to break up. In its collapse, the funnel crushed the paddle-wheel lifeboat, killing the men who were trying to free it for launching.
The rest is history, with the men standing fast while women and children were placed in the remaining boats which eventually got them all safely ashore. Thus the 'Birkenhead Drill' - Women and children first!
The ship is reputed to have onboard quarter-million pounds in specie, the military pay packet for military units fighting in and around East London.
Shapiro: 'In my research, it was stated during the subsequent court-martial of Richard Bevan Richards (the Master's assistant), that there were indeed a 120 boxes of specie on board. Since her sinking, many salvage attempts have been made in search of this treasure, but to date, the specie remains unfounded.
A thorough archaeological and salvage excavation was carried out by the combined efforts of Aqua Exploration and the Depth Recovery Unit groups during 1986/7/8.
BORDERER (1868)
The Borderer was a British iron ship of 1,062 tons that left Penang in October 1868 where she had loaded a general cargo of Indian and Straits produce for London. There was rum, tin, rattans, pepper, hides, horns, sugar, tapioca and a lot else onboard.
The ship struck the middle blinder of the Struis Point reef during a strong westerly late October in 1868 and sank in 45 metres of water. The commander and a dozen of his men got into one of the boats and reached the shore. The remainder of the crew -also 12 members - used the only other boat onboard, but nothing was ever heard of them. It was later reported that the steamer Namaqua picked up a capsized boat from the Borderer, about 25 miles east of Agulhas.
The wreck was originally discovered by Cape Town divers Brian Clark and 'Tubby' Gerricke in 1977 and part of the tin cargo was salvaged.
During 1990, Charles Shapiro's Aqua Exploration re-located the site and found a considerable amount of tin still onboard. Depth and poor visibility - together with host of aggressive sharks made this a difficult and dangerous venture.
At one stage, while working at 45 metres, Shapiro and crew were being circled by three great white sharks.
For all that, they managed to excavate and salvage all the remaining tin without serious mishap. It was to become the deepest salvage carried out in South African waters.
SANTIAGO (1585)
The Santiago was an 800-ton Portuguese Nao Indiaman. She'd sailed from Lisbon in April 1585, bound for India.
On the voyage down Africa, there was a scare when an English sloop drew near but what frightened the people aboard more was a 'fish' - evidently a whale shark - that followed them for several weeks and was interpreted as an evil omen. The Cape of Good Hope was rounded without damage in July and a month later the Santiago was becalmed off Natal. Short provisions decided Captain Fernao de Mendonca against making the Indian Ocean crossing direct and he headed north through the Mozambique Channel to Mozambique to replenish.
Shortly afterwards, the Santiago ran aground on the reefs of the treacherous Bassas da India. She managed to slip off, but was pounded onto the rocks by waves. The bottom of her hull was shorn off, together with the two lower decks
At first light the crew was to discover that they had wrecked on the south edge of a coral atoll about 65 kilometres in circumference. About ten miles to the north were several high rocks but otherwise the entire reef was submerged. Meantime, the Santiago had broken in three parts, settled on the multihued reef surface 6 to 10 feet deep at high tide.
There was only one undamaged lifeboat, which was soon lowered and occupied by the captain, mate, 20 of the crew together with two wealthy passengers. With assurances to the others that they were going to make a reconnaissance trip to the rocks, this group left over 400 of their shipmates stranded on the ship and headed for Africa.
The ensuing chaos on the slowly disintegrating ship resulted in only one damaged boat being repaired. It was immediately commandeered by nobles and priests with a token few crew to row them. Nothing was ever again heard of the 400 people who were left stranded. The Santiago would finally have shattered and would no longer have been able to support anybody above water. The lack of fresh water would have been a major problem within a day or two. Because the atoll is submerged at high tide, there is none.
The ship's manifests list a silver cargo of perhaps $300,000 onboard, in addition to considerable quantity of gold and jewellery that the wealthier passengers had to abandon.
SUSSEX (1738)
The Sussex was an 18th Century English East Indiaman bound from Canton in China for England. In March 1738, while well to the east of the Cape of Good Hope, the ship was suddenly overtaken by a heavy storm. The ship broached, and ended up with its starboard gunwale under water.
During 1986, Charles Shapiro's Aqua Exploration visited Bassas da India and carried out a magnetometer survey right around the atoll. They discovered 15 wreck sites and managed to positively identify the site of the Sussex from the porcelain and cargo of zinc ingots found.
A most interesting series of events took place when the ship eventually sank, with only one survivor able to talk about it afterwards…
LE HEREUSE (1769)
The Le Hereuse was a French East India Company vessel bound from the port of Lorient to Bengal. She was reputed to be carrying 250,000 pesos for Bengal. She was wrecked at midnight of an island in the Seychelles Archipelago.
During 1995, Shapiro discovered the site of the Le Hereuse on Cerf Island, part of the Providence Archipelago. He had his 'Blower' prop-wash sent across to the Seychelles from South Africa and towed to Cerf Island.
On opening the wreck site, they discovered that the entire surrounding was made up of cowrie shells. The site was positively identified by the recovery of a ships bell, and some silver coins and artefacts recovered were handed over to the Seychelles Government.
The main cargo found seemed to be 250.000 pesos worth of Cowrie shells which was used as currency to trade for slaves in West Africa…
ST. ABBS (1855)
The St. Abbs was an English vessel bound from London to Bombay a century-and-a-half ago with a full cargo of machinery, sundry goods and three boxes of bullion, in all estimated at a value of 120,000 pounds.
The ship went onto the reef off the island of Juan de Nuovo in the Farquhar Islands group on 14 June 1854. Of the six passengers onboard, only one survived together with five members of the crew. In all, 22 people perished. It took a month for the survivors to be rescued by the schooner Marie from the Seychelles, at the time in search of turtles and tortoise shells.
During 1994 Aqua Exploration were offered the rights to search for the boxes of bullion which previous expeditions had failed to locate. Aqua Exploration carried out an archaeological survey and recovered a fine collection of jars and bottles of preservatives, wine, beer, black ink and other artefacts such as silver beer mugs, candle stick holders and the rest, most of it on the inside of the reef and almost a kilometre from the original wreck site.
Shapiro reached the conclusion that, with the vessel gradually breaking up, the boxes of bullion could have been carried off with part of the stern section. That could eventually have become buried and lost anywhere in this extensive sandy lagoon area. The artefacts and site plans were also handed over to the Seychelles Government.
HMS Sybille (1901)
This British twin-screw second-class steel cruiser of 3,400 tons was lost because the captain and his officers went ashore to attend a party that had been arranged in their honour by local townsfolk.
Built in Newcastle in 1890 and under the temporary command of by First Lieutenant Holland (Capt Hugh Williams being ashore) the cruiser went onto the rocks in unseasonably heavy seas that had suddenly enveloped that stretch of coast. She was wrecked opposite Steenbokfontein, south of Lambert's Bay with one rating onboard killed by wave impact when the warship run aground.
The role of the Sybille was to act as a guardship at Lambert's Bay during that phase of the Boer War. Indeed, prior to her loss, the cruiser had been involved in the only 'naval engagement' of the Boer War when she exchanged fire with a patrol headed by Boer General J.B.M. Hertzog. She is reputed to have had onboard a chest of gold sovereigns.
Some of her guns - two 6-inch, six 4.7-inch and eight 6-pounders guns - were salvaged shortly after she ran aground.
Images from the book
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