Fact Sheet:

The ship The Tek Sing ("True Star") was an unusually large junk. She was approximately 50 meters long, 10 meters wide, around 1000 tons.

The discovery In a hydrographic handbook ("Directions for sailing to the East Indies", by James Horsburgh, vol. 2, 1848), Nigel Pickford found information about a large Chinese junk having sunk near the Belvidere Reef some time in the early 19th century with the loss of many lives. With this information Mike Hatcher started his search. On May 12, 1999 the treasure divers discover a mound, 30 m below the water, 42 m long, 4 m high and over 10 m wide, in the South China Sea, two degrees south of the equator, north of Java, east of Sumatra, south of Singapore. The mound is the wreck and the cargo of a Chinese junk. The cargo reaches 2 meters under the sea bed and the cargo hold originally was around 54 meters long. Nigel Pickford identifies the wreck as the Tek Sing (True Star), an unusually large junk from Amoy (today Xiamen) of approximately 1000 tons. It had three masts, the tallest measured over 90 feet. The cargo The salvaged cargo contained mercury, sextants, pocket watches, Chinese ink pads, an iron and brass cannon, a bronze cannon, boxes with needles, pocket knives, Chinese brass padlocks, candlesticks, incense burners, telescope parts, coins and 350,000 pieces of Chinese porcelain. Most of the porcelain is from the kilns of the town of Dehua and was manufactured in the 18th and early 19th centuries for export to Asian markets. The auction the Tek Sing cargo was held in Stugard,Germany in November 2000.

Tragedy:

Amoy, 14th January 1822, during the reign of the Emperor Dao Guang (1821-1851) from the Qing Dynasty a large Chinese junk named of "Tek Sing or True Star" was planned to sail from Amoy to the destination of Batavia (today Java), Indonesia. She brought the huge packages of porcelain, blue and white, swatow, celadon blanc de Chine, and also porcelain for every conceivable occasion and purpose : teapots, plates, dishes, cups, cosmetic jars, ginger pots, bird feeders, water carriers, soup spoons, oil lamps, tiny figurine ornaments, glass beads, etc. However, the important cargo of the Tek Sing was the human cargo!

The passengers included merchants, couriers, and students, but the greater part were impoverished migrants or coolies emigrating to work in the sugar cane fields of Java. They were between 6 and 70 years of age, including entire families, and most of them were deck passengers. The Tek Sing sailed a route not normally used by Chinese junks; she ran aground on a reef and sank within one hour. As the loss of life was greater than that on the Titanic - some 1600 people lost their lives - the Tek Sing is referred to as the 'Chinese Titanic' or the 'Titanic of the East'. The discovery of this catastrophe sheds light on the turbulent state of China at the time. Western trading companies for whom trading with opium was legal were smuggling the drug to China where it was forbidden, thus causing addiction and a constant drain of silver. This in turn caused a rapid decline of the Chinese economy and subsequently mass emigration.

The captain of the Tek Sing was called Io Tauko. He was a very experienced seaman, having made the annual voyage to Batavia for at least the five previous years, always in the same ship. On the 14 January 1822 the streets were particularly crowded and noisy, because it was the day that the Tek Sing was finally due to set sail. Everywhere on the streets there were small troupes of actors, jugglers, acrobats and musicians. The noise from gongs, tom-toms, pipes and horns was deafening. And the above all the racket there were the continual explosions of firecrackers.

On the evening of the 5th of February, the Famous Tek Sing had struck on some rocks of Gaspar Strait (between the islands of Bangka and Belitung, eastern of Palembang, Sumatra). These rocks had been identified as the Belvidere Shoals.

At the mean time, on the morning of 7 February, the English's Indiana ship, with the captain of James Pearl, had just sailed from Batavia to Borneo, and passed by to the Gaspar Strait. The crew saw that the rocks appeared to be moving towards them. Then it became evident that they were not rocks at all but numerous pieces of driftwood of every conceivable variety. Boxes, lengths of bamboo, bundles of umbrellas, all kind and manner of debris came gradually into view, a huge floating mass of flotsam and jetsam, bobbing close together on the surface of the sea. All clinging to all this wreckage, struggling in the water, were enormous numbers of people. Each bundle of umbrellas or length of cane supported one or two wretched humans, clearly of Chinese origin. The larger planks of wood had four or six Chinese attached to them. In Captain Pearl's own words, 'I discovered the sea covered with humans for many miles'. Captain Pearl, without a second thought for his own safety, hove the ship to and ordered the ship's boats to be lowered and manned with his best officers and seamen in order to try and save those who were struggling in the water. The rescued Chinese were mostly naked. But communication was difficult owing to mutual incomprehension of each other's languages. However, fortunately, one of the rescued called Baba Chy, spoke some Malay and, as some of the crew of the Indiana also spoke Malay Baba Chy was son of a wealthy Chinese merchant living in Batavia, who had been sent back to China for his education and had been returning on board the Tek Sing to Batavia to rejoin his parents. It was established from Baba Chy's account that the wrecked junk was of a large size, carrying 1600 passangers aged between 6 and 70, besides a large crew and a valuable cargo.

The total number of shipwrecked persons could be saved by Captain Pearl and his crew was 190. Another 18 persons was saved by a small Chinese wangkang with the captain of Jalang Lima. They had been picked up clinging to part of a mast near the island of Pulau Leat on the morning of 6 February. But there are many inconsistencies about Jalang Lima's story. This surely identifies this wangkang as the "Red Head" junk that was mentioned by Baba Chy as travelling in tandem with the Tek Sing, and avoided the Tek Sing when she struck the rocks. Captain Pearl did not receive a compensation for his commercial loss, neither by the Dutch nor by the China. The only known tangible compensation that Captain James Pearl ever received was a medal commerating his bravery from the King of the Netherlands.

Please view our Tek sing artefact under Qing catalog

For more infos, please read "The Legacy of the Tek Sing" by Nigel Pickford & Michael Hatcher