The Bells Under The Waves: Chanthaburi’s Underwater Archaeology
“Off the Chanthaburi coast lies an old Siamese port submerged since the 1800s. At low spring tides, you can walk out and touch the stone pillars and pottery shards. Locals still find coins and beads. Fishermen say they sometimes hear temple bells ringing under the waves.”
I first came across those lines in an article that had nothing to do with the rest of my Thailand notes, but they stuck in my head. They sound like the kind of story old fishermen tell over cheap beer and grilled squid, the sort of tale that grows a little taller each time it’s told.
Yet when you start digging into Chanthaburi’s underwater archaeology, you realise there’s a very real history beneath that legend, one that’s being documented by divers who treat the seabed like any other archaeological site.
The Special Forces of the Fine Arts Department
Under the calm surface of the Gulf of Thailand, a team of divers goes down to the seabed, ignoring colourful coral reefs and marine life. Their intention is not leisure, but the collection of data and samples of ancient artefacts as well as parts of ships that capsized centuries ago.
They are the divers of the Underwater Archaeology Division of the Fine Arts Department, and like other archaeologists, their duties are to study, analyse and preserve ancient artefacts. However, it’s archaeology with a difference, as their scope of work is underwater in both the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand, as well as rivers, ponds and dams.
The division’s director has described his team as the “special force of the Fine Arts Department”. The unit was founded in 1974 after numerous artefacts from the Ayutthaya period were taken by locals and international divers from an old shipwreck near Koh Khram in Chonburi.
At that time the department did not have any experts to handle underwater work, so it asked the Royal Thai Navy to help collect the artefacts before they were all stolen. Since then, the department has set up a team of underwater archaeologists, initially recruiting its first diving team from the Navy, and today the team has about 14 divers based in Chanthaburi.
What The Wrecks Tell Us
The relics found in shipwreck sites can tell us a lot about history and the trading relationship between Thailand and other countries. From these sites, researchers learn about the routes that transported goods and people, as well as objects used during the old days, while the remaining ships can show technology or techniques of shipbuilding which were unique to a period of time and the country of origin.
For example, the team recently found a shipwreck around Koh Kluay in Ranong, an exciting discovery that shows trading between the South, which is believed to have been part of the Suvarnabhumi era, and India 2,000 years ago.
So far, the division has found 46 sites in both the Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. In addition to Koh Khram in Chon Buri and Koh Kluay in Ranong, they have also found wreck sites in Krabi and Samut Sakhon, as well as in the Chao Phraya River in Ayutthaya.
When they find a wreck site, the first thing they do is record its location using GPS, though they note that the GPS location above sea level differs from the underwater position. After having the right location, they work to find the period of the wreck with scientific proof of its age, measuring the site, taking pictures and jotting down details of what they found before evaluating whether to excavate, or simply collect artefacts for study, since the process of finding old items can damage the site.
Chanthaburi’s Own Underwater Finds
In Chanthaburi itself, the team has found copper pieces at the Bang Kachai site, part of the wider pattern of underwater discoveries across the region. Other finds in the broader area have included old beads, ancient brass mirrors, and clay pots of the Han Dynasty dating from 206 BCE to 220 CE in Krabi, with some of these artefacts exhibited in Thalang National Museum in Phuket.
These are the kinds of objects that, in local storytelling, easily become the “coins and beads” that fishermen still pull from the water, small tangible links to a past when the Gulf was criss‑crossed by trading junks from China, India and beyond.
The largest underwater archaeological site found so far lies in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand. In 1992, the Navy besieged an Australian ship after finding it had taken a lot of artefacts from the site. As there was no law to protect the artefacts in the exclusive economic zone at that time, the Navy didn’t capture the vessel but instead decided to release it in exchange for the artefacts.
The recovered cargo included clay pots and ceramic tableware of the Sukhothai Kingdom, and there were so many pieces that the authorities decided to open the National Maritime Museum in Chanthaburi to display them.
The Museum In An Old Fortress
The National Maritime Museum sits inside the historic Noen Wong Camp, also known as Khai Noen Wong, in Bang Kacha subdistrict of Mueang Chanthaburi. This is an ancient fortress city that dates back to the reign of King Rama III, built in the early 1800s as a defensive stronghold against Vietnamese incursions and later French influence in the region.
The museum’s twin buildings cover around 3,500 square meters and house exhibits on Thailand’s merchant marine, underwater archaeology, and the thousands of artefacts recovered from shipwrecks in the Gulf of Thailand.
Walking through the museum, you see the sheer scale of what came out of that one Gulf wreck, with display cases full of Sukhothai‑period ceramics, trade goods, and objects that once lay for centuries under the waves. The site itself is part of a larger historical complex that includes the Underwater Archaeological Office, where artefacts are conserved and studied before being put on display or stored for research.
For a province better known for gems, fruits and quiet coastal towns, Chanthaburi has quietly become the national center for Thailand’s underwater heritage.
Where Legend Meets The Tide
Back on the coast, it’s easy to see how stories like the “submerged port” take hold. Chanthaburi’s shoreline, from Laem Sing to Ban Chao Lao, experiences strong spring tides that can expose wide stretches of seabed and rocky foreshore at low tide. In a province where divers regularly pull up centuries‑old cargo from the Gulf, and where museum walls are lined with objects that once lay under the waves, it’s no surprise that fishermen tell stories about bells, lost towns, and walkable ruins at low tide.
Similar motifs appear across the region, from the sunken temple of Sangkhlaburi in Kanchanaburi that emerges in the dry season, to legends of underwater cities and lost islands of gold in the wider maritime world of Southeast Asia. In those stories, temple bells ring under the water, coins and beads wash up after storms, and old ports slip beneath the waves after wars or changing coastlines.
Chanthaburi’s underwater archaeology doesn’t prove any one of those tales literally true, but it does show that the sea here really does hold layered histories, from Han‑dynasty pots to Sukhothai ceramics to the copper pieces at Bang Kachai.
The Human Cost of Diving Into History
Being an underwater archaeological diver in Thailand is not romantic fieldwork but demanding, risky labour. Those who join the team have to love their job and be physically fit, because they work in an environment with a high risk to their lives.
When they are underwater, they may face strong currents, problems with diving gear, or poisonous marine animals, and the division once lost a staff member because of oxygen toxicity while he was on duty in Koh Krut in 2010. Since that incident, they have built a swimming pool with three different levels of depth, ranging from 1.2 metres to 5 metres to 12 metres, for training sessions and practice, with the facility opening in 2012.
The team takes pictures and records every detail by hand, working slowly and carefully to document sites before deciding whether to excavate or simply protect them in place. Their training pool in Chanthaburi now serves as a regional hub, with the division working with other countries in ASEAN to conduct basic and advanced training courses.
UNESCO also supports them as a training center of underwater archaeology to help protect cultural heritage sites in the Asia Pacific, making Chanthaburi not just a storage place for old pots but a living centre of expertise.
Listening For The Bells
When locals say they sometimes hear temple bells ringing under the waves off Chanthaburi, they’re not hearing a single sunken temple with a bell tower still intact.
What they are experiencing, in the language of legend, is the weight of all those lost ships, broken cargoes, and forgotten journeys that the divers are now mapping and preserving. Every copper piece from Bang Kachai, every shard of Sukhothai ceramic in the National Maritime Museum, and every recorded GPS coordinate of a wreck site is another note in that underwater chorus.