The shipwreck that has been sleeping on the seabed for 800 years is the first shipwreck in the history of world archaeology to salvage the water as a whole, and the shipwreck that cost 150 million yuan was salvaged.
Shipwrecks carrying artifacts worth more than $300 billion, and so on...
The names are all about the same shipwreck.
All kinds of descriptions make this shipwreck even more mysterious.
So, what kind of story is behind it?
Figure 1
This is the "Nanhai No. 1" we are going to talk about today.
Salvage the wrong boat
Fast forward to 1987, when employees of the British Ocean Exploration Company saw a message in the old newspaper.
It is said that in the 18th century, a ship of the East India Company was sunk in a crash near the Yangjiang River in Guangdong, China, and 6 boxes of silver were loaded on the ship.
Because someone successfully escaped after the ship sank, the location of the shipwreck was recorded in more detail.
So the British Ocean Exploration Company approached the Chinese side and hoped to salvage the wreck together.
In August, the Guangzhou Salvage Bureau (the predecessor of the Guangzhou Salvage Bureau) signed a contract with the British Marine Exploration Company according to the instructions of its superiors to jointly search for the shipwreck.
When the British salvage ship reached the wreck, it identified several suspicious locations with sonar.
Then start sampling with the grapple.
After several samplings, I actually caught some porcelain and ancient Chinese money at one of the locations.
Figure 2
The British wanted to continue to arrest, but were stopped by the people of the Guangzhou Rescue and Salvage Bureau.
They said that what they were looking for in the contract was the wreck of the East India Company, which was clearly Chinese, and you could not continue salvaging it.
At the request of the Chinese side, salvage stopped.
The salvaged cultural relics were handed over to the Guangdong Provincial Cultural Relics Department.
After cleaning, there are more than 200 pieces, including porcelain from the Song and Yuan dynasties, "Shaoxing Tongbao" and "Zhenghe Tongbao" coins, and a gilded belt of about 1.7 meters.
It can be preliminarily determined that this is a ship from the Song and Yuan dynasties.
In 1989, Chinese and Japanese archaeologists reached an agreement to jointly conduct an underwater survey of the shipwreck.
In November of that year, archaeological teams from the two countries came to the Yangjiang River for a five-day underwater exploration.
At that time, the wind was relatively strong, the visibility of the sea was also very low, and even with sonar and diver exploration methods, the shipwreck hull could not be found.
Fig. 3 Gold-plated belt
Only a fragment of a white porcelain bowl was salvaged.
By comparing it with the porcelain salvaged in the previous two years, it was determined that it was the same batch.
It was during this operation that Yu Weichao, the leader of the Sino-Japanese joint investigation team and an archaeologist, gave the shipwreck the later widely known name - "Nanhai No. 1".
For various reasons, the Japanese side has stopped cooperating.
The salvage failed.
Due to the weak underwater archaeological capacity in China at that time, salvage was suspended.
This stop is 12 years.
In 2001, Zhang Wei, director of the Underwater Archaeology Center of the National Museum, received 1.2 million yuan in support from an underwater archaeology agency in Hong Kong.
The higher authorities allocated another 800,000 yuan, and Zhang Wei took an archaeological team to the Yangjiang Sea again in April of that year.
Figure 4 Underwater archaeological excavation process
It took more than a month to determine the specific location of the wreck.
In the spring of 2002, the archaeological team conducted a trial excavation of the wreck of the Nanhai No. 1.
The excavation area is only 4 square meters, and more than 4,000 ceramics have been excavated, as well as cultural relics such as iron, bronze, and ancient coins.
With the extensive media coverage, the "Nanhai No. 1" has gradually become known to the world.
From the discovery of "Nanhai No. 1" in 1987, to 2003, "Nanhai No. 1" was widely known.
For more than a decade, the Yangjiang Border Defense Detachment has been patrolling and protecting the shipwreck.
When the surrounding fishermen are fishing in this area, the patrol boats of the border guards will come to the area.
Tell the fishermen that there are torpedo mines left behind by former foreign invaders, which are very dangerous, and hurry up and leave.
Figure 5 Coins excavated in Nanhai-1
It is under the protection of such "lies" that the "Nanhai No. 1" has not been damaged by fishermen's trawlings for more than a decade.
How to salvage
The trial excavation in 2002 proved that the "Nanhai No. 1" cultural relics are very large and have high archaeological value.
The next thing to consider is how to salvage.
Traditional underwater archaeology involves this shipwreck.
Generally speaking, the exploration party is arranged first, and then the area is excavated one by one, layer by layer, and after the cultural relics are salvaged, the shipwreck is salvaged.
This scheme is mature in technology and not difficult.
However, in the face of "Nanhai One", this method will not work.
First of all, the visibility of the sea in this area is extremely low, and five fingers cannot be seen twenty centimeters away from the seabed, which seriously affects archaeological work.
Figure 6 Excavation site
Second, the hull is large, and it is also covered by 1 to 2 meters of silt, which is too much work.
Third, due to the influence of the monsoon and climate, there are only three or four months of seabed operation time every year.
Maybe before the silt is cleared, the year's suitable work time has passed.
Wait until next year, the hull is covered with silt again.
After many meetings and discussions, the archaeologists proposed a "holistic salvage" plan, the basic steps are as follows:
First, find the specific location of the shipwreck and lay the positioning pile;
2. Cover the shipwreck with a giant steel caisson (sinking well);
3. Hollow out the silt on both sides;
Fourth, the steel beam is worn at the bottom of the steel caisson;
5. Use a crane to lift the caisson as a whole and then put it on the full submersible barge;
Sixth, the full submersible barge transports the caisson to the designated place.
It may not sound complicated, but this plan has been questioned by some.
Fig. 7 Lacquerware and cinnabar on board
They believe that the "Nanhai No. 1" is 30 meters long, 10 meters wide, and more than 4 meters high.
Where in China can lift such a large caisson lifting equipment!
They were right, with the technology at that time, it was impossible to salvage the "South China Sea No. 1", and they could only wait.
This wait is another four years.
In March 2007, the opportunity finally arrived.
The Guangzhou Salvage Bureau spent 600 million yuan and took more than two years to build Asia's first large-scale lifting engineering vessel, "Hua Tianlong" was officially completed and put into operation.
The maximum lifting capacity reaches 4,000 tons.
Salvage cost 150 million
At 10:00 a.m. on April 18, 2007, the Hua Tianlong was ready to take its place and the salvage officially began.
This is the world's first overall salvage of a large ancient shipwreck, so many problems have been encountered in the salvage process.
First of all, the wind and waves were large, and the positioning pile could not be hit, so the project team switched to the underwater positioning system and directly placed the sinking well.
Figure 8 "The "Hua Tianlong" hoisting engineering vessel that salvaged the "Nanhai No. 1" in that year
Shortly after the sinking of the sinking well, it encountered a high-hardness mud layer, which could not be suppressed by its own weight, so it could only excavate the silt around the sinking well to let the sinking well sink.
This step took two and a half months.
Later, when the steel beam is inserted at the bottom of the sinking shaft, the 15-meter-long steel beam passes through this side.
To match the hole on the other side, the error should be controlled within 1 cm.
As a result, when the first steel beam crossed the seabed, it was bent by the hard mud layer and did not meet the hole on the other side.
Finally, through the high-pressure water gun, this problem was solved.
All 36 steel beams were finally worn.
Of course, the specific solution is more complicated, which has become a confidential technology of the Guangdong Salvage Bureau.
On the morning of December 22, 2007, the "Nanhai No. 1" slowly came out of the water under the lifting of the "Hua tianlong".
Figure 9 Panoramic view of the shipwreck taken in 2014
It was then transported by semi-submersible barge to its new home, the "Maritime Silk Road Museum" in Yangjiang City.
The salvage lasted nine months, cost 150 million yuan, and cost 150 million yuan to build a museum.
Some people have questions, is it worth spending 300 million yuan to salvage a shipwreck?
First, the value of Nanhai One cannot be measured in monetary terms.
Although the goods it carries are indeed very valuable.
Secondly, this successful salvage fully demonstrates the strong strength of the mainland salvage technology and construction machinery manufacturing technology, which is a good publicity.
Third, this salvage is a great progress in the underwater archaeology of the mainland, and it has successfully washed away a shame in the archaeological community of the mainland.
Why do you have to salvage?
This humiliation begins in 1984.
Fig. 10 Porcelain salvaged from the shipwreck of Hatcher (left) and Godmuarsen (also known as Nanjing) at the auction site
That year, the British explorer Mike Hatcher salvaged an ancient shipwreck in the South China Sea and obtained nearly a million pieces of porcelain from the Qing Kangxi dynasty.
As the saying goes, "things are more expensive than rare", and the collection community also has this saying.
In order to make the salvaged porcelain sell for a good price, he smashed more than six hundred thousand pieces in one go.
And the remains of the shipwreck were also completely destroyed.
Later, Mike Hatcher claimed the porcelain was salvaged on the high seas and auctioned in the Netherlands in 1986.
After the State Administration of Cultural Heritage learned the news, it wanted to stop it.
However, neither the relevant legal basis at the international level nor the relevant domestic law on marine cultural relics can be found.
Only $30,000 was collected to send ceramic experts Geng Baochang and Feng Xianming to the Netherlands.
Hope to photograph some porcelain and come back to do research.
Fig. 11 Porcelain and gold ingots from the water outlet of the Godmunsen, cover of the auction catalogue
When the two arrived in Amsterdam, they found that $30,000 could not buy a decent piece of porcelain.
After three days at the auction, they didn't even have a chance to raise their cards.
In the end, I could only return home in despair.
This auction deeply stung Chinese archaeologists, which led to the story of the subsequent salvage of the "South China Sea No. 1" at great expense.
Start with the artifacts on board
In 2014, archaeologists began conservation excavations of the Nanhai No. 1 shipwreck.
The hull of the wreck is basically preserved, and after measurement, the residual length is about 23 meters, the width is nearly 10 meters, and the deepest cabin is 2.7 meters.
The shipwreck retains the original hull structure and is by far the best preserved ancient shipwreck found on the mainland.
The reason why it has not decayed for 800 years is that the silt on the seabed isolates oxygen and slows down the decay of wood.
Figure 12 "Nanhai No. 1" archaeological site
The second is the use of masson pine shipbuilding in southern China, which is a kind of hard wood.
Guangdong folk have a saying that "the water bubbles a thousand years of pine, and the wind blows a thousand years of cedar".
In 2019, the cargo inside the wreck was basically cleared.
A total of more than 180,000 cultural relics were unearthed, and porcelain and iron tools were large quantities.
There are also gold and silverware, bronzeware, glassware, bamboo and wood lacquerware, and human bones.
The shipwreck era was the early Southern Song Dynasty.
The Maritime Silk Road, depending on the name, seems that the commodities on this trade route are mainly silk.
In fact, during the Tang and Song dynasties, porcelain was already the largest commodity on this route.
The porcelain inside the "Nanhai No. 1" is somewhat angular, and some large porcelain bowls have trumpet-shaped mouths, which have a distinctly Arabic style.
Figure 13
It should be explained that this should be an acceptance of foreign customs porcelain.
These porcelains mainly come from the porcelain kilns of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, and there are many types of utensils.
According to the international price of porcelain similar to excavated ceramics, some people estimate that the total value of porcelain on board is 300 billion US dollars, that is, 2 trillion yuan!
Of course, this number is staggering, but what should be swept away is that this is a cultural relic, and it is impossible to buy and sell it.
"Nanhai No. 1" unearthed tens of thousands of ancient coins, a huge time span, the earliest han Dynasty five baht coins.
The latest is the Jianyan Yuanbao in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty.
What is the use of taking so much copper money abroad? Circulation, of course.
According to the history books, the five-baht coin of the Han Dynasty circulated for more than 700 years, and it was not abolished until the early Tang Dynasty.
Figure 14
Judging from this excavation, the Song Dynasty is still in use, and the circulation time of the five-baht coin has been extended for hundreds of years.
As for the song dynasty copper coins, it is also worth mentioning.
Copper coins of the Song Dynasty were more well-made and stable than those of other surrounding countries, so they were widely popular.
The Song Dynasty did business with Japan, Southeast Asia, and Arab countries, and could directly use Song money.
At that time, Song qian had become an international currency, similar to the status of the US dollar today.
What is even more exaggerated is that many countries have received Song money, which has been put into the national treasury for storage and is no longer used for circulation.
The large outflow of copper coins even formed a money shortage in the territory of the Song Dynasty, resulting in less and less copper coins on the market.
Finally, the state even stipulated that the copper coins brought abroad exceeded the usual, and the leader should be executed.
Figure 15
However, due to the fact that the purchasing power of Song qian is too strong, the situation of smuggling Song qian by the people has been repeatedly prohibited.
Perhaps because song money is not enough, five baht money can continue to circulate.
From here, it can be speculated that the owner of the ship took a large amount of copper money out of the country, which may also be "reselling foreign exchange".
The mystery of "Nanhai No. 1"
So, where did the Nanhai No. 1 go from China?
More than half of the porcelain excavated on the ship was produced in the magnetic kilns and Dehua kilns in Quanzhou, Fujian Province.
Due to the inconvenience of transportation in ancient times, merchant ships were nearby when they were distributing goods.
So the ship is likely to have departed from quanzhou's thorn tong port, and as for the destination, it is still a mystery.
Why did Nanhai No. 1 sink?
The ship was lying flat on the bottom of the sea, and it should not have encountered wind and waves, so the ship would have capsized directly.
Fig. 16 Gem-encrusted hollow gold bracelet
There are no traces of large breaks and other traces in the hull, indicating that it should not be a collision.
If it hits the reef, one end of the ship will be inserted into the seabed, and from here, it may be overloaded.
Who is the owner of the ship?
Some gold jewelry was found on the "Nanhai No. 1", such as gold belts, gold bracelets, and gold rings.
During the Southern Song Dynasty, some foreign merchants living in China were very fond of gold and silver jewelry.
So the owner of this ship is likely to be a foreigner.
Cobra skulls were also found on board, indicating that there were Indians or Arabs on board.
epilogue
Today's "Nanhai No. 1" lies quietly in the "Crystal Palace", waiting for us to discover more secrets about it.
As the first in many fields, "Nanhai No. 1" carries too much.
Salvage it is not only an archaeological event, but also a cultural event.
Figure 17 Nanhai No.1 Museum
Judging from the widespread concern of the people, it is more of a social event.
Some people once compared the "Nanhai No. 1" to Dunhuang on the sea, comparing the Dunhuang Tibetan Scripture Cave to the situation when it was plundered by foreigners, and no one in China cared about it at that time.
The salvage and excavation of the "Nanhai No. 1" shows us the concern and importance of Chinese to the national cultural heritage.
This is the change brought about by the progress of civilization.
![Nanhai No. 1: Spending 300 million yuan to salvage an ancient shipwreck 800 years ago is China's best response to cultural relics pirates[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)