China to excavate salvaged merchant wreck

Chinese archeologists will next year start full excavation and research work on the Nanhai No. 1, a salvaged ancient Chinese merchant ship that is currently preserved in a giant water tank.

State Administration of Cultural Heritage will decide on the final excavation plan for the wreckage by the end of 2012, which will likely be conducted in the first half of 2013, said Huang Liusheng, deputy chief of the Marine Silk Road Museum in Yangjiang, a city in the southern province of Guangdong.

In consideration of further protecting excavated relics, the excavation work will be conducted in stages on the Nanhai No. 1, the structural and cargo details of which remain unclear, he said.

The Nanhai No. 1, which dates back to the Southern Song Dynasty in the 13th century, was lifted from the seabed of the South China Sea at the end of 2007, along with much of its cargo.

It is now immersed in a sealed tank in a huge pool at the Marine Silk Road Museum, which was designed to house the ship.

The pool is 64 meters long, 40 meters wide, 23 meters high and about 12 meters deep. It was filled with sea water and silt to replicate the water temperature, pressure and other environmental conditions of the vessel's previous resting place.

The underwater excavation techniques are quite new to China. It could take dozens of years for the excavation work to be completed on the Nanhai No. 1, Huang said.

Chinese archeologists discovered copper and porcelain treasures in the wreck in the previous two trial excavations.