There are 800 years of uncorrupted ancient shipwrecks that have not decayed
An 800-year-old non-perishable shipwreck was found in the South China Sea with $300 billion worth of 180,000 artifacts on board, which the British claimed to be their property and wanted to appropriate for themselves.
With the help of China, the shipwreck was salvaged, and the artifacts unearthed made the British feel ashamed.
So what is the origin of this 800-year-old indestructible ancient shipwreck?
Is it British or not?
Preserved the ancient shipwreck from the British
In 1987, out of some opportunistic considerations, two Britons rummaged through a library in search of opportunities to make a fortune.
It didn't take long for them to see an opportunity in an old newspaper. This is undoubtedly good news for small bosses who have just walked out of college and are preparing to start a business. So they decided to take a look. However, when they came to a newspaper, they were told that the newspaper did not exist! In the 18th century, one of the East India Company's steamships, the Rheenberg, sank off Waters in China. Someone on board survived, noted the location of the wreckage, and mentioned that there were six boxes of silver on board.
Britain's Ocean ExplorerUK immediately floated the idea of salvaging shipwrecks and silver and turned to China for help.
Chinese cooperated, agreeing to their request and signing a contract to search the South China Sea, where the shipwreck was located. They were the best crew members in the Royal Navy, piloting a British-built submarine and an unmanned helicopter to salvage a sunken ship. The operation went very smoothly. They quickly found their target. Their Britons were more advanced, using sonar to identify several suspicious locations and then sampling.
They did find submerged antiquities at one of the sites, but Chinese was stunned to see it and immediately halted the British salvage plan.
Because the Chinese found that the recovered porcelain and ancient money were obviously Chinese, it was an ancient shipwreck belonging to China, and the British said they were looking for the wreck of the East India Company.
The British were reluctant, but the evidence was overwhelming and they couldn't argue, so they asked the Chinese to take what they found and investigate, and then they left.
Chinese archaeologists have found that these more than 200 cultural relics have typical Song and Yuan characteristics, and may have a history of more than 800 years. It is understood that most of these ancient relics were excavated at the Yuyao Hemudu Cultural Site in Zhejiang Province, and some of them came from Quanzhou, Fujian, Taiwan and other places. They are all made from a substance called lead glaze. These include several "Shaoxing Tongbao" and "Zheng Tongbao", as well as a 1.7-meter-long gilded belt.
"Shaoxing Tongbao" and "Zhenghe Tongbao" were both issued in the Song Dynasty, more than 800 years ago, much earlier than the 18th century, and this was not a cargo ship that the British wanted to salvage.
When Chinese realized the problem, they sent divers to check and found an old mast at the bottom of the sea, unfortunately, at that time our level of technology was too limited to salvage.
At this time, the news from the Japanese came from nowhere, expressing their willingness to cooperate with China in salvage. This can make the Japanese difficult! They know that the Japanese have abundant resources there, but they also have strong economic strength, and if they can cooperate with China to salvage, they can not only make money, but also improve their living conditions. But since this was a cooperative salvage, when the wreck was salvaged, half of the ship's belongings would be distributed to Japan.
How could something that was originally ours give away like this. "After the Japanese side made the request, the Chinese side immediately responded. But the Japanese side said it did not agree to the request and insisted on inspecting a Chinese fishing boat. The Chinese side was very helpless about this and had to accept it. This made the Japanese side very annoyed. After careful consideration, China eventually rejected Japan's request and decided to protect the shipwreck until it reached the technical level.
For 12 years, the Chinese side has been silently guarding the ancient shipwreck, and when fishermen came to salvage it, border guards patrolling the area told them to take a step back, citing "enemy mines."
It also left the wreckage undamaged by anyone in 12 years.
So, when the technical conditions do not allow, why should we insist on salvage?
This leads to the humiliation of 1984.
A group of British, led by adventurer Mike Hatcher, came to the South China Sea to salvage. He was sunk by a storm while sailing in the South China Sea, and there were only a few people and some items on board. He gave these things to his friends and brought one of them back to England. British businessmen rushed to the scene as soon as they heard the news. They successfully rescued an ancient shipwreck and obtained nearly a million pieces of porcelain from the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty.
Not only did he claim to fish on the high seas, he also destroyed more than 600,000 such Hatchers for better prices, creating an environment in which "things are scarce and precious".
China tried to stop it, but failed, and it never let go, so something similar happened again, and China did everything possible to save the ship.
The opportunity soon came.
Make the boldest and most difficult recovery
An 800-year-old non-perishable shipwreck was found in the South China Sea with $300 billion worth of 180,000 artifacts on board, which the British claimed to be their property and wanted to appropriate for themselves.
The Chinese knew something was wrong, protected the shipwreck, and waited in silence for 12 years until the time was ripe.
In 2001, experts from the Underwater Archaeology Center of the National Museum quickly formed an underwater archaeology team with the support of the Hong Kong Underwater Archaeology Agency of 1.2 million yuan and the superior authorities of 800,000 yuan.
In the spring of 2002, the expedition successfully conducted its first trial excavation, finding more than 4,000 ceramics in a test excavation area of just 4 square meters.
There are also iron, bronze and ancient coins. On the surface, the hull structure of "Nanhai No. 1" is not complicated, but in fact it has very high technical content and artistic value, and many of its exquisite artifacts are witnesses to the historical and cultural development of the ancient Maritime Silk Road on the mainland. But this is only a small part of the ancient shipwreck, and the number of cultural relics on the "Nanhai No. 1" can be imagined.
Archaeologists have found that the ancient shipwreck must have sunk in the Song Dynasty after studying these preliminary findings, because it was too old, eroded by the sea, and not easy to be salvaged.
According to the most common method of salvaging a shipwreck at the time, it had to be broken at the bottom of the sea, then the artifacts were removed from the wreck, and then the wreck was broken down into smaller pieces, bringing the last fragment to shore.
Archaeologists don't want to take such an easy approach. They believe that in the ancient Chinese maritime culture, the most important and representative is the great feat of "Zheng He's Seven Voyages to the West". The same is true of this ancient ship, whose appearance will have a huge impact on mankind. Because this shipwreck has a history of more than 800 years, in addition to the cultural relics it carries, it is a very valuable cultural relic in itself, or even more historical significance.
So archaeologists came up with a bold way to salvage the entire ship.
The idea is not only bold, but also difficult to implement.
Unlike on the ground, underwater archaeological excavations have low visibility, which makes it easy for divers to overlook important details.
After several surveys, the research team obtained a rough outline of Nanhai One, a typical bench boat vessel with a length of 41 meters and a width of 11 meters. From the information that can be seen so far, the "South China Sea No. 1" is just an ordinary square wooden sailing ship. However, there are many ancient relics on this ship. These artifacts include: ceramics, pottery and bronzes. Eight hundred years later, the silt on the seabed has accumulated on the ship a meter or two deep, making underwater excavation extremely difficult.
In addition, this part of the South China Sea is affected by monsoons and climate, and there are only three or four months of seabed operations per year. Demining archaeological teams often have to retreat until the silt is cleared and wait until the next year when the silt is filled in.
More importantly, if the overall salvage was adopted, China's technical conditions were not yet mature at that time. This time, however, it gives us hope: we can successfully carry out underwater archaeological excavations. The waters of the South China Sea are rich in mineral resources and energy, but there are also many uncertainties. For a long time, China's frequent actions in the South China Sea have attracted widespread attention from the international community and cultivated countless greedy eyes in the South China Sea.
No way, the archaeological team had to stop digging again, claiming that a historic bomb had been found on the seabed, not allowing anyone to come near it, and again sending SWAT patrols to protect it.
That ancient shipwreck was silent for 8 years.
Surprise after surprise
An 800-year-old non-perishable shipwreck was found in the South China Sea with $300 billion worth of 180,000 artifacts on board, which the British claimed to be their property and wanted to appropriate for themselves.
The Chinese were acutely aware of the problem, drove away the British, and preserved the shipwrecks of the ancient Song Dynasty, but the subsequent excavations proved difficult.
Archaeologists decided to use the boldest and most difficult method to bring the entire ancient shipwreck ashore.
So, they waited for another 8 years, in which the Guangzhou Salvage Bureau invested 600 million yuan and built the largest large-scale crane engineering ship in Asia - Hua Tianlong Crane in two years, with a maximum lifting capacity of 4,000 tons.
On April 18 this year, the archaeological team arrived at the scene, and the Hua tianlong was also the first time in human history that a large ancient shipwreck had been fully unearthed.
Divers dive into the silt to dig, cover the "Nanhai One" with a special container, and precisely insert 36 steel brazes into the corresponding holes.
The process sounds simple, but it is actually very complicated, on December 22, it lasted nine months and cost 150 million yuan to salvage the "Nanhai No. 1" ashore.
Subsequently, another 150 million yuan was invested to build a museum that can accommodate the "Nanhai No. 1". The reason for this is simple: because it is an important part of the continent's largest tonnage deep-sea submersible, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation Type 981 deep-water science drilling vessel (referred to as "Hua Tianlong"), its value is very expensive. That is, $300 million (excluding the Hua Tianlong) was spent before and after the salvage operation alone.
Salvaging a shipwreck may seem costly, but in the process, China has demonstrated its advanced salvage and construction machinery manufacturing techniques to wash away the shame accumulated in the past and mark a huge advance in the cause of underwater archaeology.
The landing of the "Nanhai No. 1" does not mean that this work has been completed, and cultural relics and research have just begun.
Archaeologists continue to soak the artifacts in the sea for seven years without seeing them, fearing they could be damaged by a study on the ocean floor.
It wasn't until 2014 that a team of experts involved in salvaging the Nanhai No. 1 shipwreck began cleaning and protecting the artifacts.
Experts found a large number of porcelain and bronze in the shipwreck, with a beautiful appearance, mainly from the Jingdezhen, Dehua kiln and Longquan kiln, it seems that the task of this ancient ship may have been to export trade.
According to a rough estimate of the international auction price at the time, the entire porcelain traded at $300 billion, or about 2 trillion yuan.
There are also tens of thousands of copper coins on board, from the five-baht coins of the Han Dynasty to the Jianyan Yuanbao of the Southern Song Dynasty. In the process, many precious artifacts were discovered. For example, there are many "Song Jin" characters on Song Dynasty porcelain. And Song Dynasty bronze mirrors are also common. These are the crystallization of the wisdom of the working people in ancient China. In addition to this, the experts also cleaned up some gold jewelry, including gold belts and gold bracelets.
With such strong evidence, the British now have no reason to claim that the shipwreck was theirs.
From the discovery in 1987 to the actual start of the clean-up work in 2014, the nearly 30-year wait was worth it, and this ancient shipwreck undoubtedly brought us a surprise beyond imagination.