It was treasure. <\/p>\n
That dive, that day
\nMay 12 1999
\nThe True Star looming, listing on its side
\nBarely recognisable,
\ncovered
\nin the growing houses of fish<\/p>\n
The porcelain on the wreck was incidental
\nThe real earner would have been the tea
\nIf she had ever made it home<\/p>\n
But there inside, the picked bones lay<\/p>\n
We saw the skulls first, then
\nthe glow of porcelain in the dark
\nThe second \u2018unsinkable\u2019
\nCommemorated with a single floating elephant tusk<\/p>\n
We hovered above her, quiet, quiet
\nthe quiet of the suicided lady
\nlaid to rest on the sand,
\nweighed down by her jewels<\/p>\n
And so we brought up the white gold
\npiece by piece, and
\nwe thought about bringing the bodies too<\/p>\n
But it was their place
\nAnd not our place to take them<\/p>\n
—-<\/p>\n
About the Tek Sing, from Wikipedia:<\/p>\n
The Tek Sing (Chinese, “True Star”)[1] was a large three-masted Chinese ocean-going junk which sank on February 6, 1822[2] in an area of the South China Sea known as the Belvidere Shoals. The vessel was 50 meters in length, 10 meters wide and weighed about a thousand tons. Its tallest mast was estimated to be 90 feet in height. The ship was manned by a crew of 200 and had approx. 1600 passengers. The great loss of life associated with the sinking has led to the Tek Sing being referred to in modern times as the “Titanic of the East”.[3]<\/p>\n
On May 12, 1999, British marine salvor Michael Hatcher discovered the wreck of the Tek Sing in an area of the South China Sea north of Java, east of Sumatra and south of Singapore. His crew raised about 350,000 pieces of the ship’s cargo in what is described as the largest sunken cache of Chinese porcelain ever recovered.[4] Human remains were also found, but they were not disturbed as most of Hatcher’s crew, being Indonesian and Chinese, believed that bad luck would befall any who disturbed the dead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was treasure. That dive, that day May 12 1999 The True Star looming, listing on its side Barely recognisable, covered in the growing houses of fish The porcelain on Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writehanded.org\/poetry\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}