Vietnamese Silicon Valley Network

Location: 500 Washington St., 5th Floor, San Francisco, CA

Registration Information: Please contact the Asia Society at 415-421-8707

Event details: 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. The costs were unprecedented.

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. Hired as the project’s manager, Frank Pope watched the tumultuous drama of the Hoi An unfold. In Dragon Sea he 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.

Artifacts from the Hoi An excavation will also be exhibited at the program.

Frank Pope has worked on numerous underwater expeditions under the auspices of Oxford MARE (Maritime Archeological Research and Excavation), including the salvage of Lord Nelson’s flagship Agamemnon. He divides his time between London and Nairobi. Dragon Sea is his first book.