Chinese to salvage 800-year-old wreck

CHINA:A Chinese salvage team is gearing up to salvage the wreck of the Nanhai No 1, an 800-year-old merchant ship laden with exquisite porcelain, from the murky depths of the South China Sea.

The vessel went down in storms as it left a southern Chinese port to sail the rich trade route known as the ancient Marine Silk Road and was quickly buried in silt, which has preserved the priceless haul of 60,000 to 80,000 relics on board.

The researchers hope to raise the Nanhai No 1, which translates as South China Sea No 1, this morning and they are using a specially commissioned salvage vessel for the mammoth task.

"If the weather is co-operative, the boat, which has been in the sea for about 800 years, will see the light of day again two days later," Wu Jiancheng, head of the excavation project, told the Xinhua news agency.

The Marine Silk Road linked imperial China to the West and the ship dates back to the early days of the Song emperors, who ruled between 960 and 1279.

The Nanhai No 1 is 30 metres long and 10 metres wide.

There have been a number of vessels discovered in the area and the Nanhai No 1 was the first to be found when it came to light by accident in 1987. A blanket of silt has helped protect the Nanhai No 1, but it has also made excavation very difficult, as archaeologists have been forced to work by touch.

The shipwreck and the surrounding silt will be placed in a giant steel basket, which a crane will then place on a barge. Tow boats will pull the barge to a temporary port tomorrow where it will be housed in a specially-built museum, built at a cost of 150 million yuan (€14.1m) by the Guangdong government.

The museum features a "Crystal Palace" - a glass-walled pool filled with sea water to house Nanhai No 1, where the water temperature and pressure would be the same as the sea bed where the ship has lain for eight centuries. Visitors will be able to watch the archeologists at work .

Raising the shipwreck and keeping its valuable haul of porcelain intact is a challenge, as scientists face stiff competition to rescue historical artefacts from local fishermen and high-tech salvage experts, many from other parts of the world, acting secretly in the area.

The treasures often find their way to auction houses in the US and other foreign markets. In early 2005, about 15,000 pieces, mainly blue-and-white porcelain about 300-years-old, were found in a shipwreck off the southeastern province of Fujian.