Chapter 1,393 Every ship will have a little surprise
The ancient ship No. 2 at the mouth of the Yangtze River "broke through the waves" before the end of 2022.
Now this ancient ship, named Yangtze River Estuary No. 2, is placed on the century-old site of Dahai Shipyard.
An ancient ship museum will also be built on the site, which means that the ancient ship No. 2 at the Yangtze Estuary will "settlement" on the bank of the Huangpu River.
This is Chen Wenzhe's example. As long as he finds a place nearby and places his sunken ship, it will definitely form a linkage effect with the ancient sunken ship No. 2 at the Yangtze Estuary.
After you visited the Yangtze Estuary No. 2 from the Qing Dynasty, do you also want to see Chen Wenzhe’s ancient shipwreck from the Song Dynasty?
Compared with this merchant ship from the Qing Dynasty, Chen Wenzhe's ancient ship is obviously more attractive.
Of course, the reason why the ancient sunken ship No. 2 at the mouth of the Yangtze River is famous must be because it transported a lot of treasures.
Through looking back, Chen Wenzhe knew better what happened that year.
This is a somewhat controversial ancient shipwreck. That is, more than 150 years ago, this wooden ship, which was loaded with Jingzhen porcelain, purple clay ware, hookah cans produced in South Vietnam and many other valuables, sank in the Yangtze River Basin.
Today, 150 years later, when you look at the materials on the ship, you will feel strange.
If it is an imported ship, then what happened to the Jingzhen porcelain on it?
If it is an export ship, what about the hookah cans produced in South Vietnam?
Except for Chen Wenzhe, no one else can verify the cause of the shipwreck.
It's a pity that Chen Wenzhe didn't need to check the historical pictures bit by bit, because it was unnecessary, after all, it was not a sunken ship that he salvaged.
Therefore, the experts who salvage the sunken ship can only rely on the ancient hull and mottled traces to uncover the story behind the journey.
The ancient ship No. 2 at the Yangtze River Estuary is a wooden sailing ship, confirmed to be from the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty. The hull is buried in 5.5 meters of mud and tilts horizontally to the left at about 27°.
From what Chen Wenzhe observed, the ancient ship is suspected to be a flat-bottomed sand boat that was widely used for water transportation in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.
Such a ship should not be able to carry out ocean voyages.
During the early salvage, a large amount of Jingzhen porcelain was found on the ancient ship.
If it were just Jingzhen's porcelain, Chen Wenzhe really wouldn't care too much.
However, every sunken ship is a treasure house, which will give people more or less surprises.
There is no way, no matter what kind of merchant ship it is, it must bring some good things, right?
In ancient times, or simply in the Qing Dynasty, China's most famous export commodities were porcelain, tea and silk.
Therefore, if you are hunting for treasures on this ancient ship, as long as your luck is not too bad, you can still gain something.
On the sunken ship No. 2 at the mouth of the Yangtze River, a 60 cm high blue and white porcelain was found.
Archeology and looting are definitely not the same thing.
Chen Wenzhe can know by looking back that the sunken ship was discovered in 15 years, but it was not salvaged until 2022.
At that time, in order to further understand the nature and age of the ancient ship No. 2 at the Yangtze Estuary, starting in 2016, Dahai Municipal Cultural Relics Bureau and other departments conducted underwater archaeological exploration and multidisciplinary research on the shipwreck site every year.
After more than six years of underwater archaeological survey and exploration, the basic situation of the ancient ship No. 2 at the Yangtze Estuary has been initially discovered.
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According to the simulation animation, it was determined whether the ancient ship No. 2 at the Yangtze Estuary was a wooden sailing ship and which era it was from.
Others include the water depth of the water area, the depth of the hull burial, the surrounding environment, etc.
Finally, accurate data was obtained. The ancient ship was about 38.5 meters long and 7.8 meters wide, and it had 31 proven cabins.
The structure of the upper part of the sunken ship, such as the pointed bow, the piles, the main mast, the left and right sides, and the upper deck, is complete.
Archaeologists selected four of the cabins at the front and rear and conducted a small-scale cleanup. They found that there were neatly stacked Jingzhen kiln porcelain and other exquisite cultural relics in the cabins.
In addition, purple clay vessels, hookah cans produced in South Vietnam, and wooden bucket fragments were also unearthed in and around the hull.
In addition, there are also some things on the ship, such as masts, large hardwood ship materials, iron anchors, brown cables, pulleys, metal drill bits, drill pipes and black minerals and a large number of cultural relics.
From July to September 2021, the Dahai Municipal Cultural Relics Bureau once again organized a professional underwater archaeological organization to conduct an underwater survey of the ancient ship No. 2 at the Yangtze Estuary and its surroundings.
They cleared out Yuan Dynasty porcelain that had not been discovered in previous surveys, as well as large porcelain such as a complete 60-centimeter-high bean-green glazed blue and white vase.
In particular, the inscription "Tongzhi Year System" on the bottom of some of the porcelain pieces found in the ancient ship provides important basis for the dating of the ancient ship.
There were foreign goods on the sunken ship of the Qing Dynasty, so was it an import ship or an export ship?
The most important thing is that there are some Yuan blue and white flowers on this ship, especially a large blue and white vase with a height of 60 centimeters, which is quite interesting.
In this way, it is normal to find Song Dynasty and Yuan Dynasty porcelain in the Qing Dynasty shipwrecks salvaged by Chen Wenzhe.
However, Chen Wenzhe was a little surprised when he looked at the process of salvaging the sunken ship.
Because he found that salvaging sunken ships at the mouth of the Yangtze River was no easier than salvaging sunken ships at sea.
Because the ancient ship No. 2 at the Yangtze River Estuary was severely eroded by water flow, especially as the flow direction of the Yangtze River Estuary changed, the river bed changed from siltation to rapid undercutting, causing the ancient ship to accelerate and expose the surface of the river bed.
As a result, the hull faces serious safety threats, which also brings great challenges to salvage.
The current salvage methods of underwater shipwreck archeology around the world,
There are three main types.
The first method is to extract the cultural relics on the ship, then dismantle and salvage the sunken ship.
The second is to use cofferdams to pump water, conduct archaeological excavations and then salvage the sunken ship.
The last method is to use a special caisson to salvage the sunken ship, cultural relics and the surrounding seawater and sediment according to their original condition, and hoist, float and transport them as a whole in one go.
At that time, in order to prevent the Yangtze Estuary No. 2 ancient ship from natural and man-made damage, experts suggested that it should be salvaged from the water as soon as possible and moved to a fixed location for archaeological excavation, cultural relic protection, research and display.
Due to the extremely high turbidity of the water in the Yangtze River Estuary, the underwater visibility is almost zero, and the low-tide working time is very short, making it impossible to complete scientific underwater archaeological surveying, mapping, and photography operations.
At the same time, underwater archeology and construction of cofferdams require huge time and costs, and post-cofferdam archeology will block the waterway for a long time.
Therefore, after listening to expert opinions, assessing the risks faced by the sunken ship, and comprehensively analyzing three archaeological and conservation methods, the Dahai Municipal Cultural Relics Bureau decided to salvage the ancient ship No. 2 at the Yangtze Estuary as a whole.
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Overall salvage can relocate the sunken ship in the shortest time, at the lowest cost, and retain historical information to the greatest extent.
Once the salvage method is determined, the salvage method is also crucial.
The staff at that time designed a salvage method specifically for the high sediment content and fast water flow of the Yangtze River Estuary, as well as the particularities of the ancient ship and its surrounding environment.
The experts responsible for this ancient ship salvage mission decided to use an unprecedented innovative solution in the world - the arc-shaped beam non-contact integral migration technology of cultural relics to salvage this ancient shipwreck.