How many shipwrecks lie off the coast of Delaware is anyones guess. There can never be a definitive book on the amount of shipwrecks that lie off the Delaware coast or even a definitive library.

To scuba divers, a shipwreck is like a time capsule. A piece of history temporally buried at the bottom of the sea. Besides diving for fun and adventure, scuba divers search for and recover artifacts from these shipwrecks in an attempt to preserve pieces of our past so that our future generations may research and enjoy them.

During the late 1800s such a time capsule was born. For some unknown reason, maybe by storm or by fire, an unknown ship sunk without a trace, leaving no survivors, just a few miles off the Lewes beach. Here, this unknown ship and its cargo of English chinaware sat quietly for over a hundred years, trapped in time.

It was not until 1970 that this time capsule was finally found accidentally by two NOAA vessels that were in the Delaware Bay conducting a routine wire drag of the area.

They were checking for obstructions on the ocean bottom that could cause hazards for other ships traveling through the Delaware Bay.

The NOAA divers investigated the obstruction thinking it was nothing more then a pile of rocks, but what they discovered was the remains of an early 19th century British cargo vessel.

Inside the hull of the ships they discovered thousands and thousand of neatly packed English chinaware. The NOAA divers themselves recovered over 200 pieces of the English chinaware along with the 3500-pound anchor.

Once this was reported, divers from all over came and dove on this unknown wreck, digging in and around the wreck to recover the highly sought after English chinaware and to look for clues that might give up the ships name. For local divers, the unknown shipwreck was nicknamed the China Wreck.

In the summer of 1999, the author becomes certified in scuba diving and hears of the story of the China Wreck. With his strong ambition and obsession, he sets out to dive in to the raging currents and zero visibility of the Delaware Bay to recover the English chinaware that other divers have recovered and to solve the mystery of the unknown ships name.

Along the way the author meets dive boat captains and divers who tell of their stories and of their discoveries of what they have found on this shipwreck lying only forty feet beneath the surface in the Delaware Bay.