More than 800 years ago, in the early Southern Song Dynasty, a Chinese merchant ship full of cargo set sail from a large port and sailed to a foreign destination. This was a common overseas trade trip in that era, but soon after the merchant ship set out, it sank in the waters off the Shangxia river in today's Taishan City, Guangdong Province. The entire ship's belongings, along with the memory of that time and space, were sealed on the ocean floor until a fortuitous chance in 1987 was discovered. Subsequently, Chinese underwater archaeologists overcame many difficulties with extraordinary creativity to salvage it out of the water in its entirety and uncover its secrets.
The cultural relics value of the ancient ship itself is enough to be amazing; more importantly, the process of exploring it has directly promoted the growth of China's underwater archaeology and made significant contributions to the world's underwater archaeology.
This ancient ship is the world-famous "South China Sea I".
Treasures in the "Crystal Palace"
Hailing Island, Yangjiang City, Guangdong Province, is known as one of the "Top Ten Most Beautiful Islands in China", in addition to the coconut wind sea shadow, another highlight of the island is the Guangdong Maritime Silk Road Museum located at the western end of Shili Silver Beach. The pavilion formed by the combination of five ellipses resembles both cascading waves and flapping gulls; what is more unique than the appearance is that in the largest ellipsoid, the ancient ship "Nanhai I" is placed. People gave this part of the museum a nice name: "Crystal Palace".
In October 2021, when the reporter of Xinmin Weekly came here, the interior of the "Crystal Palace" had returned to tranquility. However, in the decade from 2009 to 2019, archaeologists conducted on-site excavations of ancient ships here. At certain times, visitors to the museum can see the every move of the archaeologists through the glass. One can even walk up to the dome of the "Crystal Palace" and look down on the whole view of the ancient ship.
During this time, the Nanhai I excavated more than 180,000 artifacts, including gold, silver, copper, iron, tin, ceramics, lacquerware, glassware, etc., far exceeding the initial estimate of 60,000 to 80,000 pieces. The vast number of artifacts brings a wealth of clues, and through the aggregation of various information, the exact age of the ship is determined: it sank roughly in the tenth year of the Southern Song Dynasty, that is, in 1183 AD or later.
In the more than two decades before the discovery of the Yangtze River Estuary No. 2, the Nanhai I was the largest, most completely preserved and most culturally loaded ancient ship found by Underwater Archaeology in China. It is of great significance to the study of ancient shipbuilding history, ceramic history, shipping history, trade history, etc. in China and even in East Asia and Southeast Asia.
A large proportion of the ancient ships carrying goods are porcelain. These porcelains come from jingdezhen, Longquan, Dehua, magnetic stove and other different kiln sites, not only Chinese style utensils, but also objects that show obvious Arabic and European styles. This proves that some porcelain kilns in China at that time, like today's Yiwu, began to receive orders from foreign customers and manufacture products according to the requirements of the other party.
Also striking are the gold items on board. A 1.7-meter-long gold belt is full of exotic shapes; at the same time, a gold bracelet with a diameter larger than a rice bowl and thicker than a thumb was also found; and three gold rings in the shape of Chinese, Arabic and European styles were also excavated. It was speculated that these valuable ornaments might have been owned by a wealthy merchant on board, who might have been the owner of the cargo, or the captain of the ship's "chief". Gold rings in different regional styles may be his collection, and they are worn on his hands to show that he has a rich experience of multi-country excursions. The remains of cobras were also found on board, most likely pets of the Arabs on board.
Silk protein was found in the silt of one of the capsules of the Nanhai I, which means that the ship is also carrying silk, but the amount may not be large. Archaeology has found that there are a large number of cans of wine on the ship, as well as salted duck eggs, sheep's heads, nuts, bay bayberry and rice, which seems to be very rich in food for the people on board.
When looking at and thinking about these cultural relics, a vivid animation of the Maritime Silk Road trade during the Southern Song Dynasty seems to slowly unfold in front of people's eyes.
During the ten years of the excavation of the "Nanhai I" in the "Crystal Palace", Wei Jun served as the deputy director of the Guangdong Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau and the director of the Guangdong Provincial Museum, and was one of the main responsible persons of this archaeological work. Today, he is a researcher and doctoral supervisor in the Department of Cultural Relics and Museology of Fudan University. He told the "Xinmin Weekly" reporter: "The excavation of the Nanhai I" has brought people a lot of interesting and new understandings of that era.
For example, a large number of copper coins have been found in ancient ships, numbering more than 10,000. Curiously, the style of these copper coins is not only from the Southern Song Dynasty, but also from previous dynasties, as far as the five-baht coins of the Han Dynasty. If these are the collections of the people on the ship, the number is a little too much. In this regard, Wei Jun speculated that these copper coins of the pre-Song Dynasty dynasty style may have been forged by people at that time. "Because copper, as a strategic material, could not be easily exported in large quantities at that time, minting copper into the shape of ancient coins of the previous dynasty may be a way to escape supervision and smuggle these materials out."
For example, in the conventional thinking of today's people, it is speculated that when stacking cargo, heavier and stronger iron objects will be placed in the lower cabin, and lighter and more fragile porcelain will be placed in the upper cabin. However, the excavation of the Nanhai I showed that the actual stacking of the cargo was the opposite of the above.
The beginning of underwater archaeology in China
Who would have thought that the "Nanhai I", which is now in high regard, was first known as a yin and yang error 35 years ago.
In August 1987, the British Maritime Exploration and Salvage Company cooperated with the Guangzhou Rescue and Salvage Bureau of the Then Ministry of Communications of the People's Republic of China to search for the East India Company's shipwreck "Rhineborough" in the waters of Kamihagawa Island in the South China Sea. They did not find the original target, but accidentally found another ancient shipwreck at a depth of 27 meters on the seabed, and salvaged gold ornaments, porcelain and other cultural relics. Experts initially determined that the date of the shipwreck was between the Song and Yuan dynasties, which had great archaeological value, and later named it "Nanhai I". However, the salvage of the Nanhai I will not be until exactly 20 years later, when China's underwater archaeology was just beginning in 1987 and was not yet capable of dealing with such a difficult challenge.
For quite some time, Chinese didn't have much concept of underwater cultural heritage until an auction in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1986. The lot is 80,000 pieces of Blue and White Porcelain from China's Qing Dynasty, from a merchant ship salvaged by the British in the South China Sea in 1985. After several negotiations, the Chinese government was still unable to prevent the auction, and in order to understand and study the value of these porcelains, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage sent experts Feng Xianming and Geng Baochang to participate in the auction with 30,000 US dollars, stipulating that "the use of funds should not exceed three times the value of the porcelain." Unexpectedly, the two returned empty-handed, because the final price of porcelain at the auction was ten times higher than the starting price. Geng Baochang was impressed by this experience, and after returning to China, he submitted a written report to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, suggesting that Chinese archaeology should expand into the field of underwater archaeology.
At the auction this winter, Yu Weichao, then director of the China History Museum (the predecessor of today's National Museum), found Zhang Wei, an archaeologist, and talked about underwater archaeology, who at that time did not know what underwater archaeology was.
In May 1987, Zhang Wei and his colleague Yang Lin received an invitation to travel to the Netherlands to participate in an underwater archaeology project. To each other's surprise, these two Chinese could not even dive at the most basic level. So they started learning from scratch in the local area and later became the first batch of underwater archaeologists in China. In July, they ended their training in the Netherlands; a month later, the South China Sea I was discovered.
In 1989, the First Underwater Archaeology Project of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage was approved, and the target was the "Nanhai I". The reason for this choice is that the geographical coordinates of the ancient shipwreck were found in 1987, and the cultural relics that were salvaged that year unveiled a "corner of the veil", which is enough to make people fascinated.
This winter, the China Museum of History, in cooperation with the Japan Institute of Underwater Archaeology, officially began the archaeological survey of the "Nanhai I", which is the starting point of China's underwater archaeology. In this investigation, Zhang Wei became the first Chinese underwater archaeologist to touch the "Nanhai I".
Due to sea conditions and financial reasons, the archaeology of the "Nanhai I" has been delayed. In 1999, Hong Kong businessman Chen Laifa founded an organization called the "China Underwater Archaeology and Exploration Association (Hong Kong)" and launched a fundraising campaign to donate HK$1.2 million to the underwater archaeology of "Nanhai I".
After receiving this donation, in April 2001, the Underwater Archaeology Research Center of the China Museum of History, together with the Guangdong Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and other units, a total of 12 underwater archaeology professional team members, once again explored the "Nanhai I". During this investigation, the archaeological team made a precise location of the shipwreck.
From March to May 2002, the archaeological team launched the water again, excavated and salvaged the shipwreck on the seabed, and salvaged more than 4,000 cultural relics. Another major discovery of this survey was that the archaeologists encountered clear currents under the water with almost no visibility in normal times, and for the first time took a complete image of the "Nanhai I": the part below the deck of the ancient ship was basically preserved, which was exciting.
Breaking through a large number of "impossible"
In 1987, a Joint Chinese-British Salvage Team touched the mast of the South China Sea I; in 2001, the remnants had disappeared during a large-scale exploration. What kind of approach can be taken to protect this ancient ship of immeasurable value and successfully conduct archaeological research on it? This has become a real problem facing Chinese underwater archaeologists.
For underwater waging vessels, the archaeological methods that existed internationally at that time included site preservation or in situ excavation. "Nanhai I" is affected by unfavorable factors such as marine production and illegal fishing, and it is not appropriate to adopt the method of original site protection. Excavation in situ is usually carried out by salvaging the cargo first, and then dismantling the hull underwater, transporting it out of the water and then assembling it for restoration. However, the visibility of the seabed location of the "Nanhai I" is almost zero, the sea conditions are complex, and the sea area is often invaded by typhoons, and the in situ excavation cannot be scientifically implemented.
As a result, Chinese underwater archaeologists have come up with a bold idea: salvage the Nanhai I and the silt that has surrounded it and protected it for more than 800 years. This is a feat that no one in the world has ever tried before.
In early 2003, when Wu Jiancheng, then deputy chief engineer of the Guangzhou Salvage Bureau of the Ministry of Communications, first heard of such a plan, he felt that it was nothing more than a fantasy, and even a little ridiculous. "To use an analogy, it's like wrapping a bunch of eggs in a wet newspaper so that all of them are not destroyed and the eggs are fished out." Despite the difficulty beyond imagination, he finally decided to challenge it.
He thought of borrowing from the commonly used pier casting method in bridge construction - cofferdam. The cofferdam is to enclose an area with steel plates in the water, and the water inside can be pumped out to further build the piers. Unlike ordinary cofferdams, salvaging the Nanhai I also requires a box bottom. Wu Jiancheng called the salvage device he envisioned as a caisson, and planned to cover the shipwreck with a caisson first, and then use the method of "threading the needle on the seabed" to penetrate 36 steel beams at the bottom of the caisson and build out of the bottom of the box.
After demonstration, finalization and construction, in April 2007, the 530-ton caisson finally set off on a ship to carry out its mission to salvage the Nanhai I. The first problem with salvage was that the caisson did not settle to the bottom of the sea as expected due to the silt barrier. The salvage team continued to pressurize the cement block on the caisson to make it drop until the weight applied was 4,000 tons, close to the limit of the caisson' bearing, and it was still not in place. The experts decided to carefully excavate the silt around the wreck, so that the caisson finally descended to its intended position.
Next, it was time to "thread the needle on the seabed", but the first steel beam was not in place. Salvage experts painstakingly studied and thought about it and found that it was still mud that was obstructing. As a result, the front end of the steel beam was sharpened, and a small water pump was installed in the steel beam to flush out the silt, and finally the "needle piercing" scheme was realized.
On December 22, 2007, the Huatianlong, which has a sea lifting capacity of 4,000 tons, lifted the Nanhai I out of the water. More than 8 months after the start of salvage, and 20 years after it was discovered, the ancient ship that had been sleeping for more than 800 years finally left the sea.
After the caisson loaded with the ancient ship was transported to the dock on Hailing Island, because there was no 4,000-ton land crane, the caisson was placed on several huge airbags and slowly moved forward, and finally entered the "Crystal Palace" of the Guangdong Maritime Silk Road Museum.
The overall salvage and relocation protection of the "Nanhai I" was a complete success. This project is a major innovative practice of combining marine salvage and underwater archaeology technology in China, and has set a milestone in the field of underwater archaeology in the world. It was also in this year that the National Underwater Cultural Heritage Protection Center was established, and There was a unified management agency for the protection of underwater archaeology and effluent cultural relics in China.
After the "Nanhai I" salvaged the water, archaeologists proposed a new idea of "full water excavation" that combines field archaeology and underwater archaeology techniques, that is, to let ancient ships continue to soak in seawater in caissons. The archaeological work is based on the caisson, using a combination of exploration and hull compartments, and gradually cleaning up from top to bottom in accordance with the procedure of "first outside the ship and then inside the ship, from top to bottom".
Subsequent practice has proved that "overall salvage" and "water-saturated excavation" have turned shipwreck archaeology into a fine "laboratory" excavation that can be carried out for a long time, and the integrity and authenticity of the historical information and spatial relationship of cultural relics have been preserved to the greatest extent.
Wei Jun told the "Xinmin Weekly" reporter: With the intelligent surveying and mapping platform built by the archaeological excavation of "Nanhai I", the two-dimensional and three-dimensional data collection is carried out through three-dimensional laser scanning, close-up photogrammetry and other means, exploring a new technological way to extract archaeological information to the greatest extent, and creating a new model of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary joint shipwreck protection.
At the same time, the strategy of "excavation, protection and display" adopted by the "Nanhai I" archaeology is also a new attempt at public archaeology and museum services. In the "Crystal Palace", we feel so truly that since ancient times, human beings have been unremittingly exploring the ocean, and that eternal blue feeling. (Reporter Wang Yu)