The connection between ancient China and the world is actually established bit by bit, there is a Silk Road on land, there is also a Maritime Silk Road on the sea, especially in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Maritime Silk Road frequent transportation, the Chinese precious porcelain and other objects transported abroad, in exchange for wealth, in fact, since the spring and autumn Warring States This shipping road has been opened, there have been thousands of ships active on this road.
Of course, in the era of underdeveloped shipping in ancient times, shipwrecks occasionally occurred, according to some statistics, there are at least more than 2,000 ships sunk in the South China Sea, these ships carry hundreds of thousands of Chinese precious porcelain, but limited to technical conditions, we simply can not completely salvage, but with the modern era, these precious cultural relics have once again entered our field of vision, but the first to find him is not Chinese, but a British.
Mike Hatcher, a figure regarded as a nemesis by the Chinese archaeological community, this person's life is quite legendary experience, he was born in 1940, from childhood to explore the treasure of interest, in his heart unabashed yearning for a large amount of wealth, dreaming of a windfall, so in adulthood, Mike Hatcher set up a marine commercial salvage company, specializing in salvaging warships and merchant ships sunk underwater during World War II. This also allowed him to accumulate a lot of wealth.
But more crucially, during a fortuitous treasure hunt, he found a Ming Dynasty Chinese merchant ship, and after fishing it up, he found that there were tens of thousands of precious pieces of precious porcelain, as well as some gold and silver, and after peddling these porcelains, Mike Hatcher suddenly made millions of dollars, more than the cost of salvaging military dependents, which also opened his eyes, so he began to collect information hungrily, ready to sneak into the South China Sea with the fleet to salvage underwater treasures.
In 1984, Mike Hatcher found a qing Dynasty Kangxi ship "Godmarson", which departed from Guangzhou in 1752, with a large amount of gold, silver and porcelain, and sank 16 days after going to sea, Mike Hatcher took his fleet to the South China Sea and began a careful underwater search.
He noticed the ruins of a hill under the water and concluded that there must be cultural relics in it, so he immediately decided to go into the water, and found more than 200,000 pieces of porcelain, as well as countless treasures. Of course, Mike Hatcher is smart, after he fished out of the ship, he did not make a noise, but after a year of silence, he peddled the things on the ship and bought 20 million US dollars, although China also sent a team to plan the auction, but due to insufficient estimation, watched the loss of these national treasures.
The most serious loss was the Titanic of the East, the Taesin, a ship that China went to sea in 1822 and carried millions of pieces of porcelain, but after being found by Mike Hatcher, he smashed more than 700,000 of them, and the rest was auctioned off for a high price of 30 million US dollars.
Mike Hatcher became a piece of the Heart Disease of the Chinese archaeological community, in order to compete with him, China set up an underwater archaeology team around the eighties, according to the idea of being one step faster than Mike Hatcher, finally preempted him, fished out the South China Sea No. 1 underwater sinking ship, which is a Song Dynasty ship transporting porcelain, and 180,000 pieces of Song Dynasty porcelain were found in the shipwreck, many of which are national treasure-level cultural relics, which shocked the world.