HONG KONG—The South China Morning Post reports that the Hong Kong Underwater Heritage Group recovered the upper part of an anchor thought to be more than 1,000 years old near Basalt Island. “The anchor is proof that Hong Kong was perhaps quite advanced during the Song Dynasty in terms of water transport and commercial trade,” says Libby Chan Lai-pik of the Hong Kong Maritime Museum. The team also recovered a cannon thought to date to the first half of the nineteenth century off the coast of High Island. A second cannon remains underwater. “This trip is tangible evidence that there is historical material in Hong Kong’s waters,” adds Bill Jeffery of the Hong Kong Maritime Museum and the University of Guam. “There have been lots of surveys on land but not in water.” For more on underwater archaeology, go to “Franklin’s Last Voyage.”
