The Paracel Islands are a must for the South China Sea route, and in ancient times, the Paracel Islands were also known as "Thousand Miles of Changsha". During the Sui Dynasty, envoys passed through the Paracel Islands to present-day Malaysia. During the Tang Dynasty, the monk Yijing traveled to India through the Paracel Islands to seek Buddhahood. The Paracel Islands are rarely inhabited, and there are countless large and small islands and reefs, so there are many shipwrecks. The ancient nautical folk proverb said this about it: The upper fear is the seven continents, the lower fear is afraid of Kunlun. This "seven continents" refers to the sea area of the Paracel Islands generation.
In 1996, Chinese fishermen were diving near Huaguang Reef in the Paracel Islands when they spotted a shipwreck that was later named Huaguang Reef One. Soon after the wreck of "Huaguang Reef No. 1" was discovered by fishermen, it was blown open by local criminals with explosives, and a large number of precious porcelain and cultural relics in the ship were removed.
Since then, the "Huaguang Reef No. 1" has been stolen and excavated by lawbreakers many times because the means of illegal elements are very barbaric, so the shipwreck of "Huaguang Reef" has been seriously damaged. In order to protect the wreck of "Huaguang Reef No. 1", the state decided to carry out rescue preliminary excavation of it.
In 1998, the National Museum and the Cultural Relics Department of Hainan Province jointly carried out excavation work. Because this is a rescue preliminary excavation, and the waters in the waters of Huaguang Reef are very clear and highly visible, the excavation team is not equipped with special sonar detection instruments. After the excavation team entered the water, they were stunned, because they observed that there were porcelain fragments on the thousands of square meters of Huaguang Reef, and "Huaguang Reef No. 1" sank at a depth of 3 meters. The excavation team found that the hull of the "Huaguang Reef No. 1" was about 20 meters long, and although the superstructure was excavated by lawbreakers and the damage was serious, the underlying hull was relatively well preserved, and there was still value for rescue and excavation.
Because the hull of the "Huaguang Reef No. 1" shipwreck has been highly saturated with water, coupled with the fact that this is only a trial excavation, the salvage technical support is insufficient, the excavation team members can only take a part of the specimens, and carry out protective backfilling of the "Huaguang Reef No. 1" wreck hull, so when the conditions are sufficient in the future, the overall salvage is carried out, so there are not many cultural relics salvaged out of the water this time, only nearly 1800 pieces.
In 2007, the conditions were finally more sufficient, and the National Museum and the Hainan Provincial Department of Culture, Radio, Film and Television Publishing and Sports jointly established the Xisha Archaeological Task Force to officially carry out rescue excavations and underwater archaeological surveys of the "Huaguang Reef No. 1" shipwreck. This excavation is the best preparation and most rigorous underwater archaeology in the history of the mainland.
This time, the archaeologists spent a total of 55 days excavating the "Huaguang Reef No. 1" shipwreck, of which the diving time was as high as more than 300,000 minutes. Although the work is heavy, the harvest is also quite rich, and there are nearly 10,000 cultural relics in the water. Among them, most of them are ceramics produced in Fujian and Jingdezhen, Jiangxi. Ceramics mainly include blue and white glaze, blue glaze, brown glaze and black glaze; while ceramic porcelain utensils mainly include bowls, plates, saucers, boxes, pots, cups, bottles, jars, urns and so on. Judging from the types of cultural relics and vessels excavated from the excavations, most of these cultural relics are from the folk kilns in the southern Fujian region, so experts deduce that the wreck of the "Huaguang Reef No. 1" is a southern Song Dynasty trading merchant ship.
Because seawater is extremely corrosive to wood, the hulls of ancient wooden shipwrecks are difficult to preserve. Although the hull of the "Huaguang Reef No. 1" shipwreck has been soaked by nearly a thousand years of seawater, it still retains one-third of the size of the original hull, which can be described as extremely precious. It provides us with valuable historical information for our study of ancient maritime trade and navigation routes.
Why did the same wooden "Huaguang Reef One" shipwreck be preserved for so long? Experts speculate that this may have a lot to do with the patches of coral on the surface of the remnant hull of Huaguang Reef One. Because the remnants of the "Huaguang Reef No. 1" hull are covered with large particles of calcareous biosand, and the lower layer is paved with intertwined pieces of columnar coral bones, this layer of biological covering is a natural creation, and they skillfully exist, retaining the precious hull of "Huaguang Reef No. 1".
Why can experts be sure that "Huaguang Reef No. 1" is a Shipwreck of the Southern Song Dynasty? What did the ancient ships of the mainland look like 800 years ago?
Originally, among the porcelain relics of the "Huaguang Reef No. 1" shipwreck salvaged by archaeologists, there was a piece of porcelain at the bottom that clearly marked the dry branch of "Wang Wuzai", and experts combined with the discontinuity of the water porcelain, inferred that this ship should be an ancient merchant ship of the Southern Song Dynasty Gaozong period. In addition, by observing the hull structure, experts also found that the ship should be built in the Fujian region of the Southern Song Dynasty, and the cultural relics that come out of the water on the ship are mostly ceramic products produced in Fujian. They deduced from this that the ship might have been a trading merchant ship sailing overseas from the Fujian region. However, due to the lack of physical water that can be used as evidence, it is not possible to make a definitive inference about the destination of this ship. However, this ship was a merchant ship in the middle of the Southern Song Dynasty, and it is certain that it sank in the middle of the Southern Song Dynasty. It can be seen that during the Southern Song Dynasty, the mainland navigation technology was already relatively mature, and the ancient people of the mainland who were at the leading level of the world's navigation technology also walked in the forefront of the world at that time.