By Jim Blunt

Although not the largest, the hung, m 1452 at the Shwedagon "You either quit or we will fue YOU!" That was the choice I had after Great Bell, as it is also called, is the Pagoda, the Great Bell has inscribed turning out 1,000 "B" movies in heaviest, consisting of gold, silver, on it from top to bottom and all Hollywood. I had what is described as and bronze. around its circumference the reliThe weight of the Great Bell is gious history o f A s ~ a going back seva career-ending request to my boss at the third largest camera rental house approximated at 900 tons; its height eral thousand years before Christ. in Hollywood. From ancient I wanted time manuscripts, only , . - ., z a few H ~ g h e r off to find a &-L2> sunken bell for = Order Monks know most of this monks. In my . --.+ mind, I made my history and speak decision as the rarely if at all of its contents. opportunity to seek and discovFrom what ' er the equivalent -. .4' l ~ t t l e informaof the Ark of the tion that has been i Covenant of the gleaned from this, I Buddhist religion it has been said was a chance of to be the stuff of a lifetime which legends, eclipsI , I could not say 1 ing the Greeks "no" to. and Romans. .- = - 4 I resigned and, In 1502, withatrunkfull of 1 Gaspar Bulbi, a ----, Venetian gem scuba gear, I was off to Rangoon, dealer, walked . -around the Great Burma. -.-- --"*-, - -- -- - - Hired by Bell and meathe Monks of This stoneplate, a tribute forfinding the Great Bell, i v at the main candle-lighting sured it in cubits the Shwedagon altar at the Shwedagon Pagoda. A Monk prays at the altar every day. and his hands Pagoda, it became measured around my task to find the Legendary Sunken is about 24 feet and its width 18 feet ~ t base. s Bell of King Dhammazedi, a sacred at the bottom. It has a wall thickness Gaspar took notes In his diary Icon of the Buddhist religion and the of about 24 inches. and s a ~ d there was writing from top Heavlest Bell in the World. Cast on location, where it was I to bottom all around which was not

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understood by those who visted the to superstition, to unreality. Pagoda. Arriving in Rangoon, I was met This writing is presumed to be by representatives of the Shwedagon Pali, the spoken word of Buddha and Pagoda and the Senior Engineer of in its most ancient text. the forming Great Bell Project. In 1608, the Shwedgon Pagoda The first few days were filled was beset by Nicola De Brito and his with cramming on Burmese culture, army of Portuguese marauders. language lessons and preparations to They took possession of the Great meet the Shwedagon Pagoda manBell by toppling it from its founda- agement. tion and rolling it down the Pagoda Diving consisted at either high hill with war elephants. tide or low tide, because the location At the Puzandang Creek, they dug of the Dhammazedi Bell was in the a pit and constructed a barge to carry middle of the world's largest natural the Great Bell across the bay to their vortex. At low tide you had about 20 fortress in Syriam to melt it down minutes to into cannons in dive before order to conquer the water spun all of Asia. up to six knots And what at maximum better to do that speed. At high with than magic tide time spent cannons melted in the zone down fiom a bell that is reputed was as much as 45 minutes. to have magical I used my properties. All went own tank and the Navy dive according to plan as the bell base filled it I was rafted in to with air prior an area of the to each dive. b! I made 116 bay called the I dives over a Dowbon, an A drnnling of' what fhr Greur BPI/ period of two area of water Inokv like, and it5 size it1 r~lntion to years. known for viof l ~ nd~rlr,figrrrc~ e shorivr. lent vortexes and Finding swift currents. the Great Bell Dowbon translated into English was the challenge and it was the means anger piled up. University of Rangoon that conWhile DeBrito's galleon was rig- tributed greatly to finding the most ging its sails, as ropes were being sacred icon of the Buddhist religion. The Navy had patrol boats which attached to the barge a sudden squall came up; the barge crashed into the were used as command stations and galleon and the Great Bell rolled off preparation. All of the dives were into the water, sinking the barge and done from Zodiac rubber boats. That's the best way to do the work. the galleon. The first obstacle was that the Legend has it that it was the hand of Buddha that sent the great bell to bottom is strewn with wrecks from virtually the past 1,000 years. the bottom. The Great Bell turned out to be Up until the late 1 800's, the Great Bell was visible only by swirling submerged below the river bottom eddy currents past its top at the low- between the wrecks of the Kornine, a Dutch East Indiaman with its cargo est of tides. In 1995, when I was selected to scattered all around, and the Konning :J:ivc this area and find the Great David, on its side. A bronze davit Gel;, had all but disappeared and still protrudes fiom its hull. I used fish finders for my initial v :.c: w e n forgotten by the govern.ner,i. as it had slipped from folklore, exploratory dives to discover what

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was down there and what it looked like. I would take pictures of the fish finder's screen and catalog them as well as marking those items on our marine map. Then it was a matter to &ve each one and take samples. The Great Bell was not to be seen on the bottom. From the University of Rangoon, we got two geologists who mapped the area with two magnetometers. This data was overlaid over the marine map. What was discovered was there were many non-ferrous, large items scattered around and near the wrecks. Some of this turned out to be cargo fiom the Komine. One really big thing was the Komines propeller which had chains on it from a recovery attempt. The next step was more complex and involved 10 local divers who collected 300 soil samples from a grid system. T5ie gr'id system was put on an n.t;-;i-;,.i)/, now there were three so o:;c;.l:::ys over the Dowbon. 'T'he University has a Perkin Elmer 303 Atomic Photo Spectrometer. All of the samples were analyzed for silver. With geological software, this was key to revealing the location of the Great Bell. The issue was that it was thought the propeller was the bell. Visibility was zero, so it was up to the atomic spectrometer to reveal our bell. Nobody would cast a silver propeller for a cargo vessel. We drafted a sand-bargeand modified its dredge head and extended the amount of hose to give us depth in the area above the Great Bell.
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Thk is a 3-0 graphic of the Great Bell's location, mired 35 feet below the bottom of the Irrawaddy River alongside the wreck of the East lndianman Komine and its propeller. This is at the junction of the Zrrawaddv, Puzandung Creek, the Bago River and the Sea Channel to the Sea of Andaman.

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An all teakwood sluice box was made to catch any relics we happened to scoop up. Dredging continued from sunrise to sunset. Afier three days we reached the Great Bell. T had used a 20-foot, half inch water pipe to probe the bell. Then I dove on the Great Bell and pounded on it to hear a metallic sound with my earl. This dive was repeated with more pipes by local divers and Navy divers, who confirmed we definitely had contacted the Bell. A soil sample was taken f'rom the tip of the pipe that touched the Bell; its silver content was off the chart using the spectrometer. The King Dhammazedi Bell is the only lost National Treasure in the world that has been physically located and not yet recovered. It is one of the sacred icons of the Buddhist religion and symbo!ic to the Monk Qng.
Sor~rces: "History of Rangoon," a 1938 reference book. Winstar Entertainment, Quest Series One, Producer Jim Burroughs, "Bell Beneath the Sea," a documentary of the author diving on the Great Bell.

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