Hoang Sa Flotilla - a journey to Ly Son Island
Channel: Roberto Tofani
Date: 2013-05-21

It's from the shores of Ly Son island, situated thirty kilometres from the port of Sa Ky, on the coast of the central province of Quang Ngai, that the Vietnamese fishermen depart for their journey to the Hoang Sa archipelago. Hoang Sa or Paracel, as internationally recognized. A group of islands disputed among China, Taiwan and Vietnam. The sea breeze surrounds the volcanic island already used in the seventh century by the Champa kingdom as ship basement for their maritime trade routes. Ten centuries later Nguyen Lords came. The rulers of Dai Viet--the great Viet--settled on the island, transforming it into the operational area of the company Hoang Sa, exclusively for the development of the Paracel Islands. Every year the Nguyen Lords used to recruit seventy sailors from the villages of An and An Vinh Hai. Passed into the annals as the Hoang Sa Flotilla, the brave seamen sailed before the South wind between late February and early March of the lunar calendar. After a long and difficult journey aboard vessels not always able to cope with the open sea, and after hitting the coasts of the Spratly Islands, the flotilla up the Perfume River during the hot and humid days of August to be received in the imperial capital of Hue. Today the twenty thousands citizens of Ly Son remember their ancestors with a ceremony. A celebration for the Flotilla whose foundation has no memory [...] Since the late sixteenth century and further four hundred years several teams have alternated every year in missions that over the time have also taken a scientific profile. Sailors whose courage is also celebrated in verse and treated as heroes by King Tu Duc, the Emperor of the Nguyen Dynasty who ruled the today's Vietnam from 1847 to 1883. Facts and missions that for Vietnam and its present authorities represent the historical proof of their sovereignty over the two archipelagos claimed also by Brunei, China, Malaysia, Philippines and Taiwan.