Divers put Singapore on wreck map
SSINGAPORE HAS A long tradition as an east-west trading hub – but without having any historical shipwreck sites.
Now a report on the excavation of two adjacent wrecks has changed this, with one of the ships found to date back 650 years or more.
At the end of 2014 a barge ran aground off the city-state’s easternmost island Pedra Branca, where the Singapore Strait meets the South China Sea. It was while clearing debris from the rocky seabed about 100m north-west of the island that commercial divers came across remains of Chinese ceramics.
Plates they brought up resembled those that were being found during a highly publicised excavation on land at the time, so the divers informed the authorities. In 2016 Singapore’s National Heritage Board (NHB) commissioned ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute's archaeology unit to survey and excavate the site.