ThingsAsianShipwrecks Off the Coast of Vietnam
1617 - Nuestra Senora De Loreto
A Spanish galleon lost off the coast of northern Vietnam, in the Bay of Tongking.
1633 - Kempahaan
A Dutch East Indiaman of 100 tons, Captain Kornelis Hendriksz Denijs, departed Galle (Ceylon) on December 17, 1632 and ran ashore at Cochin China on October 22, 1633.
1635 - Grootbroek
VOC (Dutch East India Company) ship of 240 tons (captain unknown), arrived in the Indies (Batavia) on April 28, 1631. Four years later during a voyage, the ship was captured by a Portuguese yacht and wrecked off the coast of Cochin China.
1636 - Keizerin
VOC (Dutch East India Company) ship of 200 tons, lost on October 29, 1636 in the Bay of Padaran, off the coast of Champa, Vietnam, during its voyage from Taiwan to Vietnam. The cargo was said to have consisted of porcelain. Recent attempts to locate the wreck have been unsuccessful.
l674 - Gouden Leeuw
VOC (Dutch East India Company) ship of 330 tons, which arrived in the lndies (Batavia) on June 18, 1666. Eight years later, the vessel was wrecked at one of the Tiger Islands in the Gulf of Tonkin.
1683 - Imyrnaste
HEIC (Honourable East India Company) ship that was lost on February 25 on the Bar of Tongking, near Haipong, Vietnam during its voyage from England to China.
1719 - Nuestra Senora De Loreto
Spanish Capitana of an Armada commanded by General Francisco de Echeveste. The vessel was bringing several merchants to Siam and struck a reef and sank somewhere along the coast of Tonkin. The crew was rescued by boats from other ships in the armada but several chests of treasure were lost.
1850 - Ship name unknown
A pirate Vietnamese ship under the command of Shap'ng Tsai was lost in the Gulf of Tonkin. The ship supposedly had treasure on board.
1864 - Flora
French ship from Marseilles bound for Saigon was lost on the Cambodian Banks near the mouth of the river Cua Dai on February 12. The crew was saved.
Year unknown - Britto Shoal
Which according to a book of sailing directions written in 1843 was named after a Portuguese captain who was shipwrecked there.
1886 - Ferntower
A steamship, sank near Saigon, Vietnam on August 26, with 50 lives lost.
1939 - Phenix
French submarine, vanished at sea on June 15, 1939, off Cam Ranh Bay in French Indochina with 71 men on board. Phenix submerged during an exercise with a French cruiser but did not return to the surface. After two days, the submarine was presumed lost. Oil slicks seen in the area of the sinking were attributed to the sunken submarine.
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Sources:
Shipwrecks and Sunken Treasure in Southeast Asia, Tony Wells, Time Editions, Singapore, 1995.
Shipwrecks: an Encyclopedia of the World's Worst Disasters at Sea, David Ritchie, Checkmark Books, New York, 1999.
Shipwreck, Richard Platt. Dorling Kindersley, New York, 1997.
The History of Shipwrecks, Angus Konstam, The Lyon Press, New York, 1999.
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