A merchant boat, dubbed the Nanhai No.
1, or "South China Sea No. 1," is being moved to the "Crystal Palace," the
Marine Silk Road Museum of Guangdong in south China's Guangdong Province.
Dec. 26. The ancient merchant boat loaded with porcelain, sank off the
south China coast 800 years ago. (Xinhua Photo) Photo
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YANGJIANG, Guangdong, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- An 800-year-old
merchant boat loaded with precious trading goods anchored at a port here
Thursday morning after it was hoisted from the bottom of the sea four days ago.
With the help of a crane, workers managed to drag the
5,000-ton Nanhai (South China Sea) No. 1 aboard 16 huge air bags to a temporary
port at about 1 a.m. after more than three hours of hard work overnight.
The 30-meter-long wooden vessel will continue to move
to its final residence of the "crystal palace" in a specially built museum
aboard 25 round air bags, each of which is 15 meters long and 1 meter in
diameter.
The ship is expected to arrive at the destination
Thursday night and on Friday, it will enter the designated glass pool, where the
water temperature, pressure and other environmental conditions are the same as
where the ship has lain on the sea bed.
The pool, containing seawater, is 64 meters long, 40
meters wide, 23 meters high and about 12 meters in depth. It will be sealed
after the ship and the silt, taken out of water along with the boat, are put in.
The well-preserved boat, containing an estimated
60,000 to 80,000 items of gold, silver, porcelain and copper coins, was raised
from about 30-meter depth of the South China Sea by a crane on Saturday.
Officials said recovery will not be carried out
immediately and it may last a quite long time in an effort to better protect
underwater relics that have been soaked in the sea for such a long time.
Guangdong has earmarked 150 million yuan (20.3
million U.S. dollars) in building a "Marine Silk Road Museum" to preserve the
salvaged ancient ship.
The new museum, run by the municipal government of
Yang Jiang, is expected to open to public by the end of next year and visitors
will be able watch the ongoing recovery of the ship through windows on two
sides of the pool.
Discovered in the summer of 1987 off the coast near
Yangjiang city, Nanhai No.1 was recognized as one of the oldest and biggest
merchant boat sunk in the sea.
Archaeologists have recovered more than 4,000
containers made of gold, silver and porcelain, as well as about 6,000 copper
coins of the Song Dynasty (960-1279), when the boat was built.
The merchant boat might confirm the existence of an
ancient maritime trade route linking China and the West.
YANGJIANG, Guangdong Province, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- An
800-year-old merchant boat raised from the South China Sea on Friday is well
protected, an expert said here on Saturday.
An early examination showed the 30-meter-long vessel,
"Nanhai No. 1", wrapped in a huge sealed steel box with tons of seawater and
silt, was "perfectly protected" during the lifting process, said Wu Jiancheng,
chief of the archaeological project. Full story
YANGJIANG, Guangdong Province, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) -- A
Chinese salvage team is getting ready to recover the wreckage of an ancient
merchant ship loaded with exquisite porcelain from the South China sea on
Saturday.
"If the weather is cooperative, the boat, which has been
in the sea for about 800 years, will see the light of day again two days later,"
said Wu Jiancheng, head of the excavation project. Full story
