800-Year Old Ship Raised - Chinese archaeologists have successfully raised an 800-year old sunken ship with an estimated 60,000 objects onboard recovered when the entire ship was lifted in a giant steel basket the size of a basketball court.
Chinese archaeologists built a steel basket around the 100-foot vessel, and it took about two hours to get the 800-year-old ship raised. A huge crane lifted the ship and surrounding silt to the surface, the Xinhua news agency reported in a basket as large as a basketball court and as tall as a three-story building.
Green glazed porcelain plates, tin pots, shadowy blue porcelains and other rare antiques have all been recovered during the initial exploration of the ship. Archaeologists also recovered containers made of gold and silver along with about 6,000 copper coins.
The ship dates from the early Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279).
A giant, enclosed pool, named the “Crystal Palace” has been built to hold the 800-year old ship raised by seaborne crane. The building housing the pool is 210 feet long, 130 feet wide and 75 feet high. The pool itself contains seawater and is about 40 feet deep.
“It will be sealed after the ship and the silt are put in,” said Feng Shaowen, head of the cultural bureau of Yangjiang City in China’s Guangdong Province near Hong Kong.
Feng said visitors would be able watch the on-going excavation of the ship through windows on two sides of the pool.
As early as 2,000 years ago, ancient Chinese traders began taking china, silk and cloth textiles and other commodities to foreign countries along the trading route. It started from ports at today’s Guangdong and Fujian provinces to countries in southeast Asia, Africa and Europe.
The 800-year old ship raised, known as “Nanhai No.1″, was accidentally found in 1987 roughly 20 sea miles west of Hailing Island off the south coast of China’s Guangdong Province, in more than 70 feet of water.
Guangdong has earmarked 150 million yuan (20.3 million U.S. dollars) to build a “Marine Silk Road Museum” to preserve the salvaged ancient ship.
Unlike the traditional practice of excavating relics on sunken ships first and then salvaging the vessel, no more relic excavations would be made until the boat “gets used to its new home,” said Wu.
“Actually, archaeologists will conduct thorough excavations of the ship later in the pool.”
The successful salvage offers important artifacts for the study of China’s history in seafaring, shipbuilding and ceramics manufacture.
And that’s the latest news on the 800-year old ship raised off the coast of China.
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