Warriors of the Deep
China’s intrepid archaeologists are excited about remarkable underwater discoveries from deep-sea shipwrecks that could overturn previous theories of trade along the Maritime Silk Road
Floating in the depths of the South China Sea, a robotic arm extending from a submersible attempts to pick up a delicate porcelain jar, directed by an archeologist. They must be careful not to even nudge another artifact or disturb the seabed for fear of destroying other relics.
Song Jianzhong and Dong Jiaxin, both archaeologists at the National Center for Archaeology of the National Cultural Heritage Administration of China, have participated in missions aboard a submersible to the sea bed to investigate the wrecks of two Ming Dynasty (13681644) vessels since 2023.
Inside the cramped capsule, which has just enough room for three crew, they have to crouch for up to 10 hours at depths of 1,500 meters, without being able to drink or eat, or go to the toilet.
But they agree it is worth the discomfort for the discoveries, which are shedding new light on historical maritime Silk Road trade routes and the cargoes the vessels carried.
New Findings
The ancient Maritime Silk Road crossed the South China Sea. By the time of the Qin (221-207 BCE) and Han (202 BCE-220 AD) dynasties, there was a marine passage from China to Southeast Asia and South Asia. During the Tang (618-907) and Song (960-1279) dynasties, Chinese sailors voyaged as far as the Red Sea, East Africa and Europe. The routes could be perilous, and many vessels met their doom, some laden with precious cargoes of ceramics, silks and other goods.
In October 2022, two wrecked ships were discovered in the South China Sea, southeast of Hainan Island and northwest of the Xisha Islands. Since 2023, painstaking missions have sought to recover artifacts and find out what happened to the two Ming Dynasty vessels, named Northwest Continental Slope No.1 and Northwest Continental Slope No.2, according to their locations.
As director of the Underwater Archaeology Special Committee of the Chinese Archaeological Society, Song conducts his deep water research using the China-designed deep-sea manned submersible Shenhai Yongshi, or Deep Sea Warrior. Advances in submersible technology have greatly lowered the costs of doing undersea research. The vessel only fits three, at a squeeze. The pilot sits in the middle, with an assistant to the left and Song on the right. All of
them are forced to sit cross-legged.
It is a race against time. Marine life, especially sand worms, which burrow into the wooden structure, and squat lobsters – which are more like crabs – scuttle all over the outside. Most of the ships’ wooden skeletons above the seabed have rotted, leaving only the beams that were covered by sand.
“It’s like when dead whales sink to the ocean floor, leaving just the skeleton behind,” Song told Newschina. They direct the Deep Sea Warrior to hover over and around the site, surveying and photographing the remains.
At the Slope No.1 site, the outline of the ship, which is mostly buried, reveals a dense pile of cargo, including pottery, porcelain and ironware stacked up to three meters in height, obscuring some of the remaining structure. Around the wreck is a ring-shaped area of artifacts, and a tail-like area 300 meters long and 50 meters wide containing scattered objects.
Archaeologists are working with multidisciplinary experts from fields such as marine science and fluid mechanics to understand how the ship sank.
Song said the vessel tilted and yawed from side to side as it sank, discarding cargo which formed the tail. The shock of hitting the bottom caused some of the cargo to first float up, then fall back to be buried in sand. Other goods were thrown from the ship, forming the ring.
No evidence of what happened to the crew has been found, and no human remains were discovered.
Since May 2023, a team from the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has conducted 41 dives on the two wrecks, making 3D scans and collecting artifacts.
The high-definition images provided by some 10,000 photos of Slope No.1 allow the researchers to plan future explorations.
Delicate Operations
On September 28, 2023, during a deep-sea mission, Dong Jiaxin looked through the submersible’s porthole at her target. “Please pick up that green glazed porcelain jar,” she instructed the pilot.
Chief pilot Li Baosheng steered the Deep Sea Warrior slowly forward, attempting to use a robot arm to grab the object. It was a tricky maneuver, as the jar had a short neck. Dong, who graduated from Beijing Normal University
with a degree in ceramics archaeology, knows when to choose her battles. On this occasion, she elected to leave the jar, in case she disturbed other objects. Spying an azure porcelain pot, she told the pilot to retrieve it instead.
It was a type of porcelain known as fahua ware. Fahua, meaning “designs with borders,” has predominantly a palette of turquoise, white and dark blues and greens to produce enamel designs. Fahua ware was first produced in China in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) when blue was fashionable and there was a close connection between China and the Islamic world. Although it continued to be produced, Dong said fahua ware is rarely seen in archaeological findings, and finding it on a shipwreck is unprecedented.
“It’s an important breakthrough in ceramics archaeology,” Song said. While fahua is not common in China now, there are many in museums in the West. It was not known how and when fahua ware was exported until these new findings. “The discovery of Slope No.1 proves that fahua porcelain was exported in the Ming Dynasty,” he said.
The day she recovered the fahua jar, Dong and the submersible crew retrieved 50 items, including a striking large white glazed bowl. Abiding by the rules of underwater research to not change the appearance of the site, researchers only take objects that are easily accessible. Finding the fahua jar was an unexpected achievement. They still do not know what other treasures
could remain under the three-meter pile of artifacts.
Remaining a mystery, for now, are locked wooden trunks on the sea floor, which might contain crew belongings. But there are no plans to collect them at present.
Unlike Slope No.1, Northwest Continental Slope No.2 was hauling a cargo of ebony hardwood, which was used to make high-end furniture like tables and cabinets, or small objects like musical instruments and chopsticks.
Slope No.1 dates from the Zhengde Emperor period of the Ming, (15061521), and Slope No.2 is earlier, from the Ming Hongzhi Emperor (14881505). According to research staff Deng Qijiang and Zhao Songyuan from the National Center for Archaeology, in the middle of the Ming Dynasty, trade in tributary goods to the imperial court from surrounding territories and kingdoms started to decline in favor of twoway commercial trade conducted by merchants.
Slope No.2 was likely a private merchant ship sailing from ports in southeastern Guangdong and Fujian provinces. The ship would have taken goods for sale to Malacca, on the southwest coast of Malaysia, and returned laden with ebony.
During the Ming and Qing dynasties, China’s international trade surplus meant most ships carried exports. No shipwreck hauling a return cargo was found until Slope No.2.
Diving Deeper
Every afternoon as the Deep Sea Warrior descended upon the wrecks, a team of around 30 experts from the National Center for Archaeology, Institute of Deep-sea Sciences and Engineering under CAS, and the China Museum of the South China Sea in Hainan Province gathered in the conference room on the mother ship. The experts encompass a variety of fields, including archaeology, cultural relics protection, geophysical exploration, marine geology, marine biology, machinery and electronics.
Song Jianzhong was the first expert to conduct research on the Deep Sea Warrior. “We’d always suspected there must be shipwrecks in the depths of the South China Sea, but we had no submersible with deep-sea capabilities before,” Song said.
Underwater archaeology was pioneered by French engineers Jacquesyves Cousteau and Emile Gagnan, who in 1943 developed a fully automatic piece of breathing gear that allowed divers to swim underwater for an extended period of time. There is an additional atmospheric pressure every 10 meters in depth, which limits how long and how deep divers can go.
Underwater archaeology in China started in 1987, but three decades later, researchers had reached the limit of what they could achieve using the equipment they had in shallow offshore areas. Due to accumulated layers of sediment, it is hard to spot evidence of wrecks, Song said. Many were seen only by accident, after sediments shifted. Others are found due to engineering projects, or by fishers. Since 2017, Song admitted, offshore archaeological findings have become much rarer than before.
“It’s like the Changjiangkou No.2 wreck, which was buried 8-10 meters down in silt. When the river course changed, some of it resurfaced,” Song said. The vessel dates to the late 19th century, and sank northeast of Chongming Island in Shanghai. Discovered in 2015, the wreck is the largest and bestpreserved wooden trading vessel found so far. In 2022, a major operation started to salvage the ship and its large cargo of relics.
While the logistics of diving to the deep sea are more complex, wrecks there are easier to spot, as the sedimentation rate is almost negligible compared to continental margins, sometimes recorded only in millimeters over centuries. If remote sensing equipment towed by surface vessels, like multibeam sonar, detects anomalies, underwater drones or submersibles are deployed to confirm.
“Technological progress and technological means have determined the development of underwater archaeology,”
said Sun Jian, deputy director of the Archaeological Research Center of the Cultural Heritage Administration.
“The most important technological breakthrough has been the manned submersible,” Song said. “Before this, in the South China Sea, with its average depth of 1,212 meters, we couldn’t even touch the seabed.”
The Deep Sea Warrior is China’s second deep-sea manned submersible after the Jiaolong, in service since 2010, which reached a depth of 7,062 meters in 2012. In April 2018, Song conducted the first deep-sea archaeological survey with the Deep Sea Warrior in the waters of Xisha North Reef in the South China Sea. Four years later, in October 2022, Slope No.1 was spotted by Deep Sea Warrior during its 499th dive. During its 500th dive, Slope No.2 was found nearby.
China’s underwater archaeology projects, which need high levels of funding and expertise, are led by the Underwater Archaeology Research Center of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, which gathers the needed experts from different provincial teams.
Now, provincial centers of expertise have emerged. Shandong Province has established China’s first provincial underwater archaeological center. There are others in places including Hainan Province, Yangjiang in Guangdong Province, Ningbo in Zhejiang Province and Beihai in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, to facilitate long-term continuous archaeological investigation and excavation.
Archeology for All
Marine science experts from the Institute of the Deep Sea, CAS and professionals from the National Center for Archaeology of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage have proposed establishing an archaeological relics park.
“This requires us to explore highfrequency, low-cost, regular entry methods, so tourists can ride a submersible down to visit the location of the shipwreck,” Chen Chuanxu, chief scientist of the archaeological expedition of the Northwest Continental Slope No.1 and No.2 shipwrecks said. Song Jianzhong said that if the shipwreck site is permanently preserved to demonstrate underwater cultural heritage protection, it will contribute to deep-sea cultural heritage protection to the whole world.
The engineering team of the Institute of the Deep Sea is mulling how to increase public accessibility, such as livestreaming. Current technology already allows real-time video chats from the deep-sea, so livestreaming is not such a huge leap. After a full 3D reconstruction of the site, people could experience it through virtual or augmented reality.
China has a fleet of three deep-sea submersibles, including the Jiaolong, Deep Sea Warrior and Fendouzhe (Striver). In late 2023, China released the Working Regulations for Underwater Archaeology, which focuses on protection. Exposed areas must be protectively backfilled or reinforced to prevent theft, using methods such as sandbags or covering the site with a steel net. Song said they have not yet finalized a plan for protecting the Northwest Continental Slope shipwrecks.
Archaeologists speculate that there are at least 100,000 items on Slope No.1. They intend to recover some 1,000, and have so far retrieved around 600. “This is a rough number,” Song said. “We don’t pick items by their appearance, instead we use criteria based on their significance, which includes coming from different parts of the ship and having distinct styles.”
Dong Jiaxin worked at the South China Sea Museum of China in Hainan for more than 20 days, cleaning and categorizing the relics recovered from the deep sea.
“I’ve never seen such a flawless white porcelain body before, and the glaze color is well-distributed without any flaws. Even the interior of red and green glazed porcelain is pure white,” she said, adding that the underwater treasures will spur a lot of new research.
While for now, underwater archaeology in China focuses on shipwrecks, later it could expand to discovering lost harbors, ancient cities, villages and the remains of early human activities on the coastal continental shelf.
“It has initiated a new space for our archaeology,” Song said. “As long as we have enough time and financial support, I am 100-percent sure there’ll be a tremendous amount of discoveries in the South China Sea.”