Philip Beale

Phillip Beale is a British sailor, adventurer, expedition leader and entrepreneur. He led the Borobudur Ship Expedition and the 2008–2010 Phoenician Expedition.

Beale has a BA Honours degree in Politics from the University of Hull and began his career in the Royal Navy.

Beale became interested in depictions of a Borobudur ship that he had seen on the Borobudur Temple terraces in Indonesia. He became interested in the fact that the carvings, which had been completed c. AD 825, depicted ships that may have sailed southwest from Indonesia to West Africa. He decided to reconstruct one and sail it to West Africa to prove that Indonesian seafarers could have reached West Africa on water as well as by land.

The ship that Beale constructed was called Samudra Raksa, which means "guardian of the sea".