Alexandre said:
If you judge by the scant remains they have managed to uncover both in the Cape Verde islands an in Mozambique... I pretty much doubt your money would be wisely invested in another one of their "expeditions"...
Strange...! Same title and announcement from a certain Michael Hatcher a few month ago. Extract:
"a unique discovery - A letter from Captain Michael Hatcher, June 2009.
To our interested investors,
Over the last eight months we have been searching in the Java Sea for a sunken wreck. Fisherman have been
catching their nets on it for the last year or two and occasionally recovering Ming porcelain that were caught in the nets.
We recently managed to get a GPS position on the wreck and went out on one of the fishing boats to personally dive and inspect the wreck and the cargo.
This discovery consists of one of the largest amount of Ming porcelain that I have ever seen or has been discovered previously to date on record.
The length of the wreck is approx 58 metres long by 28 metres wide and the porcelain is up to 8 metres high. In my estimation this find consists approximately of over a million pieces of porcelain. Along with my Indonesian partners we have officially secured the wreck with a 3 mile exclusive zone around it at present. The wreck is well guarded by my employees and Navy personnel and we currently have our survey vessel out finishing the survey. Video footage is available from our inital dive and includes footage of some recovered samples. We have recovered various pieces from the wreck whereby primary photographs taken were sent to London to the world’s leading expert for Chinese Ming dynasty porcelain at Bonham’s auction house...
...We are now in the process of mobilising the necessary equipment and personnel to start salvage operations of the cargo. All necessary documents for work proceedings are being lodged in house.
We envisaged that salvaging shall start commencement latest by end of August 2009. I am confident that it will take six months to salvage all the cargo and a further six months to promote it before it goes to auction in London with Christies Auction House.
We require USD $5 Million to complete the salvage, which includes buying and converting a barge to be the main recovery vessel and one tug boat for towing and positioning the four anchors to hold the barge over the wreck at the completion of the project. The barge and tug and other equipment purchased shall be sold off and the proceeds returned to the investment syndicate.
It’s hard to accurately estimate the cargos current market value internationally, although with high demand for
this type of merchandise in China’s economy we can conservatively estimate a worth well in excess of USD200 million.
A percentage of proceeds from books, films and sponsorship will be distributed back to investors as a bonus and the first right of refusal on the unique opportunity to invest in the retrieval of the Flor del la Mar.
Regards,
Mike Hatcher"
So, Arqueonautas, a self named "underwater archaeology" company, working with the wildest treasure hunter ever !!? For a reminder, Hatcher's last project in Indonesia was on a Chinese ceramics/porcelains ship "Tek Sing". It was already a very large cargo retrieved at the time (1999/2000). Thousands of these ceramics were just broken by the team on the spot !! Not to flood the market... And the auction done in Stuttgart (Germany) just left the unfortunate investors with their lost hopes of fortune, as the money invested on the project was barely covered.
Probably another scam in process...! People getting big salaries, going in expensive hotels etc... etc... No problem, if at the end, the cargo is unfortunately not worth what it was supposed to be.