I have heard a sufficiently incredible story of a man submerged in a Chinese junk and under water twelve hours, yet taken out alive.  A Chinese junk is the nightmare of marine architecture.  It is owned in partnership by a company, but there is this difference from an ordinary charter-party.  Each man owns his share or allotment of the vessel, and it is divided off into actual compartments or boxes made water-proof; and each one of these pigeon-holes the hong or merchant owns and stocks to suit himself.  All open out upon the upper deck, and are battened down—­sometimes with a glass skylight if used as a chamber.  The structure in junk form is the thing’s proper registry, since any departure from the ancient model would subject her to heavy taxation as an alien vessel. [2] It is a very effectual mode of preventing any improvement in shipbuilding among the Chinese.

One of these clumsy arks went on the rocks in a typhoon, and was covered over her deck, leaving, however, the projecting skylight on or near a level with the surface.  The hong was in this cuddy-hole, frantic between personal loss and personal peril.  Suddenly there was a jar and a crash, and the sea beat over her.  Fortunately, the skylight was closed water-tight, but, unfortunately, some of the spars and rigging blocked up the exit, even if he had dared the venture.  The bolts of the sea barred him in.

But Chinese wreckers and Chinese thieves are on the alert.  Wattai, or some such queer piratical Celestial with devilish propensities, went for the spoil, settling the salvage by arithmetic of his own.  The wreck was removed from the skylight, and under the water, in that dense chamber, stagnant with mephitic air, the bruised, stupefied hong was found.

As is apparent from a previous example, the tendency of the sea-sand to absorb and conceal a sunken vessel is one of those difficulties that beset the explorer.  But for that the recovery of treasure would be more frequent, the profession or business more lucrative.  The number of vessels sunk annually, we learn from Lloyd’s statistics, is one hundred thousand tons to the English commercial marine; and out of 551 vessels lost to the royal navy, 391 were sunk.  Sir Charles Lyell estimates that there might be collected in the sea more evidences of man’s art and industry than exist at any one time on the surface of the earth.  But while the sea preserves, it hides.  An example of the kind occurred in the wreck of the Golden Gate, a California steamer heavy with bullion.  It occurred during the war, and the only expert diver within reach was an expatriated rebel.  He had been a man of fortune, but, venturing too rashly in the Confederacy, he lost by confiscation and perhaps persecution.  However, he was the man for the insurance companies, and a treaty was concluded, allowing him sixty per cent. salvage.

The vessel had gone down in tide water.  The persistent sea had rocked and rocked it, and washed the tenacious quicksands about it, and finally concealed it.  The search for it was long and tedious, and once given up or nearly given up.  But as the disappointed diver was preparing to ascend his foot touched something firm, which proved to be a part of the wooden frame of the ship.