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"Tsksing", a merchant
ship of Qing Dynasty which sank into the sea after hitting a submerged
rock in 1822, was refloated not long ago. To people's surprise,
their findings on the ship include not only the skeleton of the
victims, but more than 300,000 Chinese porcelain. Without question,
the number of the porcelain means that this is one of the most
important discovery in the history of ceramics. Most of the porcelain
are from a famous Chinese ceramics base-Dehua in Fujian |
province. Once these porcelain were auctioned in
Germany, the quantum for exchange is 22,400,000 marks.
On May, 1999, an experienced English treasure-explorer Mike Hatcher
began his exploration at the submerged rock by all means with thirty
sailors in order to find "Tsksing" but in vain. Their expenses
added up to 10,000 dollars per day which made them hard to continue.
However, things changed on May 12th, they found a pile of unidentified
objects consist of the wreckage of a ship and some Chinese porcelain.
So they decided to pull them out. After researching several materials,
an English expert Nigelpickford believes the ship to be "Tsksing".
Then he told us a soul-stirring tragic story:
In 19th century, "Tsksing" was really a giant ship. On January,
1882, she left for Indonesia from Xiamen port. There were all together
2,000 passengers and sailors on the ship which includes merchants, students
and workers. In order to sail placidly, some ceramic products were put
on the ship to be the ballast. But during her sailing period, the line
was changed so as to evade the pirates.
Because of some
reasons related to climate, the ship hit the rock and began to
sink. At that time, only 18 passengers were rescued by another
small ship, others all in the water. Two days later, captain James
rescued more than 180 survivals. The death of 1800 people made
her fate somewhat the same as Titanic.
To sum up, the finding of 350,000 Chinese porcelain surprised
the world. They are mainly blue and white porcelain produced in
Dehua in 18th and 19th century. The shapes of the porcelain are
plate, bowl, cup, spoon and so on. They well manifest the living
conditions of the people who lived near the sea.
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