After the salvage was completed, a specially constructed pool was built on top of the large 4,000-ton salvage ship that Chen Wenzhe was on.
The 511 ship planks that were previously out of the water were immediately transported into the cabin and soaked in the pool as soon as they left the water.
Most of these ship parts are 5 to 6 meters long and more than 30 centimeters wide, and are made of pine or fir.
The bottom hull is basically well preserved, and the remaining length of the keel out of the water is 16.7 meters.
The keel is the largest and longest component of the ship, just like the crest of the ship running through the entire hull.
From this, Chen Wenzhe speculated that the ship was more than 20 meters long, about 6 meters wide, 3 to 4 meters deep, and had a displacement of more than 60 tons. It was a relatively large merchant ship in the Song Dynasty of my country.
During the underwater excavation, the team members found that the hull still retained 11 remaining watertight compartments, indicating that it adopted an advanced watertight compartment design.
Watertight compartments are a great invention of ancient Chinese shipbuilding technology. Watertight compartments were invented in my country in the Tang Dynasty at the latest.
The main advantages of watertight compartments are that, first, it strengthens the transverse strength of the ship and makes the ship stronger.
Secondly, with watertight compartments, even if one or two cabins are damaged and flooded, the ship will not sink and can still sail after repairs.
There are various indications that this ship is probably a high-quality blessing ship built in the southern Hujian Province during the Southern Song Dynasty in my country.
Zheng He, the great navigator of my country's Ming Dynasty, once led a huge fleet to the Western Ocean seven times, and the Fu ship was the main ship type of the fleet.
The treasure ship Zheng He took was the pointed-bottomed Fortune Ship, which was 126 meters long and was the world's first 10,000-ton ocean-going ship.
my country has opened up the Maritime Silk Road as early as the Han Dynasty, mainly traveling along the coastline.
This route is safe, but takes a lot of time.
By the Song Dynasty, with the application of advanced technologies such as navigation compasses and watertight compartments, my country's ocean navigation technology developed rapidly.
The ship passes through the deep sea area of the South my country Sea and reaches Southeast Asia and Central Asia.
Ocean-going sailing ships ride on the wind and waves and sail on this route.
This Southern Song Dynasty fortune ship is one of them.
Although it sank during the voyage, what is strange is that the wreckage site is not on the seabed, but on the underwater reef.
After repeated research, Chen Wenzhe came to an unexpected conclusion.
The ruins of this ship are not the place where the ship crashed.
In the age of sailing ships, my country's maritime navigation in the South China Sea mainly relied on monsoon winds.
For sailing ships, the monsoon is a double-edged sword. It is both the driving force of the ship and the culprit of shipwrecks.
This is obviously one of the dangerous waters on this waterway, with large and small reefs scattered here.
As the tide rises and falls, the rocks appear and disappear, threatening passing ships at all times.
When the ship was loaded with porcelain and sailing here, suddenly the sea wind suddenly rose, and the strong wind pushed huge waves over the river and overturned the sea.
The ship originally planned to sail into the reef to avoid wind and waves.
However, it lost control and hit the rocks. The ship ran aground and was pushed to the reef by the waves and ran aground there.
As the tide rose and fell, the buildings on the deck were completely destroyed, the hull was partially disintegrated, and was gradually buried in coral sand.
This time, Chen Wenzhe and the others used six large salvage ships, dispatched a total of hundreds of people, and countless mechanical equipment to salvage the entire ship from the water.
At last count, hundreds of people were on the water every day, working more than fourteen hours a day, and it took two months to complete the salvage.
He has been here for so long that the salvage crew on the ship has changed several times.
At this time, Chen Wenzhe was very lucky. Fortunately, he hired Gao Qijing and other local connections. Otherwise, this sea area would definitely not be as calm as it is now.
Seeing many divers whom he had never seen before, but who walked, sat and stood upright and well-behaved, Chen Wenzhe almost laughed so hard that his mouth split open.
It was with such a group of high-quality team members, coupled with the luxurious equipment that he spent a lot of money to build, that he was finally able to recover nearly 10,000 pieces of porcelain and more than 500 damaged shipboards in a short period of time.
Chen Wenzhe originally planned to take the boat back to celebrate the New Year. He really didn't expect that he would actually stay in this sea area for more than four months.
If there wasn't a desert island not far away, he would never have been able to hold on.
Of course, luckily they were all big ships, and they were accompanied by a large supply ship.
This means that their fleet is very powerful. Otherwise, when the first batch of porcelain comes out, there will definitely be chaos here.
There is no way to avoid chaos, because the cargo carried on this ship is still very precious.
The main reason is that there are too many porcelains. This is the export porcelain of the Southern Song Dynasty in my country. There are tens of thousands of porcelains, mainly blue and white porcelain and celadon.
There are also sauce-glazed ceramics, including porcelain bowls, porcelain plates, porcelain dishes, porcelain bottles, as well as porcelain powder boxes, porcelain jars, military holders and other water containers.
Porcelain is decorated using methods commonly used in the Song Dynasty, such as engraving, molding, and molding.
The decorations are mainly flowers, including lotus, peony, chrysanthemum, etc., as well as character decorations and auspicious words.
Among the porcelain produced by water, many have pure glaze color, fine patterns, and are very exquisitely made.
For example, a flower-mouthed eight-edge ewer was already broken when the water came out. Chen Wenzhe repaired it when he had free time these days.
Being able to repair on the ship mainly requires a small electric kiln, as well as all the professional tools that he wants to transport to the country.
Once repaired, it will be a fine piece of teapot.
This ewer has a thin body, white glaze, and an octagonal belly.
It has a girdle waist, a long neck, slender meanders, and a curved pot handle, like a graceful girl, with icy muscles and jade bones, pure and elegant.
In addition, there are many fine porcelains, such as a box.
It should be a powder box, which is a container for rouge and other cosmetics. It is a favorite of women.
Most of the powder boxes on this sunken ship are round and orange-petal shaped, with various flower patterns stenciled on the lids.
There are six star flower patterns, twelve chrysanthemum patterns, broken peony patterns, and needle leaf patterns.
There are also lotus patterns with broken branches and grass leaves patterns, which are very beautiful.
Similar powder boxes were unearthed from Hu Jiande Hua Kiln and Song Dynasty sites.
Comparing them, they are very similar.
Of course, the most common porcelain found on sunken ships are celadon bowls and dishes, while the slightly more special ones are celadon vials.
These celadon vials are also one of the many exquisite artifacts found on the sunken ship.
The glaze color of this kind of porcelain bottle is white with yellow flashes, and the soles of the feet are exposed.
Judging from the style, it is almost the same as the celadon bottles found in the Song Dynasty ruins of Hu Jiande Huayao.
From this we can see that these porcelains may have come from the same kiln.
In addition to these special porcelains, the ship also carried many auspicious porcelain bowls.
The inner wall of this kind of bowl has a mural pattern of grass leaves, and the center of the bowl has the word "吉" (吉).
Coincidentally, many fragments of porcelain bowls with auspicious characters were also found at the ruins of Hu Jian's Luodong Kiln.
From this, it can be concluded that most of the porcelain on this ship was fired by Hu Jiande Hua Kiln, Nan'an Kiln, Cizao Kiln and other folk kilns.