Excavated from the sea by Captain Michael Hatcher and his team in 1985, the Nanking Cargo marked an important milestone in the scholarship of Chinese export porcelain. The Dutch VOC ship carrying the cargo was Geldermalsen, struck a reef and sank in 1752. The Nanking Cargo was known for its extensive and large quantities of blue and white porcelains, as well as gold ingots on board. The Nanking Cargo was Captain Hatcher's second significant underwater salvage of this kind, the first being porcelains in an earlier Asian junk which sank around 1640, which is know known as the Hatcher Cargo.
