In the vast sea, the sky and water are the same, and an ancient Chinese merchant ship is sailing on the South China Sea. When the boat sailed to a place called Huaguang Reef in the Paracel Islands, the sea breeze suddenly rose, and the huge waves overturned the river and overturned the sea, and the boat shook violently and was quickly engulfed by the huge waves.
Time flies, and many years have passed. On December 18, 1998, two Xisha Chinese underwater archaeological vessels set sail from Tanmen Port in Qionghai City, Hainan Province, China, to Xisha to begin a comprehensive census of the underwater cultural remains of the Xisha Islands. The focus of the census is to find ancient shipwreck sites, reproduce the historical footprints of the Chinese ancestors in developing the South China Sea, and reproduce the ancient Chinese Maritime Silk Road.
The rich and beautiful Paracel Islands are located more than 100 nautical miles southeast of Hainan Island, and its east is the Dongsha Islands, and the South is the Zhongsha Islands and the Nansha Islands. People are accustomed to referring to them collectively as the South China Sea Islands. The Paracel Islands are made up of 39 large and small islands and atolls, like brilliant pearls set in the South China Sea, presenting a charming tropical scenery. Beneath the crystal clear waters is a wonderful underwater world, rich in marine life resources.
The Chinese ancestors produced labor in the South China Sea very early on and multiplied and multiplied. It is also an important waterway of China's ancient Maritime Silk Road.
There were two Silk Roads in ancient China, one was the Overland Silk Road. It starts from Chang'an in the east and reaches Central and Western Asia through Gansu and Xinjiang. One is the Maritime Silk Road, which starts from Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong along the coast of China, passes through the South China Sea to Southeast Asia, and Central Asia reaches the Red Sea and even the east coast of Africa.
The two Silk Roads became a major channel for trade and cultural exchanges between ancient China and other countries in the world.
Located in the south-central Paracel Islands, Huaguang Reef is a larger atoll, 16 nautical miles long from east to west, 5 nautical miles wide from north to south, with a depth of 30 meters at its deepest point and less than 1 meter at its shallowest point. As early as 1996, fishermen found traces of ancient shipwrecks at Huaguang Reef, and the underwater archaeology team decided to search for the wreck.
The underwater archaeological team soon discovered the remains of the shipwreck in the reef disc of Huaguang Reef. Since the site had been destroyed, the archaeological team decided to immediately conduct a pilot excavation of the shipwreck, which was the first ancient Chinese shipwreck found at Huaguang Reef and named it "Huaguang Reef No. 1".
The trial excavation of "Huaguang Reef No. 1" has produced nearly a thousand cultural relics in the water, obtained a large number of precious underwater surveying and mapping data, and published the "Xisha Underwater Archaeological Report", laying a solid foundation for the formal excavation of the shipwreck.
The news of the discovery of the "Huaguang Reef No. 1" shipwreck in China's Paracel Islands shocked the archaeological community, and people are eagerly hoping that the wreck can be salvaged out of the water as soon as possible and unveil its mysterious veil. After nine years of meticulous preparation, the overall salvage work of "Huaguang Reef No. 1" officially began.
The overall salvage of Huaguang Reef 1 was completed in two parts. Nearly 10,000 artifacts from the 2007 shipwreck site were salvaged out of the water, and the remaining ship plates in 2008 were photographed and recorded underwater, dismantled layer by layer, and all salvaged out of the water, and the cultural relics and boat plates that came out of the water are now treasured in the Hainan Museum.
The largest number of cultural relics in the water of "Huaguang Reef No. 1" is nearly 10,000 pieces of porcelain, of which 7,000 pieces are basically intact. Among the porcelain, there is the most blue and white porcelain, followed by celadon porcelain, and a small amount of sauce brown glaze ceramics, which are common daily porcelain such as dishes and plates.
After identification, these are export porcelain produced during the Southern Song Dynasty of China. Combined with the location of the shipwreck, experts deduce that "Huaguang Reef No. 1" is a Chinese ocean-going trading merchant ship during the Southern Song Dynasty, which has a history of 800 years.
Huaguang Reef No. 1 was the first Southern Song Dynasty shipwreck to be found in the South China Sea and salvaged as a whole. The shipwreck itself is an extremely precious cultural relic, and these decaying boards, which have been soaked in the sea for 800 years, should be salvaged from the sea intact. You can imagine how hard it is.
The Hainan Museum has a pool, and the 511 boat boards that come out of the water are immediately soaked in the pool after being transported back to the museum, most of which are 5 to 6 meters long and more than 30 centimeters wide, made of pine or fir. The underlying hull is basically well preserved, and the keel fragments from the water are 16.7 meters long. The keel is the largest and longest component of the ship's hull, just like the vertebrae of a ship run through the entire hull.
Experts speculate that the length of "Huaguang Reef No. 1" is more than 20 meters, about 6 meters wide, 3 to 4 meters deep, and has a displacement of more than 60 tons, which is a relatively large merchant ship in the Song Dynasty of China.
During the underwater excavation, the archaeologists found that the hull of the ship still retained 11 remaining watertight tanks, indicating that the "Huaguang Reef One" adopted an advanced watertight compartment design.
The watertight compartment is a great invention of the ancient Chinese shipbuilding process, and the watertight compartment was invented in China at the latest in the Tang Dynasty. The main advantage of the watertight compartment is that, first, it strengthens the lateral strength of the ship and makes the ship more robust. Second, with the watertight compartment, even if one or two cabins are damaged and enter the water, the ship will not sink, and it can still sail after repair.
All indications show that the "Huaguang Reef No. 1" is likely to be a high-quality lucky ship built in the southern part of Fujian Province during the Southern Song Dynasty of China. Zheng He, the great navigator of the Ming Dynasty of China, led a huge fleet of ships to the West seven times, and the Fu ship was the main ship type of the fleet. The treasure ship that Zheng He took was the pointed bottom Fu Ship, which was 126 meters long and was the world's first 10,000-ton ocean-going ship.
China opened up the Maritime Silk Road as early as the Han Dynasty, mainly along the coastline. This route is safe but takes a lot of time.
In the Song Dynasty, with the application of advanced technologies such as navigation compass and watertight compartment, China's ocean navigation technology developed by leaps and bounds, and ships crossed the deep sea area of the South China Sea to Southeast Asia and Central Asia. "Huaguang Reef One" is one of them.
Huaguang Reef One sank during the voyage. Curiously, the wreck site is not on the ocean floor, but on the reef of Huaguang Reef. After repeated research, archaeologists have come to a surprising conclusion, that is, the site of Huaguang Reef No. 1 is not the site of the ship accident that year.
In the age of sailing, maritime navigation in the South China Sea mainly relied on the monsoon. For sailing ships, the monsoon is a double-edged sword, both the power of the ship and the culprit of the shipwreck. Huaguang Reef is one of the most dangerous waterways in the waters of the South China Sea, and there are reefs of all sizes scattered here. As the tide rises and falls, the reef looms and threatens passing ships.
When Huaguang Reef No. 1 sailed here full of porcelain and so on, suddenly the sea breeze suddenly rose, and the fierce wind pushed the huge waves over the river and the sea. Huaguang Reef 1 was intended to sail into the reef to avoid the wind and waves, but it lost control and crashed into the reef, and the ship that touched the reef was pushed by the waves to the reef and ran aground there. As the tide rose and fell, the buildings on the deck were completely destroyed, and the hull partially disintegrated, gradually burying itself in coral sand.
From 1998 to 2008, Chinese archaeologists spent a decade salvaging HuaguangJiao No. 1 as a whole, producing nearly 10,000 pieces of porcelain and more than 500 damaged ship plates.
The goods loaded by Huaguangjiao No. 1 are mainly export porcelain from the Southern Song Dynasty of China, with tens of thousands of pieces of porcelain, mainly blue and white porcelain celadon and sauce glaze ceramics. Varieties include porcelain bowls, porcelain plates, porcelain plates, porcelain bottles, as well as porcelain powder boxes and porcelain pots, military holdings and other water-containing utensils.
Porcelain is decorated by engraving, stenciling, pasting and other methods commonly used in the Song Dynasty, and the ornamentation is mainly floral, including lotus flowers, peony flowers, chrysanthemums, etc., as well as character ornaments and auspicious characters.
In the porcelain that comes out of the water, many porcelain glazes are pure in color, fine in patterns, and very exquisitely made. For example, this flower mouth eight-edged pot, when it comes out of the water, it is a thin tire of the repaired straight-up pot, the glaze is white, the abdomen is eight-sided, the waist is bundled, the long neck, the slender curved flow, the curved handle, like a girl standing in the pavilion, the ice muscle jade bone, the beautiful elegance.
Powder boxes are utensils for cosmetics such as rouge and are a favorite of women. The powder boxes on Huaguang Reef No. 1 are mostly round, orange petal shape, and the lid of the box is molded with various floral patterns, including six star flower patterns, twelve chrysanthemum patterns, folded branches peony patterns, conifer patterns, and folded branches lotus patterns, grass leaf patterns, very beautiful. Similar powder boxes have also been excavated at the Song Dynasty site of Dehua kiln in Fujian Province. Compare them, and the two are very similar.
These celadon vials are also artifacts on Huaguang Reef One. The glaze of the porcelain bottle is white and yellow, and the sole of the foot is exposed. It is also similar to the celadon vase found at the Song Dynasty site of the Dehua kiln in Fujian.
Huaguang Jiao No. 1 is loaded with a number of Ji character porcelain bowls, the inner wall of the bowl is frescoed with grass leaf patterns, and the bowl has a "Ji" character in the center. Many fragments of Jizi porcelain bowls have also been found at the site of the Luodong kiln in Nan'an County, Fujian Province. Archaeologists therefore believe that most of the porcelain on Huaguangjiao No. 1 is fired in Fujian Dehua kiln, Nan'an kiln, magnetic kiln and other folk kilns. These kilns belong to the Quanzhou area of Fujian Province.
During the Tang, Song and Yuan dynasties of China, Quanzhou, Fujian Province, was the world-renowned first trade port in the East. There are many merchants from South Asia, West Asia, and Europe, and porcelain, silk, tea, lacquerware and other commodities from all over China are continuously transported to Quanzhou, and then loaded into ships and sold overseas.
Porcelain is the largest foreign trade commodity in China's Song Dynasty, in order to save costs, bulk porcelain is produced nearby and shipped on a ship, which greatly stimulates the production of local porcelain kilns in Fujian, forming an export porcelain production base centered on Quanzhou. More than 80% of the porcelain on HuaguangJiao No. 1 comes from folk kilns such as Dehua kilns, magnetic kilns and Nan'an kilns in Quanzhou area.
It is inferred from this that the origin of Huaguang Reef No. 1 is Quanzhou Port in Fujian Province, and Huaguang Reef No. 1 departed from Quanzhou Port in Fujian Province and sank in the Xisha Islands, indicating that it traveled on the Maritime Silk Road route.
This vase is from Huaguang Jiao No. 1, the flower mouth is flat, the glaze color is pure, the abdomen is carved with lotus patterns, and the mouth edge is turned outwards, like a blooming flower. Interestingly, the Philippines has also dug up similar vases and compared them. The shape, glaze color and ornamentation are very similar, indicating that this type of vase was once exported to Southeast Asia.
According to literature, before the Song Dynasty of China, people in Southeast Asia used banana leaves as plates, some used sunflower leaves as bowls, and some used bamboo weaving and coconut shells as utensils. The large export of Chinese export porcelain has changed their way of eating, affected their food culture, and had an important impact on the world, and the porcelain loaded by Huaguang Reef No. 1 bears witness to this history.
HuaguangJiao No. 1 is the first Chinese Song Dynasty shipwreck salvaged in the South China Sea as a whole, and it is undoubtedly a very precious historical relic, which provides extremely valuable materials for the study of the ancient Chinese development of the South China Sea and the history of shipbuilding, navigation, trade and cultural exchanges.
Since the 1980s, the Chinese Underwater Archaeology Team has conducted a large-scale census of underwater cultural relics in the South China Sea, and found a number of underwater cultural relics in the South China Sea. Nanhai No. 1, Huaguang Reef No. 1, Bowl Reef No. 1, North Jiao No. 1, etc., have linked together ancient shipwrecks. After many years of silence, China's ancient Maritime Silk Road was clearly displayed in front of the world.
The discovery of underwater cultural relics in the South China Sea has once again proved that many of our ancestors in the South China Sea have worked and traded here since ancient times, and have lived here for generations, which also fully proves that the South China Sea has been our China since ancient times.