Belgian treasure-hunter Luc Heymans said the haul was one of the biggest found in Asia and was comparable to the most valuable shipwreck ever found anywhere, that of the Atocha, a Spanish vessel which sank off Florida in 1622.

It includes 271,000 pieces such as rubies, pearls, gold jewellery, Fatimid rock-crystal, Iranian glassware and exquisite Chinese imperial porcelain dating back to the end of the first millennium, or around 976 AD.

"At the time there was a lot of trade going on between Arabia and India and coming down to Java and Sumatra," said Heymans, who led the salvage effort and subsequent battles with Indonesian officialdom to bring the treasure to light.

"But we think there must have been an ambassador on board because so many pieces are imperial Chinese porcelain."

Descending for the first time onto the wreck site north of Cirebon, West Java, in 2004, the veteran diver said he couldn't believe what appeared out of the gloom on the sea floor.

"The site was 40 metres (130 feet) by 40 metres and it was just a mountain of porcelain. You couldn't see any wood," he said.

And not just any porcelain. The pieces include the largest known vase from the Liao Dynasty (907-1125) and famous Yue Mise wares from the Five Dynasties (907-960), with the green colouring exclusive to the emperor.

Around 11,000 pearls, 4,000 rubies, 400 dark red sapphires and more than 2,200 garnets were also pulled from the depths by Heymans and his team of international divers.

It took 22,000 dives to bring it all up but Heymans said the salvage work, from February 2004 to October 2005, was the easy part. "All the major problems began after we got the stuff on shore," he said.

The police arrested two of the divers even though Heymans' company, Cosmix Underwater Research Ltd., and his local partner, Paradigma Putra Sejathera PT, had painstakingly arranged survey and excavation licences.

The divers spent a month behind bars before the mix-up was resolved.

There were also run-ins with the Indonesian navy, efforts by rivals to move in on the wreck, a year of litigation and two years of waiting while Indonesia drafted new regulations to govern such work.

Some of Heymans' backers who covered him to the tune of 10 million dollars began to worry that their investment would be lost at the bottom of the Java Strait, he said.

"I feel some relief now because so many people told me I would never be able to get the permits and get the stuff out of the country," he said. He adds, however, that it was one of the most difficult ordeals of his career.

By coincidence, officials last week said another treasure hunter who is well-known to Indonesia, Michael Hatcher, is under investigation for allegedly plundering valuable Chinese porcelain from a new wreck.

Marine and Fisheries Ministry official Adji Sularso said the probe came after authorities seized 2,360 items dating from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) which Hatcher was allegedly trying to smuggle out of the country.

The porcelain was loaded in two ships that were intercepted in waters off West Java in September, he added.

No charges have been laid but police said Friday that Hatcher was a fugitive and alerted border officials to block him from attempting to flee the country. His current whereabouts are unknown.

Hatcher, who was reportedly born in Britain but grew up as an orphan in Australia, is believed to have made 17 million dollars from auctioning gold ingots and 160,000 pieces of porcelain salvaged from wreck found in the Riau islands in the mid-1980s.

Under the terms of Heymans' arrangement with the Indonesian government, which declared some of his treasure to be of national heritage, the state will take 50 percent of the proceeds of Wednesday's auction.

The remainder will be shared among the salvagers.

The auction will be conducted by the Indonesian government, bidders will have to front up a deposit of 16 million dollars to take part and the artefacts will be sold as a single lot. The deadline for registration is Monday.

"We hope to get more than 80 million dollars -- it all depends on how the auction runs," Marine and Fisheries Ministry official Ansori Zawawi said.

Bidders are expected from China, Singapore, Japan and Taiwan, he added.

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