I have been to the museum in Seoul and it was awesome! This post reminded me of the trip to the museum. I am also interested in more of the sunken history but as you already said, it is had to find information in English. I will keep a lookout and post if i come across anything. Henry James
Me too! I've discovered that the National Geographic magazine featured an article about the excavation in August 1979 by Donald Keith titled "Yellow Sea Yields Shipwreck Trove: A 14th-Century Cargo Makes Port at Last". I've ordered a copy of the magazine off ebay and look forward to receiving it. I wish that National Geographic had made a documentary film about the ship and its discovery.
It seems that the wreck found off Sinan really started Korean underwater archeology and they now have a fabulous maritime museum filled with information and artifacts from this wreck and other ancient vessels - it wish I could have visited it, too.
Below is some more information about the Sinan/Shinan wreck that I found in an online blog:
A Year in Mokpo: The Shinan Ship
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Shinan wreck
In 1975, Ch'oe Hyong-gun recovered a number of encrusted ceramic containers from a ship lying in about 20 meters of water off the coast of Shinan, South Korea (in 35?1N, 126?5E). These containers were positively identified as antiquities, and divers began to loot the site before government authorities put it under the auspices of the Cultural Property Preservation Office. Proper archaeological excavation began in 1976 and continued through 1984, culminating with the salvage and conservation of the ship's hull in a special shoreside facility.
The remains of the hull include 445 ship's timbers and 223 planks of Chinese red fir and Chinese red pine, both of which are native to southern China. The ship is similar to the thirteenth-century Quanzhou wreck, though there are differences in the construction details. In both ships, the bottom of the hull is V-shaped, and the hull planking is joined in a variety of ways. The Shinan wreck yielded the keel, fourteen starboard strakes, and six port strakes. The strakes were laid over one another in a rabbeted clinker construction, with the rabbet being cut out of the inner lower part of the plank. Towards the bow, this changes to a rabbeted carvel construction to give the hull a smooth side. Parts of two mast steps survived (fore and a main) and the interior of the hull is divided by seven bulkheads.
Further study of the site revealed that the wreck was of a Chinese vessel en route from China, possibly Ningpo, towards Japan, when it sank in a storm. The cargo consisted of more than 12,000 pieces of Chinese ceramics, including celadon vases, plates and bowls, stoneware, incense burners, and ching p'ai (bluish white) porcelain pieces from the Yuan dynasty. Among other artifacts related to the cargo were numbered 729 metal objects, 45 stone objects, 20,000 individual Chinese copper coins, 1,017 pieces of red sandalwood measuring between 1 and 3 meters in length, and over 500 other objects, including the crew's personal possessions. Many of the finds were still packed in their shipping containers marked with the year, 1323, towards the end of the Yuan dynasty.