Pirates of the Marine Silk Road
Volume 64 Number 5, September/October 2011
by Lauren Hilgers
A shipwreck in the South China Sea advances China's emerging field of underwater archaeology
Just off the coast of the southern Chinese island of Nan'ao, on a boat called the Nan Tianshun, Chinese archaeologist Cui Yong is the only still thing on deck. He sits near the front of the repurposed barge, leaning into a radio receiver while everyone else on the boat bustles around him. Researchers in wetsuits and fins splash into the water. Workers shout back and forth, pulling on taut ropes that disappear into the ocean. Someone hoses down a row of oxygen tanks. Loud as they are, these on-deck activities barely seem to register with the archaeologist. His attention is 90 feet down, on the bottom of the South China Sea. The radio crackles with reports from his divers on the wreck of a Ming Dynasty pirate ship.
https://archive.archaeology.org/1109/features/south_china_sea_ming_dynasty_shipwreck.html
