Publisher's Synopsis
Frank Pope pulls back the curtain on the intensely competitive underworld of shipwrecks in this thrilling story of treasure hunting gone wrong. When Oxford archeologist Mensun Bound-dubbed the "Indiana Jones of the Deep" by the Discovery Channel-teamed up with a financier to salvage a sunken trove of fifteenth-century porcelain, it seemed a dream enterprise. The stakes were high: The Hoi An wreck lay hundreds of feet down in a typhoon-prone stretch of water off the coast of Vietnam known as the Dragon Sea. Raising its contents required saturation diving, a crew of 160, and a fleet of boats. But the potential rewards were equally high: Bound would revolutionize thinking about Vietnamese ceramics, and his partner would make a fortune auctioning off the pieces. Or so they thought. In Dragon Sea, Pope delivers an engrossing tale of danger, adventure, and ambition-a fascinating lesson in what happens when scholarship and money join forces to recover lost treasure.
