In December 1895, the Guangbing, a Chinese-made cruiser in the Japanese navy, ran aground during a heavy storm and sank in the Taiwan Strait near the Penghu Islands. Taiwan had just been ceded to Japan by the Qing court (1644–1911) of mainland China as a result of the Qing’s defeat in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), and for the next half-century Taiwan would be under Japanese colonial rule (1895–1945). The Guangbing had originally been part of the Qing’s Guangdong Fleet, the smallest of its naval defense forces. The cruiser was captured during the war and added to the Japanese navy before its fateful voyage to the 64-island Penghu archipelago to the west of Taiwan. In 2010, the wreckage of the Guangbing was discovered on the floor of the Taiwan Strait. “This ship has a lot of historical significance,” says Tsang Cheng-hwa (臧振華), a research fellow in the Institute of History and Philology at Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s foremost research center. “We knew little about the ship before the wreckage was discovered, but the archaeological remains tell us a lot about the history of the region and the ship itself,” he adds.
As of June this year, the Guangbing’s watery grave is one of 78 sites that have been found by Tsang’s underwater archaeological team at Academia Sinica. Tsang first began working at the institute in 1976 as an assistant research fellow, and in July this year he was awarded the prestigious rank of academician. He is currently a professor of anthropology at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu City, northern Taiwan, and also chairman of the Taiwan Underwater Archaeology Association (TUAA), which is headquartered at Academia Sinica. Tsang’s team draws resources and personnel from both the research institute and the TUAA.
The seafloor survey project that Tsang’s team is undertaking is the largest of its kind ever conducted by the country. The team began their work in 2006 under the auspices of the Council for Cultural Affairs (CCA). In 2012, the CCA became the Ministry of Culture (MOC), which sponsors the project through funding from its Bureau of Cultural Heritage (BOCH). The MOC’s Department of Cultural Resources and BOCH jointly supervise the actual survey work. In addition to their archaeological efforts in the Penghu archipelago, Tsang and his team are conducting or planning similar work in the waters surrounding Green Island off the coast of southeastern Taiwan, the Dongsha Atoll in the South China Sea, Taiwan’s Matsu Islands near Fujian province, mainland China, as well as off the coast of Tainan City, southwestern Taiwan.
“Based on the results of historical documentation research, sonar scanners and divers are used to conduct comprehensive surveys that locate and evaluate undersea cultural sites in the waters around Taiwan,” says Shy Gwo-long (施國隆), head of the BOCH. Among the archaeological sites found so far, 11 have been identified as the remains of sunken ships and four of them, including the Guangbing, have been registered as significant historical sites under the Cultural Heritage Preservation Act.
A student takes part in a training course on undersea archaeology. (Photo courtesy of Bureau of Cultural Heritage)
Global Trends
Understanding the need for a separate legal framework, the MOC drafted the Underwater Cultural Heritage Preservation Act in July this year to help ensure even more specialized management of these sites, and the act is now awaiting examination by the Executive Yuan. In the past, efforts to protect cultural heritage were focused primarily on land-based sites, Tsang says. However, in accordance with international trends, considerable attention has been paid to the sea in recent years.
In 2001, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization adopted the Convention on the Protection of the Underwater Cultural Heritage, which entered into force in 2009, to help guarantee better research on, safeguards for and treatment of submerged cultural sites around the world. The convention states that the in situ preservation of cultural heritage is to be considered as the first option when doing undersea archaeological work. Moreover, it stipulates that nations should encourage training in underwater archaeology, protect sites from commercial exploitation, share information and raise awareness of the importance of the field among the public. “Taiwan isn’t a member of the United Nations,” Tsang notes, “but we’re ready to follow the international consensus.”
The Research, Development and Evaluation Commission under the Executive Yuan published the Ocean Policy White Paper in 2006 as part of government efforts to establish national marine policy guidelines. Accordingly, the CCA began the undersea project that Tsang leads that same year. Taiwan’s first systematic efforts in underwater archaeology were organized in 1995 by the National Museum of History in Taipei to investigate the wreckage of a sunken cargo ship that had been found at a depth of around 20 meters several years earlier in Penghu by a local scuba diving enthusiast. The Jiangjun No.1 ship, named after a nearby Penghu islet, the Guangbing and many other sunken ships were all victims of the region’s treacherous waters. “The Taiwan Strait, with its numerous reefs and shoals, is known for fierce monsoons, strong sea currents and tempestuous waves,” Shy says. “This explains why many boats have capsized there, and means it’s one of the best places to conduct maritime archaeology.”
The BOCH director points out that the sunken ships and their cargoes serve as testimony to the rich trading history of the region. Maritime transport has thrived in the Taiwan Strait ever since the coastal ports of mainland China became major shipping and shipbuilding centers centuries ago. The strait was part of the world’s busiest trading route, the “silk road of the sea,” which reached as far away as Africa. The name comes from the fact that silk was an extremely important export item for dynastic China. “We’ve collected records of more than 500 ships that sank during the Ming [1368–1644] and Qing dynasties,” Shy says, referring to the results of an Academia Sinica research project that delved into historical documents from a number of other countries that were involved in such trade relations.
Geological evidence indicates that at some point during the last ice age, which occurred between 110,000 and 12,000 B.C. at the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, sea levels fell enough for Taiwan to be a contiguous part of the Asian continent. “So our surveys target ancient human activities as well as sunken ships,” says Tsang. The archaeologist adds that fossils of large Pleistocene mammals have been found during the course of the survey work. “The Taiwan Strait was once a land mass where animals like the rhinoceros and elephant lived,” he says. “Humans also hunted there. One tool we found was made from a piece of antler and had obvious man-made cut marks on it.”
Taiwan’s Bureau of Cultural Heritage and France’s Department for Underwater and Undersea Archaeological Research renew their cooperation pact on maritime archaeology in Taipei in 2012. (Photo courtesy of Bureau of Cultural Heritage)
A Disciplined Approach
Established in 2003 to promote undersea archaeology, train those interested in the field, and raise awareness of it among the general public, the TUAA comprises professional divers, underwater photographers, technicians and archaeologists, among other experts and scholars. “Underwater cultural heritage-related work must be conducted using an interdisciplinary model that integrates expertise in archaeology, atmospheric science, undersea probing, earth science, history, marine biology, preservation science and shipbuilding,” Shy says. “Experts in these disciplines need a mechanism for cooperation and must engage in a continuing dialog through exchange programs such as forums and training courses.” The ongoing underwater survey project will build such mechanisms and platforms as it expands to cover a wider range of the waters surrounding Taiwan.
The BOCH has also organized training courses each year since 2007, with the 2014 Training Workshop on Underwater Cultural Heritage Preservation taking place at National Taitung University (NTTU) in southeastern Taiwan’s Taitung City in September. Among the major subjects of this year’s courses is the relatively new concept of environmental impact assessments for undersea construction projects such as port dredging and laying submarine cables.
“In the past, little attention was paid to the man-made threat to underwater cultural heritage,” Tsang says. “Now impact assessments are required by the government’s Environmental Protection Administration for construction projects at sea.” For example, the TUAA was assigned to conduct the hydrographic survey work in 2010 and 2011 for the Port of Taipei deep-water capacity development project in Bali District, New Taipei City. The Port of Taipei was originally designed to supplement the services of Keelung Harbor in northern Taiwan, but once fully operational is now expected to become a major shipping port in the Asia-Pacific region.
Instructors at the 2014 training workshop included Tsang and NTTU President Liu Jin-yuan (劉金源), who is also TUAA’s vice chairman and a professor in the Institute of Undersea Technology at National Sun Yat-sen University in the southern port city of Kaohsiung. Lecturers were also invited from such organizations as the State Administration of Cultural Heritage in mainland China and the Department for Underwater and Undersea Archaeological Research (DRASSM) in Marseilles, France. In March 2012, the BOCH and DRASSM renewed their cooperation agreement on underwater archaeology, which began in 2007 with a focus on research, training and site preservation.
Tsang acknowledges that the MOC project has much work to do before it matches the accomplishments of similar but larger and more experienced organizations such as the National Research Institute of Maritime Cultural Heritage in South Korea, the Philippines Underwater Archaeology Society and the Underwater Archaeology Department in the Institute of Archaeology at the Vietnamese Academy of Social Sciences. These types of major government and academic organizations indicate that there is a clear global trend to explore and preserve undersea cultural resources, Tsang notes. “And in terms of raising awareness, a museum with a submerged viewing space that would allow the public to experience underwater archaeology could enhance people’s understanding of the value of this work,” the academician says. “Taiwan can’t afford to be left behind in this field.”
Write to Pat Gao at cjkao@mofa.gov.tw