BEIJING, (APP) — An 800-year-old merchant boat named Nanhai No. 1 raised from the South China Sea on Friday is well protected, an expert in Yangjiang, Guangdong province said on Saturday.
An early examination showed the 30-meter-long vessel, wrapped in a huge sealed steel box with tons of seawater and silt, was “perfectly protected” during the lifting process, said Wu Jiancheng, chief of the archaeological project.
The barge carrying Nanhai No. 1, meaning “South China Sea No. 1”, was to be temporarily docked on Sunday. The boat was then to be put on a huge air bed and sent to a specially-built museum, according to the salvage plan.
Plans called for the boat to be placed in a glass pool at a specially- built museum named the “Crystal Palace” where the water temperature, pressure and other environmental conditions were the same as where the ship had rested on the sea bed.
The pool was 64 meters long, 40 meters wide and 23 meters high. It contained seawater and was about 12 meters in depth.
“It will be sealed after the ship and the silt are put in,” said Feng Shaowen, head of the cultural bureau of Yangjiang City, Guangdong Province.
Guangdong has earmarked 150 million yuan ($ 20.3 million) to build a “Marine Silk Road Museum” to preserve the salvaged ancient ship.
The new museum, run by the Yangjiang municipal government, was expected to open to the public by the end of next year. Visitors would be able to watch the on-going excavation of the ship through windows on two sides of the pool, Feng said.
Discovered in the summer of 1987 off the coast near Yangjiang City, Nanhai No.1 was recognized as one of the oldest and biggest Chinese merchant boats sunk at sea.
To date, archaeologists had recovered more than 4,000 containers made of gold, silver and porcelain, as well as about 6,000 copper coins from the Song Dynasty (960-1279) when the boat was built. Wu estimated that there were still 60,000 to 80,000 artifacts on board.