Belitung, the afterlives of a shipwreck by Natali Pearson (review)

Reviewed by: Belitung, the afterlives of a shipwreck by Natali Pearson Yolande Crowe Belitung, the afterlives of a shipwreck. By Natali Pearson. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2023. 208 pp. ISBN: 9780824892968 Seldom has the survival of a wreck created such a flurry of debates. The publication of Belitung: the afterlives of a shipwreck a quarter of a century after the wreck’s first mention, emphasises the need to explain the reasons for numerous survivals in the shape of controversial discussions in print, meetings as well as eight important exhibitions, notwithstanding the acquisition of most of the shipwreck’s content for US$32 million by the Sentosa Development Corporation of Singapore in 2005. Finally, the slow process of finding for it an academically respectable home ended with the anchoring of the now called ‘Tang shipwreck’ in 2015 at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore. According to retrieved Chinese coinage and a signed Chinese Changsha ceramic, the Arabian dhow would have sunk around 830 CE. These afterlives have now received a thorough survey by Dr Natali Pearson,3 a keen defender of underwater heritage off the Eastern and South Eastern coasts of Asia and Australia. As emphasised by the text and its ample bibliography, there exists many ways to inform the afterlives of the Belitung wreck including references to UNESCO standards. The author has thus presented her research in five chapters, preceded by an introduction concerned with underwater cultural heritage as well as the place of museum policies and their ethics. The first chapter, ‘Created’, covers the fabric of the boat, its sailing along the maritime ceramic road, the people and goods aboard ship. The second chapter, ‘Wrecked’, describes the site of its discovery and its archaeological problems in Indonesian waters. ‘Provenanced’, the third chapter, deals with the salvage, its conservation in New Zealand and the selling of the cargo to the Sentosa Development Corporation in 2005. The fourth chapter covers its ‘Contested’ destiny, arguing over its earthly survival, and the construction of a similar dhow the Jewel of Muscat, mostly relying on archaeological evidence, which sailed from Oman to Singapore in 2010. In the fifth chapter ‘Reimagined’, some of the Belitung cargo, now called the Tang, was exhibited around the world, before coming to rest in the Singapore Ancient Civilisations Museum. The conclusion deals with the final settlement of these fabulous remains. ‘Shipwrecked: Tang treasures and Monsoon winds’ was the title for the first exhibition of some of the Belitung wreck’s recoveries. It opened on 8 March 2011 at [End Page 161] the ArtScience Museum in Singapore.4 The catalogue published at the same time, was a joint effort with the Freer Gallery of Art, the art museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. The exhibition was to move to Washington. Yet by the end of June the Smithsonian and later cancelled the event altogether. Being a member of the Council of American Maritime Museums, the Smithsonian felt that exhibiting artefacts which had been removed from a commercially exploited site, would amount to approving of treasure hunting. In the case of the Belitung wreck, it had been discovered in 1998 by local fishermen off the east coast of Sumatra close to the tin-producing island of Belitung. With the agreement of the Philippine government, the wreck was explored by Seabed Explorations NZ Ltd. Tilman Walterfang, its founder owner kept together the cargo recovered by Michael Flecker. There was no dismantling by auction as was the case in 1977 with the Witte Leeuw, a VOC vessel dated 1613. On the contrary Walterfang organised a team of world specialists to record, clean and analyse the finds before the first exhibition in Singapore. Well before the Smithsonian veto, two other impressive shipwrecks had come to light: the VOC Witte Leeuw, and the San Diego, exhibited in Paris during the winter of 1994–95 at the Grande Halle de la Villette. Some 5000 artefacts were rescued from the latter, a Spanish galleon which had sunk in Manila Bayin 1600. Neither shipwreck seems to have been referred to in the afterlives of the Belitung. The details of their destinies could have shown other ways of approaching the recovery of a shipwreck by...

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