Flying Fish Wreck

(Early 12th Century)

Background

The Flying Fish Wreck lies 13 nautical miles from the nearest mainland, and 22 miles west-southwest of Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah. The ship struck a reef, wallowed on, and sank in 25 m of water. It was looted before official intervention, in this case by a private company working in close cooperation with the Sabah Museum. The author directed the excavation.

Deep sand protected a large part of the cargo from the looters, and sections of the hull from the teredo worm. Hull planks incorporated rectangular lugs, joined longitudinally by means of a narrow-raised strip every second plank. Planks varied in width from 30 to 36 cm, the lugs from 19 to 24 cm, and the raised joining strip was typically 6 cm across. Plank thickness varied from 3 to 5 cm, with dowel holes at typical 13 cm spacing. Frames were composed of several parts, roughly circular in section, with diameter varying from 8 to 12 cm. They were lashed with both a rattan-like material and ijok (sugar-palm fibre). Longitudinal poles, or stringers, of 5 cm diameter lay on the frames, with additional light thwart-ships poles above that. The hull planks are shorea genus, the dowels are belian (Borneo iron-wood) and the frames are teak.

The ceramics cargo is mostly from Fujian province. A freely painted flying fish on basins from the Cizao kilns provides the name for the wreck. Some higher quality qingbai-ware is from Jingdezhen. Finer still are some rare examples of northern green-ware from the Yaozhou kilns of Shaanxi province, along with several pieces of Longquan green-ware from Zhejiang province. The non-ceramic cargo consists of cast and wrought-iron, lead ingots, lead rings, copper alloy anglets, and gongs. Southeast Asian resin, shell ornaments, and stoneware stoves were also recovered.

Two wood samples were radiocarbon dated, yielding adjusted calibrated 2-sigma (95.4% probability) date ranges as follows:

Frame: 1065 to 1155 CE

Branch: 1081 to 1152 CE

Fine qingbai bowls on the wreck, with an incised cross-hatched design and an unglazed rim (known as ‘Haji cap’ bowls), have also been found in a Chinese tomb dated to 1127. Dr Tai Yew Seng, of Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, is of the opinion that a qingbai bowl from the Flying Fish Wreck, with a delicately lobed rim and a high foot ring, was a product of a specific Jingdezhen kiln that only made this type of ware during the reign of Emperor Huizong (1100 to 1125). It may therefore be concluded from the combined evidence that the Flying Fish Wreck is dated to the very late Northern Song period, say the first quarter of the 12th century.

With a surviving cargo made up mostly of iron and Fujian ceramics there is no doubt that the Flying Fish ship’s last voyage originated in China. The port of embarkation was almost certainly Quanzhou. She was heading southwards along the eastern route of the South China Sea, paralleling the coastlines of Taiwan and the Philippines before crossing to Sabah. From terrestrial archaeological evidence, she was bound for ancient habitation centres in the vicinity of Brunei or Santubong in north-western Borneo.

Publication

The Flying Fish Wreck, Michael Flecker, Tai Yew Seng, published by Five Dynasty Antiques, Kuala Lumpur, 2019.