The Lena cargo: Sunken treasure

BRISTOL. In early 1997 unprovenanced, fine blue-and-white porcelain objects started to appear in the street markets of Mindoro in the Philippines. When news reached the Philippine coastguards they suspected that a shipwreck had been discovered and that it was being looted by treasure hunters. A search for the wreck was immediately organised and it was eventually located on the Lena Shoal to the south of the island.

Fifty metres underwater a low mound twenty-five metres long revealed the remains of a Chinese junk divided into eleven bulkheads...