Underwater archaeology from the salvage of Dingyuan ship in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895

1September, 894 17, the Qing dynasty and the main force of the Japanese navy launched an all-round contest in the northern part of the Yellow Sea. In this battle, the Japanese fleet won a great victory and occupied the sea control right of the Yellow Sea, while the Beiyang Navy of the Qing Dynasty suffered heavy losses and lost five warships. "This day is full of tears and has a strong naval force." National hero Deng Shichang also died here.

In recent years, Shandong Underwater Archaeological Research Center, Sino-Japanese War Museum and other units have assembled 30 archaeologists and related technicians to carry out underwater archaeology in Weihai, and successfully hoisted an armored ship belonging to Dingyuan (one of the five ships that were sunk at that time) out of the water on 126, thus giving the world a chance to see the real thing.

Behind this discovery of great historical significance is actually the continuous development of underwater archaeology in China.

Speaking of archaeology, the people are most familiar with the excavation of ancient tombs on land, commonly known as grave robbery.

In fact, this understanding is simply one of the biggest misunderstandings about archaeology. Besides tombs, the research objects of field archaeology also include ancient roads, bridges, canals, cities, mines and many other sites.

In addition, archaeology is not always carried out on land. Underwater archaeology is an extension of archaeology to water, which studies ancient shipbuilding, navigation and ancient relics and relics such as cities, ports and ships that sank in rivers, lakes and seas.

On the technical level, underwater archaeology is also very different from what everyone thinks. In addition to traditional archaeological means, underwater archaeology also needs the technical support of ocean exploration, diving engineering, remote sensing physics and other disciplines.

Compared with traditional archaeology, the origin of underwater archaeology is much later. There is a simple reason. It was impossible to develop underwater archaeology in those days when you couldn't breathe underwater for a long time.

/kloc-In the 1930s of 0/9, diving masks came out, which made mankind take a big step towards the underwater world.

1On August 24th, 848, Morlot, a Bernese, sneaked into the bottom of Lake Ranfusch in Morgos, looking for the remains of residents on Lake Switzerland, and succeeded. He is also called the father of underwater archaeology.

1943, the French navy invented scuba, and archaeologists can finally breathe in the water below 10 meters.

1960, American archaeologist george bass investigated and excavated the Byzantine shipwreck in the 7th century AD in Cape Gridoya, Turkey, and applied the land archaeological method to underwater for the first time. Later, he published the book Underwater Archaeology, which became a landmark event in the history of underwater archaeology.

In the mid-1960s, the most famous British warship of Tudor Dynasty, Mary Ruth, stayed at the bottom of the sea for more than 400 years and was salvaged by archaeologist Alexander MacKay ... In this way, the subject of underwater archaeology gradually developed and brought people unexpected surprises again and again.

China has a long history and a long coastline. In China's coastal waters, there are a large number of shipwreck sites and countless underwater treasures, but our underwater archaeology discipline construction is very backward, and backwardness is bound to be beaten.

An Englishman, Michelle Hacha, was born in 1940. He grew up in an orphanage. During his lonely growing years, he read many books about treasure hunting and decided to become an explorer, patrolling around with a treasure map in his hand and getting rich overnight. In fact, that's what he did.

In Michelle's team, there are experts in archaeology, guides familiar with the eastern waters, divers with excellent water quality, and the most advanced acoustic locator and magnetic sensor at that time. The cost of single-day testing is as high as 1 000 USD.

Once, they identified a merchant ship of the Qing Dynasty in China that ran aground and sank, and subsequently successfully salvaged more than 6,543,800 pieces of well-preserved porcelain. However, these grave robbers not only threw the remains of ancient people without commercial value, but also seriously damaged cultural relics. In order to raise the price of cultural relics, Michelle, who knows that "things are rare", even immediately smashed 650,000 of them. The remaining 350,000 pieces were sent to auction, and only one piece of China blue and white was sold for 230 million yuan by Sotheby's.

Lured by huge economic benefits, various salvage teams and "expeditions" frequently appear in South China Sea of China to steal treasures. The losses they caused were no less than the looting of Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes by Stein and Boscio.

1985, Michelle and his fleet found an ancient sunken ship named "Chinese sailboat" at Stirling Swift Reef, about 12 nautical mile off bintan island, Indonesia, and recovered tens of thousands of blue and white porcelain and gold ingots from the Kangxi period of Qing Dynasty. From 65438 to 0986, these treasures appeared in the auction in Amsterdam, which made Michelle earn a lot of money and shocked collectors around the world.

Due to the long-term lack of communication with foreign countries, when these cultural robbers plundered the treasures at the bottom of China, the archaeological community in China knew almost nothing. Later, with the smooth flow of information, the archaeological community in China discovered in hindsight that someone stole the national treasure secretly and violated the state sovereignty. So in September of the same year, the state decided to develop underwater archaeology, and established the only professional institution of underwater archaeology in China at that time-Underwater Archaeological Research Center.

1987- 1990 through cooperation with foreign underwater archaeological research institutions and sending people abroad to study, China has finally trained a group of underwater archaeological professionals and gradually started to equip them with various high-tech instruments. These include underwater positioning systems, such as sonar equipment, high-sensitivity measuring instruments, acoustic rangefinders and lighting equipment. There are also underwater photography equipment, diving communication equipment, salvage equipment and so on.

Underwater cultural relics are often buried by silt, but they can't be dug out with shovels like on land, so dredging machines with different powers, such as silt pumps, are needed to quickly remove the silt accumulated by sunken ships.

How to land underwater cultural relics is also a problem. China introduced a kind of high-power hoist, which can make pot-shaped cultural relics surface automatically by buoyancy.

The most important equipment is the diver's life support equipment. People who do underwater archaeology have a joke that it is difficult for us to train divers into archaeologists quickly, so we can only train archaeologists into divers. Actually, that's what I did. Many people who dig in the dark seabed are trained archaeologists.

After more than 30 years' efforts, China has established its own high-level underwater archaeological team. Our own professional team, together with National Cultural Heritage Administration Underwater Cultural Regret Protection Center, conducted many investigations and excavations in China's four sea areas-Bohai Sea, Yellow Sea, East China Sea and South China Sea.

From 199 1 to 1993 underwater archaeology in Suizhong, Liaoning, to the world-famous Nanhai No.1 project, and to the recent salvage of Dingyuan ship, China's underwater archaeological ability has undergone earth-shaking changes, making countless underwater treasures reappear in the world and reappearing China from another dimension.