12. The “Titanic of the East”, the sinking of the Tek Sing in 1822 was responsible for the deaths of approximately 1,600 passengers and crew.
The Tek Sing, meaning “True Star”, was a three-masted ocean-faring junk – a type of ancient Chinese sailing vessel – of tremendous proportions. Measuring fifty meters in length, ten meters wide, and weighing approximately one thousand tons, the Tek Sing possessed a mast measuring more than ninety feet in height. Manned by a crew of two hundred, the enormous vessel, nicknamed the “Titanic of the East” in recent years, enjoyed a carrying capacity of 1,600 passengers. Departing modern-day Xiamen bound for Batavia – today the city of Jakarta, Indonesia – with a full complement of passengers and cargo, the ship attempted a shortcut through the Gaspar Strait.
Whilst sailing through a treacherous region of the South China Sea known as the Belvidere Shoals, located between the Bangka-Belitung Islands, on February 6, 1822, the Tek Sing ran aground on a reef. Rapidly taking on water, the ship sunk in just thirty meters of water. Discovered the following morning by an English vessel, 190 survivors drifting on debris from the sunken ship were rescued by Captain James Pearl. In 1999, marine salvor Michael Hatcher discovered the lost wreck of the Tek Sing, salvaging more than 350,000 pieces of Chinese porcelain in the largest sunken cache ever recovered.