Wen | Yipin said history
Editor| Yipin said history
In the 1980s, the China Rescue and Salvage Bureau reached an agreement with the British Maritime Exploration Company.
They came to the South China Sea with advanced equipment to carry out fishing missions.
After instrument detection, a shipwreck was found at a position of 23 meters underwater.
After the British "specialty" mechanical claw was put underwater, it was just a moment,
There are hundreds of well-preserved cultural relics out of the water,
These included porcelain, silver ingots.
As soon as I caught it, I fished up such a number of cultural relics,
This incident shocked the current members of the scientific expedition team,
They immediately sorted out the report and reported it to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage.
When the experts of the Antiquities Bureau saw these exquisitely shaped porcelain,
All shocked "So perfect! ”
Among the salvaged treasures was a pure gold belt made of 1.7 meters of gold,
This belt does not have a traditional Chinese style, but is full of exotic atmosphere.
And the location of the shipwreck is on the ancient Maritime Silk Road,
Experts agree that the ship's historical value is "immeasurable!" ”
The discovery of the shipwreck immediately caused a sensation around the world,
It means a fresh beginning that fills the continent's gap in this regard
Underwater archaeologist Mr. Yu Weichao in the 1990s,
The shipwreck site was officially named "Nanhai One".
In the salvage boat that performed the "earth-shattering claw" in that year, the leader was led by two foreigners,
They had come to look for the shipwreck of the East India Company.
Due to the weather, the fishing is very unsmooth, and by chance,
They accidentally discovered Nanhai One.
It was also when they saw the salvaged artifacts that they were excited to prepare to do a few more times.
"You can't fish, it's not in the contract."
"We're not performing our contract, it's on the high seas, you can't control it, can you?"
On the map, the location of the shipwreck is just a little bit outside China's territorial limits.
The salvage bureau member who accompanied the fishing was very clever, and he flew a plan.
"Our territorial line is 16 nautical miles, but this is not calculated according to what you say about high tides.
It is calculated according to the lowest point of the falling tide, so this is still Chinese land! ”
When the Captain of England saw this, he did not dare to confront the country,
This is the very painful end to the fishing operation.
Mike Hatcher. We are not familiar with his name, but in the marine archaeology community,
The name is as dangerous as the plague, once in 1896,
He claimed that he had found the shipwreck in Chinese territorial waters after examining the literature.
And a large number of treasures were taken out, about to be auctioned, and 239,000 treasures appeared on the scene.
Since we had not yet established a law on the protection of marine cultural relics, we could only watch a group of people openly selling national treasures on the mainland.
Experts at the China Administration of Cultural Heritage can only think of one way to "buy it back." ”
They came to the auction with $30,000 across the ocean.
After arriving at the scene, I found that the money I brought was a dime,
The price of each piece of porcelain is more than ten times the estimated price,
$30,000 is like waste paper, and you can't even bring back a treasure.
The auction lasted for three days, three full days, and they didn't have a single chance to raise their cards.
And this "explorer" also got a sky-high return because of this performance,
In the marine archaeology community, reputation and insults often come together.
In that year, he found 1 million exquisite pieces of porcelain, but he only salvaged 239,000 pieces.
He wanted to make the 239,000 treasures in his hand a "good price"
He actually used the machine to smash all the cultural relics on the seabed.
If he discovers the shipwreck in the South China Sea, the consequences will be unimaginable.
Experts calculate that if you look at the price at the auction,
If the cultural relics on the "Nanhai No. 1" are converted into US dollars, they are worth at least 300 billion US dollars!
At that time, the GDP of Guangdong Province was only 20 billion US dollars, and a ship actually topped the development of Guangdong for ten years!
Just after the experts reported it, the relevant departments immediately made two preparations.
One is to strictly protect against leakage, and the other is to quickly prepare their own underwater salvage team for rescue!
After a lot of training, the mainland diving team finally mastered the underwater salvage technology.
Just when everyone was preparing to dive down and start salvaging the "South China Sea No. 1", an accident occurred.
"What about ships?! Where did the boat go!? "When people search according to the original coordinates,
I couldn't find the South China Sea No. 1, and it disappeared into the vast sea,
When USing GPS coordinates in those years, it was not as accurate as it is now to a few meters.
Instead, the position is marked in the way of this coil, and the point is connected to the line into a circle, and the circle is the coordinates.
The archaeologists all went out and leaned on their hands at a position of more than 20 meters underwater.
Looking through the silt over and over again, the visibility under the turbid water is very low,
Two days passed, and they were finally 100 meters away from the marker point,
Touched a piece of wood standing upright in the mud! Touched!
The archaeologists quickly used tools to break a hole,
What comes into view is a small room of several square meters, and more than 4,000 pieces of porcelain!
Since the discovery of Nanhai No. 1, it has been identified that this is the earliest known undersea shipwreck in China.
Many people in the industry call it "underwater terracotta warriors" and "underwater Dunhuang"
During the salvage process, we found that the ancient ship was still well preserved.
There is a huge amount of sludge around the hull, and it is also the anaerobic bacteria in these seabed silts,
Greatly protected the hull from corrosion, so how did it sink?
Experts gave the answer, although it is now more than 20 meters deep underwater,
But at that time, the depth of the water was only three or four meters deep, and as a result, the captain was too greedy to load too much cargo.
This led to the bottom of the ship touching the reef cabin and sinking directly, and because the hull was too heavy,
Quickly wrapped in silt after bottoming out.
Time never stopped, expeditions never stopped, in 2005,
At this time, it has been 18 years since the discovery of "Nanhai No. 1".
The expedition team made a bold decision
"We're going to fish it out in its entirety!"
It does not refer to a single item, but to the shore with the cargo of the ship as a whole!
This idea, said out like a "fantasy",
But as soon as this conjecture was proposed, it was recognized by most experts.
They also came up with an idea for this, "fixing the boat with all the surrounding silt and salvaging it." ”
After salvaging, the boat and silt were moved to the museum on the shore in its entirety.
Underwater archaeological excavations on shore.
This idea is also the first case in the world,
Cultural relics are non-renewable resources,
If an accident occurs in the process of salvage, the consequences are unimaginable.
This seemingly insurmountable world puzzle,
It fell on the shoulders of Wu Jiancheng, the commander-in-chief of the salvage.
He first thought of the traditional "cofferdam method"
This method is often used on the piers of cross-sea bridges,
In order to build the piers, the construction personnel will use steel plates to surround the pier position,
Form a confined space, and then pump the water from the piers and pour them.
Can this approach be applied to Nanhai-1?
Upon request, the authorities specially made a huge caisson,
The steel box as a whole is divided into two parts, the bottom is designed to tilt inward,
Can be smoothly inserted into the bottom of the shipwreck, the bottom of the upper caisson is designed with 36 bottom beams to insert,
If the plan goes well, the steel box will become a separate space.
On April 17, 2007, the caisson was transported to the designated location,
With the sound of an order, the salvage activity officially began, and more than twenty divers dived in turn.
To cooperate with the work on the shore, when the caisson was perfectly covered into the South China Sea One,
Immediately on the shore began to throw huge cement blocks above the steel box.
But what I didn't expect was that after pressing a thousand tons of cement blocks,
The steel box dropped by only four meters. This is something that researchers did not expect.
It turned out to be the silt that wrapped the shipwreck, and after a hundred years of squeezing, the density has been very exaggerated,
Even on the shore, after erosion, the silt still does not disperse,
At this time, Wu Jiancheng could not retreat, and he gave an order,
All the cement counterweights were put down and pressed against the steel box,
As the counterweight increased, the steel box finally began to decline again,
After a long wait, the caisson finally wrapped the "South China Sea One" perfectly.
Next, there is the insertion of steel beams, according to the plan, the overall need to use 36 steel beams,
A day plan to put down one, more than a month can be completed,
But unexpectedly, after three or four days, not even a single steel beam was put down.
People can't understand why what they have planned for a few years cannot be implemented in practice.
And on a day when the wind and waves were high, there was a steel beam twisted and deformed on the bottom of the sea,
The salvage boat suddenly filled with an air of despair.
It turned out that there was too much silt on the seabed, and when the steel beam was inserted from one of the openings of the caisson,
It is very likely that it will be pushed up by the silt, resulting in the inability to insert into the pre-left hole,
The problem is found, how to solve it?
At this time, Wu Jiancheng's shoulders were pressed with a thousand pounds of heavy burdens.
His brain was racing, and there it was!
Remodel the steel beam and then install a small water pump inside it,
Is it possible to use high-speed water pressure to wash away the silt?
Alternating black and white, day and night, the people on board listened to the voices coming from inside the walkie-talkie
"50, 40, 30, 20, 10, success! Successful fit! ”
This is the first steel beam inserted horizontally into the seabed in 13 days!
Since then, the process of steel beams has been rapidly accelerated.
By the end of 2007, The Hua Tianlong, asia's largest crane,
Arriving at the position of Nanhai No. 1, the overall salvage operation slowly began.
It lasted a total of one and a half hours, and as the wrapped steel box surfaced,
More than 20 years of hard work and the painstaking efforts of two generations have brought tears to the people present.
Today's "Nanhai No. 1" stands quietly inside the Guangdong Maritime Silk Road Museum.
As of 2019, more than 180,000 exquisite cultural relics have been cleared.
It is a ready-made museum, a textbook of Chinese civilization.
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