●The largest ancient ship archaeology and cultural relics protection project in mainland China
●The world's first and most advanced arc beam non-contact cultural relics overall salvage technology
●The world's first project of archaeological excavation, overall relocation, cultural relics protection and museum construction and display of ancient ships
The above focus is all around one thing~
Something that will excite the archeological community and heritage fans
The largest overall salvage and protection project of an ancient shipwreck in the mainland so far, the Yangtze River Estuary No. 2 Ancient Ship Archaeology and Cultural Relics Protection Project, was officially launched in Shanghai today. This wooden sailing ship from the Tongzhi period of the Qing Dynasty is another milestone in Chinese underwater archaeology after the discovery of the "Nanhai No. 1" shipwreck of the Song Dynasty in Guangdong Province 35 years ago.
In order to completely unveil the mystery of this ancient ship, the salvage will use the world's first technology to wrap the ancient ship and its attached sediment and sea water in a huge caisson and lift it as a whole. In the future, at the former site of the Yangpu Riverside Shanghai Shipyard, a special "living" museum will be built for this ancient ship, and people can visit it while gradually unveiling the many unsolved mysteries of the ancient shipwreck with archaeologists.
Video Producer: Lou Jiayin
The launching ceremony was held on the Salvage Ship "Weili" at waigaoqiao Wharf, 63 kilometers to the east is the Chongming Hengsha waters of the Yangtze River Estuary, and the no. 2 ancient ship of the Yangtze River Estuary, which is about 38.5 meters long and about 7.8 meters wide, is quietly buried in the silt of 5.5 meters deep, tilted to the left by 27 degrees, slightly exposed to the starboard side, and the structure is relatively complete, which is judged by experts to be a flat-bottomed sand boat widely used in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Zhai Yang, deputy director of the Municipal Cultural Protection Center, introduced that this ancient ship is known to people, and it is also from the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics launched the census of underwater cultural heritage in 2011, through land survey visits, access to literature and other methods, at that time collected more than 150 underwater cultural relics clues in the waters of the Yangtze River estuary.
In 2015, an iron shipwreck of the Republic of China period "Yangtze River Estuary No. 1" was discovered by sonar scanning technology, and then another large and well-preserved wooden ancient shipwreck was found in the north of the wreck, with the archaeological number "Yangtze River Estuary No. 2". Since then, the prelude to decoding the no. 2 ancient ship at the mouth of the Yangtze River has been opened.
From the discovery to the confirmation of the age and value of the ancient ship, it took 6 years, during which archaeologists explored that the hull had 31 cabins, and the 4 cabins before and after the selection were cleaned in a small area, and exquisite cultural relics such as Jingdezhen kiln porcelain were found neatly stacked. From July to September 2021, another underwater investigation found large-scale whole vessels such as Yuan Dynasty porcelain and 60 cm high bean green glazed blue and white vases, especially the "Tongzhi Year System" section of the water porcelain bottom book in the ancient ship, which provided an important basis for the dating of ancient ships.
The "Nanhai No. 1" is about 24 meters long and has more than 180,000 cultural relics. The Yangtze River Estuary No. 2 ancient ship is larger than the "Nanhai No. 1", is currently one of the largest, most complete preservation, and huge number of ancient wooden shipwrecks found in China and even in the world, and is a precious cultural heritage with extremely important historical, scientific and artistic value.
In addition, purple sand vessels, wooden bucket fragments, and Hookahs from Vietnam were unearthed in and around the hull. Zhai Yang said that analyzing the cultural relics and structure of this ship is of great value for the study of the Maritime Silk Road. "Porcelain like Vietnamese porcelain, not in batches, should be the crew's daily necessities; the hull component tree species analysis results are Borneo, produced in Southeast Asia", Zhai Yang hopes to solve these mysteries, "where is this ship built?" Are the crew members foreigners? Or Chinese have been to Southeast Asia and brought back these habits? ”
Due to the high sediment content and fast water flow speed at the mouth of the Yangtze River, in order to prevent the hull from falling apart in the salvage project, the cultural relics department decided to adopt the world's first arc beam non-contact integral salvage technology. A special curved caisson up to 51 meters long, 19 meters wide and 9 meters high is used to wrap the shipwreck and cultural relics with the surrounding rivers and sediments. Zhou Dongrong, deputy director of the Shanghai Salvage Bureau of the Ministry of Transport, described it as a "needle in a haystack", "the difficulty is world-class, relying on China's high-end manufacturing capacity, can only be the improvement of comprehensive national strength to have this kind of processing equipment." ”
For a simple example, the curved beam needs to be connected by a lock, but the accuracy should be controlled to ±5 mm on a beam with a diameter of 17 meters, and the monitoring technology of the optical fiber that then runs through the beam should also be accurate to the millimeter level, so as to monitor the position of the beam in real time, maximize the protection of the originality and integrity of the underwater cultural heritage, and ensure the safety of cultural relics.
This salvage technology combines the processing technology of nuclear power arc beam, tunnel shield boring technology, immersed pipe tunnel docking technology, and uses hydraulic synchronous lifting technology, integrated monitoring system and other high-tech technologies that are currently the world's most advanced. At the same time, these technologies are also the first time to be applied to the field of cultural relics protection and archaeology, and truly realize the integration and development of cultural relics protection and scientific and technological innovation.
(Offshore equal proportion salvage test diagram)
22 special giant "arc beams" plus river water, sand and mud, shipwrecks, the total weight of the caisson is nearly 10,000 tons, and the migration after salvage is another major test.
Zhou Dongrong introduced that the Shanghai Salvage Bureau "opened the brain hole" for the caisson to customize a "central opening" engineering ship, opened a 56-meter-long, 20-meter-wide, 9-meter-deep hole, put all the 10,000 tons of caisson into the belly of the ship, avoided the impact on it during the lifting process, and "embraced" the Yangtze River Estuary No. 2 ancient ship to sail to the destination. That is to say, this ancient shipwreck left the mud bottom, and all the up and down movement processes were controlled within a few meters, and the cultural relics were disturbed as little as possible.
According to the plan, the Yangtze River Estuary No. 2 ancient ship is expected to complete the salvage and relocation tasks before the end of this year. The Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government chose the site of Yangpu Binjiang Shanghai Shipyard and used two old docks and preserved historical buildings to prepare for the construction of the No. 2 Ancient Ship Museum at the mouth of the Yangtze River.
Fang Shizhong, director of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Cultural Heritage, said, "The popularization of archaeological work and public archaeology is synchronized, making the Yangtze River Estuary No. 2 Ancient Ship Museum an important cultural landmark of the life show, which is not only a major discovery in the archaeological community, but also a great enlightenment for the public to carry out archaeological and cultural relics protection work, and it is also a great integration of scientific and technological innovation in Shanghai and even China." ”
The salvage and protection of the No. 2 ancient ship at the mouth of the Yangtze River is one of the important symbols of China's underwater archaeology entering the world-class level, which will significantly enhance the influence and discourse power of mainland underwater archaeology in the world, and effectively promote the integration of culture and tourism and high-quality development.
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