Chapter 1,315: Of all the porcelains in the world, I am the best
After divers enter the water, the first thing they do is detect the water depth.
The water depth here is only 14 meters, and the waves cannot reach the sunken ship. The seabed is hard and the current is slow.
Such an ideal underwater environment even makes people who have excavated other sunken ships in harsh environments feel intoxicated.
However, they could only look for porcelain buried in the sand, so the excavation speed was not very fast.
During the day, they were busy searching and digging for porcelain.
At night, they took a ferry to the shipwreck area to monitor the movement.
Some nights, fishing boats carrying diving equipment anchored nearby.
There was even a ship that had touched the alarm bells they had set on the surrounding sea.
The thieves on the fishing boat confronted the team members, stopping and leaving. They did not dare to go into the water, but they retaliated by denying the team members a good night's sleep.
"The Sword Comes"
The calm only lasted for 10 days, because the typhoon came and gave Chen Wenzhe and others an opportunity.
It's one of the worst things to happen, but within the danger lies opportunity.
The prime season for underwater salvage is from March to June. One of the reasons is that there are no meteorological disasters such as typhoons.
It will delay the excavation time, stir up the sea water, and greatly reduce the visibility of the seabed.
However, for this excavation, the harm it brings is far more than that.
When a typhoon passes through, it is definitely not possible to go into the water. When the typhoon subsides, the team members who have been trapped on the island for shelter from the wind for the past few days go into the water again.
At this time, all the fishing boats peeping around had disappeared.
Those small fishing boats couldn't fight against the typhoon, so they should have all evacuated from this sea area.
However, things are often not as expected, because after they go into the water, they find that the porcelain has been lost and damaged again.
The bulkheads of the sunken ship were lifted, the baseline was torn off the bottom of the water, and the stones used to tie the buoys and the fishermen's rakes were still left.
And these newly appeared buoys must be fishermen in their hearts.
Obviously, Chen Wenzhe and the others' actions attracted the attention of the surrounding fishermen.
Therefore, when the typhoon passed through, some people went into the water.
In other words, these new thieves not only dare to steal fish under their noses, but they are not even afraid of typhoons.
In the middle of a typhoon, and they dared to go into the water, those people really dared to risk their lives.
For money, some people dare to do anything. It can be said that they want money rather than their lives.
Fortunately, this sunken ship had been stolen and cleared out a long time ago, and there was nothing on it at all.
And what those people salvaged were only the fake sea-sourced porcelain that was newly put in.
Think about it, is it worth it for them to go into the water with a passing typhoon for some fake products?
Maybe it's worth it, because what they fear most is that they don't even have a chance to fight, right?
Chen Wenzhe and the others have now landed ashore and are wearing shoes. Naturally, they cannot risk their lives casually.
Therefore, it took more than a month to salvage the sunken ship this time.
During the more than 50 days of excavation, this water area encountered three typhoons.
On average, it happens once every ten days, and I can't work for two to three days at a time.
Therefore, the excavation work of the sunken ship is intermittent, and theft of the shipwreck occurs from time to time.
Unfortunately, the things found on the sunken ship were all modern porcelain, which Chen Wenzhe didn't care about at all.
It is the existence of this batch of fake porcelain from the sea that actually allows them to coexist peacefully in this sea area.
Of course, compared to Chen Wenzhe and his salvage boat, those fishermen must have suffered losses.
During the typhoon, a risky fishing boat sank in the nearby waters.
Therefore, Gao Qijing and others had to speed up the progress, and the exploration work that should have been carried out more fully had to be ended early.
More and more fishing boats are gathering, making the situation more complicated.
What makes them feel most urgent is to fish the porcelain out of the water as soon as possible to cut off the covetousness of other thieves.
However, after the typhoon, the visibility in the shipwreck waters dropped sharply.
Gao Qijing said that in the following months, the visibility in this sea area has always been maintained at about 10 to 20 centimeters, and has never improved significantly, and it was almost zero at the lowest point.
For the "treasure hunt" type of salvager, cloudy vision is not a problem.
They could touch the cultural relics and lift them out of the water, but for the underwater treasure hunting team members, it was almost a disaster.
If you only want to salvage a deep-sea sunken ship, then you only need to put down the steam claws at the sunken site, clamp the wreckage and pull it up to the surface, and you will be done.
Chen Wenzhe's underwater treasure hunting work is by no means so simple and crude.
Because they want more, they need to search for more useful information.
Of course, they are also looking for clues within the scope of science, including various archaeological fields such as ancient porcelain research, navigation history research, shipbuilding history research, and maritime trade history.
Therefore, collecting various information on the sunken ship rather than fishing out the porcelain is the essence of the excavation work.
Only if you understand this, you may be able to find a series of treasure ships around you.
Therefore, when visibility is too low, the effectiveness of information collection is naturally greatly reduced.
Fortunately, before the typhoon came, they were able to lay down special sulfuric acid paper underwater and draw a "square map" with a pencil according to the ratio of 1:20.
After the typhoon, they had no choice but to feel around in the chaos, relying on touch to judge the orientation, shape, and proportion. After returning to the ship, they drew the drawings from memory.
After the drawings were completed, Chen Wenzhe figured out how the sunken ship sank to the bottom of the sea, and how the porcelain in the cabin was scattered on the bottom of the sea.
Of course, the most important thing is the shipping routes, monsoons, typhoons and other issues here.
Knowing this information, they might be able to find all the sunken ancient transport ships around here.
After getting the desired information, the next step is to fully excavate the porcelain around this first sunken ship.
In order to excavate this sunken ship, Gao Qijing and others conducted six experimental excavations and even enclosed the entire sunken ship site within a splicing frame.
Compared with other sunken ships, the contents of this ship have been emptied, but the porcelain buried in the nearby mud and sand is particularly well preserved.
"Among the porcelains in the world, I am the best; among my porcelains, Kang and Yong are the best."
Regarding the porcelain unearthed this time, Chen Wenzhe feels that it is the best among the underwater sites that have been discovered.
Under the influence of the southern summer weather, tides and currents, the underwater team members have very little time for launching operations.
Each time they enter the water, they can stay for up to 40 minutes, and each person enters the water an average of 3 times a day.
In the deep sea, the consciousness of the team members is very blurred and it is difficult to concentrate.
Therefore, you must make all plans accurately before diving, and hope to complete them as soon as possible after entering the water.
The hull and remaining cultural relics are buried under the mud.
The distribution of cultural relics under these silts has also been marked.
After that, just refer to the drawings, search according to the drawings, and dig them out one by one.